Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics
A New Translation and Commentary
1st Edition
Published on 8. March 2023
360 pages
978-1-4744-5780-4 (ISBN)
Description
Written in 1686, Discourse on Metaphysics is one of the most important and widely published works in the history of philosophy. This translation and commentary by Christopher Johns has much new to offer.
Based extensively on the Akademie edition this is the first truly scholarly translation. Also included is historical and philosophical context, detailing Leibniz's activities during 1685 and 1686, and several letters previously unpublished in English. These letters and texts illuminate important themes found in the Discourse and shed light on the intellectual context of the time which will be of particular interest to scholars and teachers of Leibniz.
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Content
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction to Leibniz's Life and Work
- The seventeenth-century political, scientific, and intellectual background
- The Discourse in the context of Leibniz's life and work
- The provenance of the 'little discourse'
- Guide to the Akademie Edition, its variant-apparatus, and the present translation
- How to track the variants in the translation
- Why another English translation?
- Why a commentary?
- Summary of symbols used in the translation, footnotes, and commentary
- Topical summary of the Discourse on Metaphysics, by article
- Translation of the Discourse on Metaphysics
- Commentary on the Discourse on Metaphysics
- 1. On the very idea of an absolutely perfect being.
- 2. On the charge that moral goodness is arbitrary.
- 3. On those who say that God could have done better.
- 4. The love of God requires our complete satisfaction in him
- but this does not imply we should not strive to act for the best.
- 5. On the rules of perfection: the simplest means and the richest effects.
- 6. God's actions are most orderly. Nothing occurs without a determinable order.
- 7. That miracles conform to the general order, though counter to natural laws
- and how God permits evil but does not will it.
- 8. On the complete notion (concept) of an individual substance: the principal motive for the doctrine
- the philosophical conception of substance
- the problem of individuation
- Leibniz's early conception of individuation
- the complete notion of an individu
- 9. Several 'paradoxes' following from the complete notion
- and that 'each unique substance expresses the whole universe in its manner', that is, according to its unique degree of perfection.
- 10. That substantial forms have their place in physics, but not as explanations of the details of phenomena.
- 11. The Scholastics, who upheld substantial forms, are not to be despised entirely.
- 12. Critique of Descartes' conception of extension: that extension involves imaginary notions and therefore cannot constitute the substance of body.
- 13. On whether the complete notion entails a fatal necessity
- on distinctions between necessary and contingent propositions and consecutions
- on God's foreknowledge of future contingents
- on inclination without necessitation.
- 14. That God produces diverse substances, each of which uniquely expresses God's view of the universe, thus increasing the glory of God. That substances do not enter into causal relations, but God makes all of their actions correspond.
- 15. On the causal and moral implications of expression, perfection, and accommodation.
- 16. God's 'extraordinary concourse' is included in each individual notion, thus accounting for the compatibility of miracles with natural laws.
- 17. God conserves the same quantity of force in the universe that he originally put into it, not the same quantity of motion, against Descartes.
- 18. Thus, to explain the cause of motion in bodies, 'one must have recourse to metaphysical considerations separate from extension'.
- 19. On the utility of final causes in physics.
- 20. The passage in Plato's Phaedo explaining the difference between efficient and final causes.
- 21. If the laws of nature depended solely on Cartesian mechanics, without Metaphysics, the phenomena of nature would be entirely different.
- 22. Reconciliation of final and efficient causes, as exemplified by the laws of reflection and refraction.
- 23. The nature of ideas
- how God acts on the understanding
- and how ideas can be illusory: a critique of Descartes' supposed proof for God's existence.
- 24. The degrees and varieties of ideas and knowledge: Ideas clear, confused, distinct, adequate, intuitive, and suppositive. Definitions: nominal, real, causal, and essential.
- 25. Symbolised ideas require contemplation.
- 26. That we already have all ideas in us
- and on Plato's doctrine of reminiscence.
- 27. Thus, the soul is not a 'blank tablet'.
- 28. The sense in which God is the immediate object of our perceptions.
- 29. The sense in which we think immediately through our own ideas.
- 30. On divine concurrence
- on the spontaneity of the soul
- that the will should always tend to the apparent good
- on the indifference of the will
- on precautions against the surprises of appearances
- on the assurance from all eternity that the soul will n
- 31. On God's dispensation of grace
- on middle knowledge and God's reasons for admitting a possible individual into existence - thus resolving all the difficulties.
- 32. The utility of metaphysics for piety and religion
- on the accommodation of all substances
- on the immortality of the soul.
- 33. On the metaphysical 'commerce' of soul and body
- and on the source of confused perceptions.
- 34. On the differences between spirits (minds), animal souls, and substantial forms
- and that immortality implies continuity of memory.
- 35. The excellence of minds and that they express God.
- 36. God is the monarch of the most perfect republic of minds, and their felicity is his principal purpose.
- 37. That Jesus Christ has revealed the mystery of the admirable laws of the Kingdom of Heaven and the grandeur of the supreme felicity God prepares for those who love him.
- Context I: Two Years of The Life and Work of G. W. Leibniz: January 1685 to December 1686
- Context II: Translations of Letters Selected from 1685
- Letter from Leibniz to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff: 29 December 1684
- Leibniz to the Landgrave Ernst Von Hessen-Rheinfels: 29 December (8 January 1685)
- Leibniz to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff: End of May 1685
- Leibniz to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff: 26 July 1685
- Leibniz to Duke Ernst August of Hannover: August 1685-October 1687
- Leibniz for the Landgrave Ernst: Second half of October (?) 1685
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Terms
