Publisher's Synopsis
Vol. 3 in the Series: Philosophical References - Bilingual Edition: English / FrenchIn this new version:1- English text. Annotation: LEIBNIZ BY HEGEL, extract from "LECTURES ON HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY" / Part Three: Modern Philosophy / Section Two: Period of the Thinking Understanding / Chapter I. - The Metaphysics of the Understanding / C 1. LEIBNITZ.2- French text.About the Series: Philosophical Reference Bilingual Edition: English / FrenchVol. 1. The Meditations (Annotated by Hegel) Les Méditations by René Descartes.Vol. 2. Ethics (Annotated by Hegel) / Éthique by Spinoza.Vol. 3. Discourse on Metaphysics - The Monadology (Annotated by Hegel) / Discours de Métaphysique - La Monadologie Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1646 - 1716) was a prominent German polymath and one of the most important logicians, mathematicians and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment.The Discourse on Metaphysics (French: Discours de Métaphysique, 1686) is a short treatise by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in which he develops a philosophy concerning physical substance, motion and resistance of bodies, and God's role within the universe. It is one of the few texts presenting in a consistent form the earlier philosophy of Leibniz. The Discourse is closely connected to the epistolary discussion which he carried with Antoine Arnauld. However Leibniz refrained from sending the full text and it remained unpublished until the mid 19th century. Arnauld received only an abridged version in 37 points which resumed whole paragraphs and steered their discussion. The metaphysical considerations proceed from God to the substantial world and back to the spiritual realm. The starting point for the work is the conception of God as an absolutely perfect being (I), that God is good but goodness exists independently of God (a rejection of divine command theory) (II), and that God has created the world in an ordered and perfect fashion (III-VII). At the time of its writing Discourse made the controversial claim That the opinions of... scholastic philosophers are not to be wholly despised (XI). Early work in modern philosophy during the 17th century were based on a rejection of many of the precepts of medieval philosophy. Leibniz saw the failures of scholasticism merely as one of rigor. [If] some careful and meditative mind were to take the trouble to clarify and direct their thoughts in the manner of analytic geometers, he would find a great treasure of important truths, wholly demonstrable. Leibniz claimed that God's omnipotence was in no way impugned by the thought of evil, but was rather solidified. He endorsed the view that God chose the best of all possible worlds. In other words, Leibniz believed this world (or reality) to be the best there possibly could be - taking all facts into account, no better world could be imagined, even if we believed that we could think of something more perfect. Leibniz's conception of physical substance is expanded upon in The Monadology.The Monadology (French: La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads.The monad, the word and the idea, belongs to the Western philosophical tradition and has been used by various authors. Leibniz, who was exceptionally well read, could not have ignored this, but he did not use it himself until mid-1696 when he was sending for print his New System. Apparently he found with it a convenient way to expose his own philosophy as it was elaborated in this period. What he proposed can be seen as a modification of occasionalism developed by latter-day Cartesians. Leibniz surmised that there are indefinitely many substances individually 'programmed' to act in a predetermined way, each substance being coordinated with all the others. This is the pre-established harmony which solved the mind-body problem.
