Chapter XXIII: Leibniz (1646 - 1716)

Character and Personality

Born in Germany, soon after the 30 years war, Leibniz grew up wealthy with good education. He was a polymath and entered university at the early age of 15. He was outwardly faithful to Chirstiantiy. Leibniz was not well liked apparently, as only a single person attended his funeral.

Method

• Leibniz was a prolific writer, writing about 300 letters per year. He had a tendency to want to unify and find compromise, as he attempted between Protestants and Catholics, and between philosophers with a unified language of philosophy.

Main Insights and Works

• Calculus, in parallel with [[Isaac Newton], but Leibniz's notation is used today
• New Essays on Human Understanding
• the mind has inherent structure (not a blank slate), which provided categories for the senses to fill in
  • instincts, avoidance of pain, laws of reason, principle of contradiction are all innate
• human intelligence is special in it's ability to conceptualize
• monads : a fundamental unit of the universe of which everything is made. Every monad has a life force and a will to exist governed by the laws of motion. Every monad is unique, each is subject to the influence of the rest of the universe making it a low resolution mirror of everything.

the world ceases to be a dead machine, and becomes the stage of diverse and palpitating life

• Théodicée: a justification for God. Suffering and the fall of Adam/Eve is necessary for man's free will. Good and evil are subjective. This is the best of all possible worlds.

nature makes no leaps

Other

the 17th century was one of the most productive in the history of thought. Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Leibniz: here was a majestic sequence of men warm with the wine of reason, joyfully confident ... that they could understand the universe

• the 17th centure laid the foundations for modern thought; as it was rational and forward thinking, adventuring into unknown territory