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This article offers a reconstruction of Derrida's critique of Leibniz. It suggests that in attempting to fit Leibniz into his conception of the history of metaphysics and the all-embracing notion of logocentrism that underwrites it, Derrida presupposes two regimes of logocentrism: one subjective, the other theological. Subsumed into this second mode, Derrida casts Leibniz as a progenitor of structuralism and the new sciences and technologies of information in order to expose their logocentric foundations. However, in doing so, he ends up sidelining the aspect of Leibniz's ideas that anticipates the specificity of the new epoch of writing he claims to historicise. The article goes on to argue that to grasp this specificity one must look beyond the "expressivist" schema of exterior representation, which Derrida draws from Husserl's theory of meaning, and instead look to Leibniz's own formal-combinatorial concept of expression, which exceeds Derrida's critical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present what Aristotle wrote on identity in a leisurely manner, which is much more than is generally known, save among the cognoscenti (Aristotle scholars), and mutatis mutandis about the introduction of the identity-symbol (=). We add two codas, one on the so-called Leibniz' Law, which is different (but resembles) what passes for it in logic and philosophy, and one on the status of identity, as accepted by mathematicians and logicians, in physics. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite drives' importance for Nietzsche's explanation of individuals' values, controversies persist over how to interpret Nietzsche's attribution of normative capacities to the drives themselves. On one reading, drives evaluate their aims and recognize the normative authority of other drives' aims. On another, drives' normative properties reduce to nonnormative, causal properties. Neither approach is satisfying. The former commits Nietzsche to the homuncular fallacy by granting drives complex cognitive capacities. The latter reading either commits Nietzsche to the naturalistic fallacy, having him derive normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or eliminates normativity from his thought altogether. In response to this impasse, this article advances a Leibniz-informed interpretation of Nietzsche's drive psychology. By construing the normative and efficient causal orders as parallel modes of explanation distinguished by one's perspective, a Leibniz-informed reading captures the benefits of extant interpretations while avoiding their drawbacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Leibniz's use of the concept of "automaton" to characterize the nature of souls and bodies of living beings constitutes a systematic critique of Descartes' earlier use of automata. Whereas Descartes conceived non-human animals in terms of mechanical automata, he also denied that the human rational soul can be modeled on the nature of an automaton. In contrast, Leibniz understood living things to involve both an organic body, or "natural automaton," as well as an immaterial soul, or "spiritual automaton," that spontaneously produces its own perceptions. In extending the concept of the automaton to souls, Leibniz rejected key Cartesian assumptions about animals and free will and draws on the concept of the automaton to understand a range of cognitive capacities including volition. Leibniz thus occupies a distinctive place in the history of the use of automata to understand the nature of living things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La question de la relation entre le point et l'étendue en géométrie résonne, dans la pensée de Leibniz, avec celle du lien entre la substance simple avec le corps matériel dont elle est l'élément constitutif d'un point de vue métaphysique. En effet, comment ce qui est indivisible et sans dimension pourrait-il être le principe de ce qui se présente, au contraire, comme toujours divisé et étendu? Si la philosophie tardive de l'auteur, une fois devenue monadologie après 1700, rencontre en cela un problème presque insurmontable, il ne semble pas en être de même dans les années 1690. Cet article propose de montrer comment, vers 1695, une solution originale en est fournie qui renvoie aux innovations mathématiques de cette période, au sujet du point, de l'étendue et, de façon centrale, de la continuité, étoffant ainsi la toile qui unit les mathématiques de Leibniz avec sa philosophie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper analyzes Butler's theory of performative acts and her criticism of a substantialist or essentialist theory of gender through the Leibnizian theory of intentional action, with the aim of showing that we cannot dissociate performativity of intentionality, nor, consequently, of a practical understanding of personal identity. To achieve this goal, I proceed as follows: first, I analyze Butler's theory of gender and her notion of performativity through her critique of naturalistic or essentialist theories of gender; second, I confront her theory of performativity with the Leibnizian theory of intentional actions and his notion of moral agency; third, I sketch two conclusions: 1) we can only talk about performativity in terms of intentionality, and 2) talking about performative acts does not imply dissociating gender from our personal identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leibniz's manuscripts on perspective geometry remained unpublished and unknown until very recently. Among them, Scientia perspectiva stands out as the most complex and the most original. In this paper, we offer a thorough analysis of this manuscript, showing how Leibniz moves from perspective concepts fairly common at that time to a completely new idea of the practice that could have affected its entire history. This new science represents not only Leibniz's unique contribution to the development of perspective but also casts a new light on his own notion of space and geometry and their philosophical grounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of Leibniz's view of the relation between God and nature in 1675–1676 has split commentators into two competing camps. According to some scholars, Leibniz was a pantheistic substance monist in these years. However, other scholars think that he was neither a substance monist nor a pantheist. This paper advocates a middle ground between these two interpretations. With scholars in the first camp, it is argued that Leibniz was a substance monist in 1675–1676. However, it is also argued that he was not a pantheistic substance monist, but rather a panentheistic one. This interpretation has at least a twofold virtue vis-à-vis the anti-monistic and pantheistic readings. For one thing, unlike the anti-monistic reading, the panentheistic interpretation is in keeping with the weight of textual evidence, which strongly indicates that in 1675–1676 Leibniz did embrace, and actually argue for, the idea that God is the only substance. For another, unlike the pantheist interpretation, it can accommodate the fact that, while endorsing monism in 1675–1676, Leibniz at the same time rejected necessitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Morning Hours (1785), Moses Mendelssohn presents a proof for the existence of God from the grounding of possibility. Although Mendelssohn claims that this proof is original, it has not received much attention in the secondary literature. In this paper, I analyze this proof and present its historical context. I show that although it resembles Leibniz's proof from eternal truths and Kant's precritical possibility proof, it has unique characteristics that can be regarded as responses to deficiencies Mendelssohn identified in these earlier proofs. I argue that by analyzing the semantics of judgments about dispositions, Mendelssohn provides a novel explanation for the basic premise shared by these proofs, namely that possibility is grounded in actuality. Additionally, this analysis simplifies the inference to a unique infinite mind grounding all possibility. Thus, the proof is worth studying both for historical reasons and for its original account of modal concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1682, Leibniz published an essay containing his solution to the classic problem of squaring the circle: the alternating converging series that now bears his name. Yet his attempts to disseminate his quadrature results began seven years earlier and included four distinct approaches: the conventional (journal article), the grand (treatise), the impostrous (pseudepigraphia), and the extravagant (medals). This paper examines Leibniz's various attempts to disseminate his series formula. By examining oft-ignored writings, as well as unpublished manuscripts, this paper answers the question of how one of the greatest mathematicians sought to introduce his first great geometrical discovery to the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does Deleuze rely so heavily on Spinoza and Leibniz? At first glance, his critique of representation and the traditional 'image of thought' seems to oppose him to rationalism. However, Deleuze says that when the 'cry of rationalism' is pursued until the end, rationalism becomes 'delirious'. In such a state, it undermines the model of representation. This delirium is found in Spinoza and Leibniz's critique of generality and their conflation of essence and existence, through which they ruin the traditional mediation of difference by identity and generality. However, for this rationalism to completely break with representationalism it must undergo some Deleuzian corrections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a period when transatlantic slavery was still being racialized, Hobbes and Leibniz represent stark alternatives on the nature and justification of slavery. This article investigates Leibniz's encounter with the Hobbesian position on slavery (servitus), drawing out the racial implications. Throughout his political works, Hobbes defended voluntary servitude by transforming a legacy of Roman jurisprudence that had come to be encapsulated in the law of nations (jus gentium). Hobbes defended the justification that a master could possess slaves as de jure property with the rights to buy or sell them. In Sur la notion commune de la justice , Leibniz argued against Hobbes that slave-owners' rights should be limited. He also defended his own paternalistic justification of slavery, reinterpreting Aristotelian natural slavery. Leibniz claimed that some persons merit guidance as slaves by nature, yet legitimate possession of persons can only go as far as a usufruct. In contrast, Hobbes had rejected the normative logic that any person could rationally merit enslavement but maintained that masters could totally possess the body of captive slaves for as far as their power extends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essential idea of Leibniz's Theodicy has become one of the organizing themes of modern mathematics. Many phenomena are possible locally but for purely mathematical reasons impossible globally. For example, it is possible to build a spiral staircase that is rising at any given point, but not one that is rising at all points and comes back to where it started. The necessity is mathematically provable, so not subject to exception by divine power. Modern mathematics vindicates Leibniz's theory that, contrary to what we think we can imagine, there is no possible world better than this one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We pose two challenges to Sterba's position. First, we show that Sterba fails to consider alternative historical positions such as Leibniz's (who argues that God knows that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds) or Kant's (who suggests that God does not necessarily know what free agents would choose or would have chosen, had God not intervened), both of which bear direct relevance to some major aspects of Sterba's argument. Second, we show that Sterba neither rules out the possibility that God has always intervened in history when his not intervening would have led to significant and horrendous evils, nor the possibility that every immoral action (and its consequences) might have led to significant and horrendous evils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leibniz is often cited as an authority when it comes to the formulation and answer strategy of the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Yet much current research assumes that Leibniz advocates an unambiguous question and strategy for the answer. In this respect, one repeatedly finds the argument in the literature that alternative explanatory approaches to this question violate Leibniz's intention, since he derives the question from the principle of sufficient reason and also demands a causal explanation to the question. In particular, the new research on non-causal explanatory strategies to the Leibniz question seems to concern this counter-argument. In this paper, however, I will argue that while Leibniz raises the question by means of the principle of sufficient reason, he even favours a non-causal explanatory strategy to the question. Thus, a more accurate Leibniz interpretation seems not only to legitimise but also to support non-causal explanations to the Leibniz question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his reconstruction of Kant's critical philosophy as a whole, Deleuze argues that the cognitive and practical faculties are genetically grounded in the affective, enlivening dynamics of the reflecting power of judgment. In this paper I propose to take Kant's account of self-organisation as model for understanding this genesis of the faculties in terms of a circular causality that is purposively animated from within by a self-productive and self-maintaining tendency. The key argument I develop is that this generative tendency may be understood as a conatus that is inherent to the power of judgment and comes to the fore in the subject's feeling of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eighteenth-century German rationalist tradition is, broadly speaking, committed to (what I call) 'the principle of rational cognition': the grounded must be rationally cognizable from its sufficient ground. Whereas the prevailing view takes the fundamental challenge to rationalist paradise to stem from the principle of sufficient reason, I argue that it instead stems from this principle: How is it possible to rationally cognize anything at all from its ground? By investigating the opposing responses of two of Leibniz's most influential immediate successors, Christian Wolff and Christian Crusius, we find no easy way to remain in rationalist paradise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show that intuitionistic Kripke models are a powerful tool for interpreting Kant's 'Critical Philosophy'. Part I reviews some old work of mine that applies these models to provide a reading of Kant's second antinomy about the divisibility of matter and to answer several attacks on Kant's antinomies. But it also points out three shortcomings of that original application. First, the reading fails to account for Kant's second antinomy claim that matter is divisible 'ad infinitum' and his first antinomy claim that empirical space extends only 'ad indefinitum'. Secondly, in conformity with the 'assertability' heuristics for Kripke models, it attributes an assertability semantics to Kant. In fact, it attributes a pair of assertability semantics to Kant, but neither of these accords with modern assertabilism. And finally, one must wonder the propriety of using contemporary assertability and contemporary formal logic to save an eighteenth-century text. Part II goes historical to solve the problems about assertability. It outlines the Descartes–Leibniz dialectic about the infinite/indefinite distinction and demonstrates how each position reflects larger philosophical positions. It then demonstrates that Kant's two versions of assertability and his version of the infinite/indefinite dichotomy emerge naturally from his attempts (pre-critical and then critical) to resolve a tension in Leibniz's philosophy. In light of this demonstration, Part III adapts the Kripke model interpretation so that it does reflect that dichotomy. It then refines the Kripke semantics in order to model some of Kant's signature critical doctrines, and it shows how Kant's critical version of the infinite/indefinite distinction differs from all those of his predecessors and from his own pre-critical version. It also addresses the question of using contemporary logical machinery to interpret Kant. Part IV turns the tables and uses what we have learned about Kant and modern semantics in order to address a pair of issues in the contemporary critical foundations of logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with an alternative interpretation of syllogistics, different from the classical (extensional) one: an intensional one, in which subject and predicate are not associated with a set of individuals (the extension of the concept) but a set of attributes (the content of the concept). The authors of the paper draw attention to the fact that this approach was first proposed by Leibniz in works on logical calculus, which for a long time remained in the shadow of his other philosophical works. Currently, the intensional approach is gaining more and more popularity due to the development of non-classical logics, and the article will present several existing intensional formal syllogistic semantics. The paper will also consider another historical approach to syllogistics, associated with the name of the Russian logician Nikolai Vasiliev, who is not only one of the founders of non-classical (non-Aristotelian logic) but also of a different intensional interpretation of such logic. The authors, along with the already known formalizations of Vasiliev's ideas, present two new systems. One of them is a reconstruction of one type of imaginary logic with statements of three qualities: affirmative and two types of negative statements (with absolute and ordinary negation). The second system is the one that is adequate to semantics, in which instead of the four classical ones, only three types of statements are presented (two particular statements are replaced by one -- accidental), and their significance is determined through the relation of the classical logical entailment. Both of them are interpreted intensionally. The intensional approach in logic and, in particular, in syllogistics allows us to expand the class of accepted principles (which occurs due to the expansion of the class of correct moods of syllogisms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents a transcription of a handwritten Latin text, along with its translation into English, that was identified only very recently in the Kongelige Bibliothek in Copenhagen while preparing the new critical edition of Kant's Nova dilucidatio (PND). The text consists of remarks by Johann Reinhold Grube, composed in his role as opponent at Kant's disputation for the venia legendi on 27 September 1755. Grube's interleaved opposing remarks on Kant's dissertatio metaphysica pro receptione contain precious starting points for new lines of research, since they vividly exemplify the point of view of one of the participants in the debate, a perspective that is rarely documented. In addition to informing us about how the disputation itself was carried out and which traditional rhetorical techniques were used, these remarks offer a compelling glimpse into the immediate reception of Kant's first thoughts on logic and metaphysics, giving scholars access to an ingenious reaction to Kant's stance on the theory of judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of a toy model universe as a character string where each character is either X or -. The string makes a transition between states that are of maximal variety. The definition of variety given by Barbour and Smolin is used in this paper. An interpretation of the toy model universe is given in terms of Everett's manyworlds interpretation. The paper also discusses whether new maximal variety strings can be obtained by addition or subtraction of maximal variety strings. A few comments are included about the use of quantum computers, which may help find the maximal variety strings more quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, to understand individual substances we must distance ourselves and see the totality. In fact, it is necessary to see the picture at a convenient distance to understand the perfection of wholeness and uniqueness. The possible exit from the labyrinth in which metaphysics entangled us, stimulates the desire to know everything and the certainty that there are no equal substances. Totality and difference; maximum totality and maximum difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses debates about the normative implications of nominalism by considering significant Enlightenment assessments of China's society and politics. Enlightenment universalism has been criticized as an insufficient bulwark against nominalist tendencies towards cultural or subjective relativism, and (in its Anglo‐French formulations) as responsible for the ills of modernity which need to be overcome by a 'spiritual turn' in Critical Realism. Yet in response to the nominalist aspects of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588‐1679), the early Enlightenment thinkers Pierre Bayle (1647‐1706), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646‐1716), and the Baron de Montesquieu (1689‐1755) countered the nominalist denial of the reality of universal concepts while conceding the validity of multiple cultural perspectives on the social and political world. Each thinker attempted to reconcile certain universal ethical standards with the fact of cultural and epistemic diversity as demonstrated by China, with differing levels of success. Indeed, their considerations on Hobbesian nominalism and views on China are tied to conceptions of the social as a sphere in many ways independent of the political order—a general development in western social and political theory in the late seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Thus, the links between their responses to ethical nominalism and conceptions of the Chinese social and political order shed crucial light on debates internal to Enlightenment thought relative to non‐European cultures, and in turn on the development of classical social theory. Furthermore, their anti‐nominalist universalist theories which nevertheless accounted for particular and often incommensurable cultural frameworks can be seen as early modern precursors to ongoing efforts to navigate between extreme versions of universalism and relativism, and as constituting 'philosophical under‐labour' for contemporary social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to reconstruct the notion of practical identity in both Aristotle and Leibniz, in order to show to what extent, the Hanoverian is indebted with Aristotle and to what extent one proposal can be distinguished from the other. To achieve this we do two things: on the one hand, we analyze the Aristotelian notion of praxis and moral agency trough his notion of habituation; on the other hand, we notice the practical dimension that Leibniz assigns to his notion of personal identity, based on his notions of conscientia and moral quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses some issues of Leibniz's metaphysics to show the relationship between religion, God, and the conception of eternal truths, and with that to reveal that Leibniz's philosophy is a coherent and intertwined whole. His idea of religion is set out briefly, then his metaphysics is analyzed, in particular creation and what are the eternal truths. The paper ends with a commentary on some quotations from the New essays that make evident that these truths require the existence of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The concept of khôra, which was elaborated but quickly repressed by Plato in Timaeus, has caught the attention of a whole coterie of contemporary philosophers. It is often interpreted as "receptacle" or "uterus." Its presence in Deleuze's corpus is largely covert and easily overlooked. Foregrounding its significance in Deleuze's work allows us to get a firmer grasp of his vitalistic thought. Following the lineage of Plato-Leibniz-Whitehead, Deleuze takes khôra to be a screen, sieve, filter, or membrane that makes something issue from chaos, "even if this something differs only slightly." Khôra is the mother or locus of genesis, becoming, negentropy, and the event. Roughly speaking, the function of khôra is twofold: prehension and negative prehension, or simply selective prehension. Two statements made by Deleuze deserve our particular attention: first, "the brain is the mind itself"; second, "the brain is the screen." For our purposes, the second statement can be productively misinterpreted as, "the brain is the khôra." There is textual evidence in Deleuze's book, Negotiations, to support such an interpretation. After sorting out the rationale of Deleuzean vitalism through the lens of khôra, this article moves on to such notions as the intermind, composite khôra, and the global superbrain to probe into the human condition in the era of mental symbiosis between humanity and its artificially intelligent counterparts, and to negotiate the tension between control and becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the publication of Begriffsschrift, a conflict erupted between Frege and Schröder regarding their respective logical systems which emerged around the Leibnizian notions of lingua characterica and calculus ratiocinator. Both of them claimed their own logic to be a better realisation of Leibniz's ideal language and considered the rival system a mere calculus ratiocinator. Inspired by this polemic, van Heijenoort (1967b) distinguished two conceptions of logic—logic as language and logic as calculus—and presented them as opposing views, but did not explain Frege's and Schröder's conceptions of the fulfilment of Leibniz's scientific ideal. In this paper I explain the reasons for Frege's and Schröder's mutual accusations of having created a mere calculus ratiocinator. On the one hand, Schröder's construction of the algebra of relatives fits with a project for the reduction of any mathematical concept to the notion of relative. From this stance I argue that he deemed the formal system of Begriffsschrift incapable of such a reduction. On the other hand, first I argue that Frege took Boolean logic to be an abstract logical theory inadequate for the rendering of specific content; then I claim that the language of Begriffsschrift did not constitute a complete lingua characterica by itself, more being seen by Frege as a tool that could be applied to scientific disciplines. Accordingly, I argue that Frege's project of constructing a lingua characterica was not tied to his later logicist programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leibniz is unclear about the nature of pleasure. In some texts, he describes pleasure as a perception of perfection, while in other texts he describes pleasure as being caused by a perception of perfection. In this article, I disambiguate two senses of "perception of perfection", which clarifies Leibniz's considered position. I argue that pleasure is a perception of an increase in a substance's power which is caused by a substance's knowledge of a perfection of the universe or God. This reading helps clarify the nature of Leibnizian happiness. Happiness is a cognitive process (akin to a mood), constituted fundamentally out of pleasure, which is grounded in increases in a substance's power. A rational substance will sustain its happiness so long as it is more powerful than it is weak, and it is engaging in activities that increase its power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I consider Descartes' enigmatic claim that we must assert that the material world is indefinite rather than infinite. The focus here is on the discussion of this claim in Descartes' late correspondence with More. One puzzle that emerges from this correspondence is that Descartes insists to More that we are not in a position to deny the indefinite universe has limits, while at the same time indicating that we conceive a contradiction in the notion that the universe has a limit. I reject one attempt to resolve this apparent conflict which appeals to Descartes' admission to More that divine omnipotence requires that God can create a vacuum in nature, and focus instead on his response to More's claim that this omnipotence requires the possibility of a completion of the division of matter that results in atoms. Finally, I distinguish Descartes' indefinite from two other kinds of infinity with which it might well be confused. The first is an essentially incomplete 'potential infinity' that Descartes discusses in the Third Meditation, and the second is the sort of quantitative infinity that Leibniz – contrary to Descartes – denies can constitute a completed whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The consensus today is that both Newton and Leibniz created calculus independently. Yet, this was not so clear at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A bitter controversy took place at that time, which came to be known as the 'calculus war', probably the greatest clash in the history of science. While it is accepted that the debate started when Fatio de Duillier publicly accused Leibniz of plagiarism in 1699, earlier evidence of its origins can be found in an exchange of letters between Leibniz and Huygens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the scholarly consensus on Willem Jacob 's Gravesande's philosophy, namely the view that it was predominantly influenced by Newton, Locke, and Descartes. More generally, it opposes the tendency to read the work of eighteenth-century natural philosophers as being part of well-defined strands of Newtonianism. I argue that we will understand the intellectual history of the early eighteenth century better if we let go of essentialist taxonomic views and instead pay attention to the historical trajectories of various actors and ideas. In the case of 's Gravesande (1688–1742), it has often been assumed that he used a particular form of Newtonianism to combat rationalist metaphysics, particularly Spinozism. Here I show that this view is not tenable when we take account of 's Gravesande's metaphysical writings. On topics such as liberty, necessity, and theodicy, these writings deviate from what Newtonianism is usually taken to stand for. Instead, 's Gravesande's views on such matters correspond more closely to certain interpretations of Leibniz's Théodicée. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

May 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Miguel Sánchez-Mazas, founder of Theoria. An International Journal of Theory, History and Foundations of Science, and regarded as the person who brought mathematical logic to Spain. Here we present some of his biographical features and a summary of his contributions, from his early work in the 1950s - introducing contemporary advances in logic and philosophy of science in a philosophically backward milieu dominated by the scholasticism of that era in Spain - to the development of a project of Lebnizian lineage aimed at producing an arithmetic calculation that would elude some of the difficulties confronting Leibniz's calculus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The aim of the paper is to illuminate some core aspects of Leibniz's conception of judgement and its place in his conception of the mind. In particular, the paper argues for three claims: First, the act of judgement is at the centre of Leibniz's conception of the mind in that minds strive at actualising innate knowledge concerning derivative truths, where the actualising involves an act of judgement. Second, Leibniz does not hold a judgement account of predication, but a two-component account that distinguishes between predication and alethic evaluation. Third, Leibniz understands the act of affirmative judgement in terms of establishing active dispositions, i.e. strivings, to make reasons available for future reasoning that aims at answering whether-questions (whether a proposition p is true or not). Correspondingly, he understands the act of negative judgement in terms of establishing dispositions to ban propositions from future reasoning that aims at answering whether-questions. In the final analysis, the acts of affirmative as well as of negative judgement turn out to be acts of changing memory dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Con-textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy is the property of Con-Textos Kantianos (CTK) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Starting from an analogy with Quine's two dogmas of empiricism, I offer a (neo-Kantian) critique of two dogmas of analytic historiography: the belief in a cleavage between the justification of a philosophical claim and an account of its genesis and the belief in rational reconstructionism. I take Russell's rational reconstruction of Leibniz's philosophy as my detailed example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the scholastic context of the discussion about the unity of the composite or corporeal substance and the nature of the vinculum substantiale or substantial bond in Leibniz's correspondence with Des Bosses. Three prominent scholastic views are examined: Duns Scotus's antireductionist account of the composite substance as an entity irreducible to its essential parts (i.e., matter and substantial form); Ockham's parts-whole identity thesis, which entails a reductionist view of the composite substance; and Suárez's explanation of the unity of composite substance through the presence of a substantial mode of union. It is then shown that Leibniz initially combines a reductionist account of the composite substance, with the vinculum playing the role of bond among the component monads. In his last letters, he moves away from this to an antireductionist account of the composite substance, with which he now identifies the vinculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leibniz argues that there must be a fundamental level of simple substances because composites borrow their reality from their constituents and not all reality can be borrowed. I contend that the underlying logic of this 'borrowed reality argument' has been misunderstood, particularly the rationale for the key premise that not all reality can be borrowed. Contrary to what has been suggested, the rationale turns neither on the alleged viciousness of an unending regress of reality borrowers nor on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but on the idea that composites are phenomena and thus can be real only insofar as they have a foundation in substances, from which they directly 'borrow' their reality. The claim that composites are phenomena rests in turn on Leibniz's conceptualism about relations. So understood, what initially looked like a disappointingly simple argument for simples turns out to be a rather rich and sophisticated one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main concern of this essay is to make a case for the thesis that Leibniz conceived of his philosophy as a way of life in something like the sense articulated in the works of Pierre Hadot. On this view, philosophy was a type of conduct, or a mode of existing‐in‐the‐world, which had to be practised at each instant, with the goal of transforming the whole of the individual's life. The essay also serves as an introduction to some of the main themes in Hadot's work. While it includes a brief discussion of a number of the central components of Leibniz's philosophy conceived as a way of life, the essay does not aim to do so in great detail. Rather, it offers a manifesto and initial road map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greek antiquity saw the development of two distinct systems of logic: Aristotle's theory of the categorical syllogism and the Stoic theory of the hypothetical syllogism. Some ancient logicians argued that hypothetical syllogistic is more fundamental than categorical syllogistic on the grounds that the latter relies on modes of propositional reasoning such as reductio ad absurdum. Peripatetic logicians, by contrast, sought to establish the priority of categorical over hypothetical syllogistic by reducing various modes of propositional reasoning to categorical form. In the 17th century, this Peripatetic program of reducing hypothetical to categorical logic was championed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In an essay titled Specimina calculi rationalis , Leibniz develops a theory of propositional terms that allows him to derive the rule of reductio ad absurdum in a purely categorical calculus in which every proposition is of the form A is B. We reconstruct Leibniz's categorical calculus and show that it is strong enough to establish not only the rule of reductio ad absurdum , but all the laws of classical propositional logic. Moreover, we show that the propositional logic generated by the nonmonotonic variant of Leibniz's categorical calculus is a natural system of relevance logic known as RMI⌍→. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite his commitment to freedom, Leibniz' philosophy is also founded on pre-established harmony. Understanding the life of the individual as a spiritual automaton led Leibniz to refer to the puzzle of the way out of determinism as the Labyrinth of Freedom. Leibniz claimed that infinite complexity is the reason why it is impossible to prove a contingent truth (in a finite number of steps). But by means of Leibniz' calculus, it actually can be shown in a finite number of steps how to calculate a summation of infinite parts. It appears that the analogy Leibniz drew between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of contingent truths did more harm than good. A solution consistent with Leibniz' perception of infinity is proposed. Alongside the existence of the aforementioned analogy, it is based on a disanalogy between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of infinitely complex truths. This is a disanalogy that Leibniz had already used to solve the Labyrinth of Continuum which he declared more than once could, like the Labyrinth of Freedom, be solved by means of the nature of infinity. The solution of both labyrinths is based on the fictitiousness of the infinitesimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophical statements are often suppositions. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz proposes in Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain, 1704, a method of the construction of assertive conditionals occurring between any philosophical suppositions. If we can infer a philosophical statement from any suppositions then the implication between these suppositions and the obtained statement is assertive. In the article, some examples of the application of Leibniz's method are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief Ideengeschichte, the cultural construct of Western(ised) questions on theodicy, namely Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s 1710 Essais de Théodicée, the Hebrew Bible Book of Job and the understanding of Timo Veijola on Genesis 22 as a precursor to the Book of Job, are brought into discussion with one another. The impossibility of extracting ourselves from our matrices of understanding makes it difficult to understand matters of holiness as anything other than as matters of theodicy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cauriensia: Revista Anual de Ciencias Eclesiásticas is the property of Instituto Teologico San Pedro de Alcantara de Caceres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cauriensia: Revista Anual de Ciencias Eclesiásticas is the property of Instituto Teologico San Pedro de Alcantara de Caceres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay investigates whether there is the possibility of finding in a passage of modern philosophy a Leibnizian perspective, i.e. a Leibnizian "sign" able to connote it. This would be almost a prognostic trace, which could reveal at least part of the path that led to the development of a fundamental text for the narrative of modern-contemporary (political, legal, moral) philosophy, comparable to the Kantian Project for Perpetual Peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]