Leibniz’s modal philosophy, 1675-1676, displays a complex relationship to Spinoza. Commentators have tried to determine the extent to which these drafts foreshadow Leibniz’s later opposition to the necessitarianism with which Spinoza is reproached. The status of non-realized possibles is central to this debate. I here defend the thesis of a strong kind of necessitarianism that Leibniz attempted to make compatible with divine personality. Other possibilities are taken into account by Leibniz only because he wanted to guarantee that the best be (...) necessarily chosen, a choice without options conceivable from God’s action on Himself. (shrink)

Leibniz’s claim that it is possible for us to gain metaphysical knowledge through reflection on the self has intrigued many commentators, but it has also often been criticized as flawed or unintelligible. A similar fate has beset Leibniz’s arguments against materialism. In this paper, I explore one of Leibniz’s lesser-known arguments against materialism from his reply to Bayle’s new note L, and argue that it provides us with an instance of a Leibnizian “argument from reflection”. This argument, I further show, (...) does not constitute a flawed appeal to mere introspection, but is in fact securely grounded in an important corollary of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Leibniz’s Principle of Intelligibility. (shrink)