Leibniz Nature and Freedom

by Rutherford, Donald; Cover, J. A.

• ISBN13: 9780195143751
• ISBN10: 0195143752
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The revival of Leibniz studies in the past twenty-five years has cast important new light on both the context and content of Leibniz's philosophical thought. Where earlier English-language scholarship understood Leibniz's philosophy as issuing from his preoccupations with logic and language,recent work has recommended an account on which theological, ethical, and metaphysical themes figure centrally in Leibniz's thought throughout his career. The significance of these themes to the development of Leibniz's philosophy is the subject of increasing attention by philosophers andhistorians. This collection of new essays by a distinguished group of scholars offers an up-to-date overview of the current state of Leibniz research. In focusing on nature and freedom, the volume revisits two key topics in Leibniz's thought, on which he engaged both contemporary and historical arguments.Important contributions to Leibniz scholarship in their own right, these articles collectively provide readers a framework in which to better situate Leibniz's distinctive philosophy of nature and the congenial home for a morally significant freedom that he took it to provide.

Author Biography

Donald Rutherford is Professor of Philosophy at University of California, San Diego.
J. A. Cover is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University.

Table of Contents

Contributors	xi
Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	3	(191)
Donald Rutherford and J.A. Cover
1. The One and the Many and Kinds of Distinctness: The Possibility of Monism or Pantheism in the Young Leibniz
Mark Kulstad	20	(24)
2. Leibniz and Sleigh on Substantial Unity
Christia Mercer	44	(25)
3. Leibniz on Precise Shapes and the Corporeal World
Samuel Levey	69	(26)
4. Leibniz and Idealism
Daniel Garber	95	(13)
5. Compossibility, Expression, Accommodation
Catherine Wilson	108	(13)
6. Leibniz and Occasionalism
Nicholas Jolley	121	(14)
7. Leibniz's Two Realms
Jonathan Bennett	135	(21)
8. Leibniz on Spontaneity
Donald Rutherford	156	(25)
9. Moral Necessity
Robert Merrihew Adams	181	(13)
10. Spontaneity and Freedom in Leibniz
Michael J. Murray	194