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Author: Pauline Phemister
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402034016
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
In the present book, Pauline Phemister argues against traditional Anglo-American interpretations of Leibniz as an idealist who conceives ultimate reality as a plurality of mind-like immaterial beings and for whom physical bodies are ultimately unreal and our perceptions of them illusory. Re-reading the texts without the prior assumption of idealism allows the more material aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics to emerge. Leibniz is found to advance a synthesis of idealism and materialism. His ontology posits indivisible, living, animal-like corporeal substances as the real metaphysical constituents of the universe; his epistemology combines sense-experience and reason; and his ethics fuses confused perceptions and insensible appetites with distinct perceptions and rational choice. In the light of his sustained commitment to the reality of bodies, Phemister re-examines his dynamics, the doctrine of pre-established harmony and his views on freedom. The image of Leibniz as a rationalist philosopher who values activity and reason over passivity and sense-experience is replaced by the one of a philosopher who recognises that, in the created world, there can only be activity if there is also passivity; minds, souls and forms if there is also matter; good if there is evil; perfection if there is imperfection.
Author: Pauline Phemister
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402034016
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Get Book
Book Description
In the present book, Pauline Phemister argues against traditional Anglo-American interpretations of Leibniz as an idealist who conceives ultimate reality as a plurality of mind-like immaterial beings and for whom physical bodies are ultimately unreal and our perceptions of them illusory. Re-reading the texts without the prior assumption of idealism allows the more material aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics to emerge. Leibniz is found to advance a synthesis of idealism and materialism. His ontology posits indivisible, living, animal-like corporeal substances as the real metaphysical constituents of the universe; his epistemology combines sense-experience and reason; and his ethics fuses confused perceptions and insensible appetites with distinct perceptions and rational choice. In the light of his sustained commitment to the reality of bodies, Phemister re-examines his dynamics, the doctrine of pre-established harmony and his views on freedom. The image of Leibniz as a rationalist philosopher who values activity and reason over passivity and sense-experience is replaced by the one of a philosopher who recognises that, in the created world, there can only be activity if there is also passivity; minds, souls and forms if there is also matter; good if there is evil; perfection if there is imperfection.
Author: Pauline Phemister
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317408101
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
The work of seventeenth-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz has proved inspirational to philosophers and scientists alike. In this thought-provoking book, Pauline Phemister explores the ecological potential of Leibniz’s dynamic, pluralist, panpsychist, metaphysical system. She argues that Leibniz’s philosophy has a renewed relevance in the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to the environmental change and crises that threaten human and non-human life on earth. Drawing on Leibniz’s theory of soul-like, interconnected metaphysical entities he termed 'monads', Phemister explains how an individual’s true good is inextricably linked to the good of all. Phemister also finds in Leibniz’s works the rudiments of a theory of empathy and strategies for strengthening human feelings of compassion towards all living things. Leibniz and the Environment is essential reading for historians of philosophy and environmental philosophers, and will also be of interest to anyone seeking a metaphysical perspective from which to pursue environmental action and policy.
Author: N. Rescher
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9789027712523
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 154
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Book Description
The essays included in this volume are a mixture of old and new. Three of them make their first appearance in print on this occa sion (Nos III, IV, and V). The remaining four are based upon materials previously published in learned journals or anthologies. (However, these previously published papers have been revised and, generally, expanded for inclusion here.) Detailed acknowl edgement of prior publications is made in the notes to the relevant articles. I am grateful to the editors of these several publications for their kind permission to use this material. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the Western Ontario Series for some useful corrigenda. And I should like to thank John Horty and Lily Knezevich for their help in seeing this material through the press. NICHOLAS RESCHER Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May, 1980 xi INTRODUCTION The unifying theme of these essays is their concern with Leibniz's metaphysics of nature. In particular, they revolve about his cos mology of creation and his conception of the real world as one among infinitely many equipossible alternatives.
Author: Donald Rutherford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521597371
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
This major contribution to Leibniz scholarship will prove invaluable to historians of philosophy, theology, and science.
Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226112977
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Protogaea, an ambitious account of terrestrial history, was central to the development of the earth sciences in the eighteenth century and provides key philosophical insights into the unity of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s thought and writings. In the book, Leibniz offers observations about the formation of the earth, the actions of fire and water, the genesis of rocks and minerals, the origins of salts and springs, the formation of fossils, and their identification as the remains of living organisms. Protogaea also includes a series of engraved plates depicting the remains of animals—in particular the famous reconstruction of a “fossil unicorn”—together with a cross section of the cave in which some fossil objects were discovered. Though the works of Leibniz have been widely translated, Protogaea has languished in its original Latin for centuries. Now Claudine Cohen and Andre Wakefield offer the first English translation of this central text in natural philosophy and natural history. Written between 1691 and 1693, and first published after Leibniz’s death in 1749, Protogaea reemerges in this bilingual edition with an introduction that carefully situates the work within its historical context.
Author: Justin E. H. Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691141789
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
"his book provides a comprehensive survey of G. W. Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the sciences of life, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. It is shown that these sundry interests were not only relevant to his core philosophical interests, but indeed often provided the insights that in part led to some of his most familiar philosophical doctrines, including the theory of corporeal substance and the theory of organic preformation"--
Author: Donald Rutherford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195143744
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
New essays offer an overview of current research into Leibniz' metaphysics, situating this distinctive philosophy of nature.
Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393071049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
"Exhilarating…Stewart has achieved a near impossibility, creating a page-turner about jousting metaphysical ideas, casting thinkers as warriors." —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review Once upon a time, philosophy was a dangerous business—and for no one more so than for Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century philosopher vilified by theologians and political authorities everywhere as “the atheist Jew.” As his inflammatory manuscripts circulated underground, Spinoza lived a humble existence in The Hague, grinding optical lenses to make ends meet. Meanwhile, in the glittering salons of Paris, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was climbing the ladder of courtly success. In between trips to the opera and groundbreaking work in mathematics, philosophy, and jurisprudence, he took every opportunity to denounce Spinoza, relishing his self-appointed role as “God’s attorney.” In this exquisitely written philosophical romance of attraction and repulsion, greed and virtue, religion and heresy, Matthew Stewart gives narrative form to an epic contest of ideas that shook the seventeenth century—and continues today.
Author: N. Rescher
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400984456
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
The essays included in this volume are a mixture of old and new. Three of them make their first appearance in print on this occa sion (Nos III, IV, and V). The remaining four are based upon materials previously published in learned journals or anthologies. (However, these previously published papers have been revised and, generally, expanded for inclusion here.) Detailed acknowl edgement of prior publications is made in the notes to the relevant articles. I am grateful to the editors of these several publications for their kind permission to use this material. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the Western Ontario Series for some useful corrigenda. And I should like to thank John Horty and Lily Knezevich for their help in seeing this material through the press. NICHOLAS RESCHER Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May, 1980 xi INTRODUCTION The unifying theme of these essays is their concern with Leibniz's metaphysics of nature. In particular, they revolve about his cos mology of creation and his conception of the real world as one among infinitely many equipossible alternatives.
Author: G. W. Leibniz
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486149803
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
One of the seventeenth century's most important thinkers, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz exercised enormous influence on the philosophy of Herder, Feuerbach, and Hegel as well as on the writings of Schiller and Goethe. Two of Leibniz's most studied and often quoted works appear in this volume: Discourse on Metaphysics and The Monadology. Published in 1686, the Discourse on Metaphysics consists of Leibniz's expansion of a letter to his theologian friend Antoine Arnauld, in which he explains that through our perceptions we express the rest of the universe from our own unique perspectives. The whole world is thus contained in each individual substance as each represents the same universe and "the universe is in a way multiplied as many times as there are substances, and similarly the glory of God is redoubled by as many completely different representations of His work." It is here that Leibniz makes his famous assertion that God, with perfect knowledge and goodness, freely chose to create this, the best of all possible worlds. The Monadology, written in 1714, offers a concise synopsis of Leibniz's philosophy. It establishes the laws of final causes, which underlie God's free choice to create the best possible world--a world that serves as dynamic and perfectly ordered evidence of the wisdom, power, and benevolence of its creator.
