In line with its influence, Emer de Vattel’s Le droit des gens (1757) is most often conceptualised in terms of far-reaching political intentions and epochal intellectual developments. However, the core axioms of the work constitute a surprisingly exact application of Vattel’s philosophical premises, developed within the highly specific traditions of Swiss Calvinism and the école romande of natural law, integrating Leibnizian influences. The present article provides basic context for this claim by excavating two early debates that Vattel intervenes upon as (...) an apologist for Leibniz: first, Vattel demonstrates an adherence to non-fatalist Leibnizian metaphysics when countering Swiss anti-Leibnizians in 1737–1741 and, second, in 1747 Vattel develops Leibnizian-Wolffian moral philosophy in response to Barbeyrac’s vindication of Pufendorfian voluntarism. These interventions point toward an evolving but systematic philosophical substratum, which I claim can also be found, mutatis mutandis, in Vattel’s account of the law of nations. Thus, whether applying natural law to people or states, Vattel considers both to be (moral) persons who naturally prioritise duties to themselves, this principle of self-interested utility conceived of as coterminous with altruistic virtue, and, by consequence, belonging to a universal society of moral actors. (shrink)

The article reconstructs a brief controversy between H. More, G. W. Leibniz and J. G. Wachter about the Kabbalah, or what they called ‘the philosophy of the Hebrews’. I study in particular the status of the proposition ‘nothing comes out of nothing’ in their exchanges - a proposition they all agreed was a fundamental kabbalist axiom while having differing views as to the prospects of reconciling that position with Christianity. I show how Wachter’s curious Kabbalistico-Spinozism provided the stage for an (...) indirect philosophical encounter between Leibniz and More that highlights not only their respective positions on the Kabbalah, but also suggests some important philosophical agreement between them regarding divine transcendence and the nature of creation. (shrink)

This paper employs the revised conception of Leibniz emerging from recent research to reassess critically the ‘radical spiritual revolution’ which, according to Alexandre Koyré’s landmark book, From the closed world to the infinite universe was precipitated in the seventeenth century by the revolutions in physics, astronomy, and cosmology. While conceding that the cosmological revolution necessitated a reassessment of the place of value-concepts within cosmology, it argues that this reassessment did not entail a spiritual revolution of the kind assumed by Koyré, (...) in which ‘value-concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim’ were shed from the conception of the structure of the universe altogether. On the contrary, thanks to his pioneering intuition of the distinction between physical and metaphysical levels of explanation, Leibniz saw with great clarity that a scientific explanation of the universe which rejected the ‘closed world’ typical of Aristotelian cosmology did not necessarily require the abandonment of key metaphysical doctrines underlying the Aristotelian conception of the universe. Indeed the canon of value-concepts mentioned by Koyré—meaning, aim, perfection and harmony—reads like a list of the most important concepts underlying the Leibnizian conception of the metaphysical structure of the universe. Moreover, Leibniz’s universe, far from being a universe without God—because, as Clarke insinuated, it does not need intervention from God—is a universe which in its deepest ontological fabric is interwoven with the presence of God.Author Keywords: Leibniz; Koyré; Clarke; Universe; Cosmology; Harmony. (shrink)