Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding by G W Leibniz

Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding by G W Leibniz

In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of another. Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussions of the ideas and institutions of the age make this a fascinating and valuable document in the history of ideas. The work was originally written in French, and the version by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, based on the only reliable French edition (published in 1962), first appeared in 1981 and has become the standard English translation. It has been thoroughly revised for this series and provided with a new and longer introduction, a chronology on Leibniz's life and career and a guide to further reading.

GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ was born on July 1, 1646, in Leipzig, Germany. Leibniz, who had already shown symptoms of a prodigious brain, enrolled at the University of Leipzig at the age of fifteen to study law, mathematics, and philosophy. Because Leipzig refused to offer him a doctorate due to his youth, Leibniz moved to Altdorf, near Nuremberg, where he got his doctorate in 1666, just before his twenty-first birthday. Leibniz went into the public service shortly after, first with the Elector of Mainz and then with the ducal house of Braunschweig-Lueneburg. Leibniz's diplomatic missions took him to Paris, London, Amsterdam, and then Hanover, where he settled.

Leibniz met the prominent thinkers of the day, including philosophers Nicolas de Malebranche and Baruch de Spinoza, as well as mathematician Christiaan Huygens, as a result of his travels. Leibniz was a real polymath who wrote extensively on legal, cultural, and political issues, compiled an official history of the Braunschweig family, and contributed essential works to mathematics, theology, and philosophy. Leibniz articulated his metaphysical framework, including his view of physical reality, the motion and resistance of bodies, and the place of the divine within the dynamic universe, in his two important philosophical works, the Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology. Leibniz was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, president of the Berlin Academy, privy councillor to royalty, and a baronet of the empire for his diplomatic and scientific achievements.

Despite this, Leibniz's final years were marred by illness and growing disdain from those who saw him as a religious heretic. On November 14, 1716, he died in Hannover. A code of international law, Systema theologicum (1687), and Essais de theodicee (1710), his most important work in theology, are among Leibniz's other writings.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780521576604
ISBN 10	0521576601
Title	Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding
Author	G W Leibniz
Series	Cambridge Texts In The History Of Philosophy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	1996-11-07
Number of pages	528
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.