The Philosophical Writings of Descartes VOLUME 3. Volumes 1 and 2 provide a completely new translation of many of the major works in metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy.

The selections contained in these volumes from the papers and letters of Leibniz are intended to serve the student in two ways: first, by providing a more adequate and balanced conception of the full range and penetration of Leibniz's creative intellectual powers; second, by inviting a fresher approach to his intellectual growth and a clearer perception of the internal strains in his thinking, through a chronological arrangement. Much confusion has arisen in the past through a neglect of the develop ment (...) of Leibniz's ideas, and Couturat's impressive plea, in his edition of the Opuscu/es et fragments (p. xii), for such an arrangement is valid even for incomplete editions. The beginning student will do well, however, to read the maturer writings of Parts II, III, and IV first, leaving Part I, from a period too largely neglected by Leibniz criticism, for a later study of the still obscure sources and motives of his thought. The Introduction aims primarily to provide cultural orientation and an exposition of the structure and the underlying assumptions of the philosophical system rather than a critical evaluation. I hope that together with the notes and the Index, it will provide those aids to the understanding which the originality of Leibniz's scientific, ethical, and metaphysical efforts deserve. (shrink)

Leibniz’s metaphysics is centered on the claim that ultimate reality is composed of mind-like, immaterial substances, monads. While it is universally agreed that such substances are non-spatial, monads’ relation to time is less clear. In some passages, Leibniz suggests that monads are themselves temporal, yet in others he implies that they have only derived temporal properties in virtue of being connected to phenomenal bodies. This has led to predictable disagreements among commentators, some insisting that monads are intrinsically temporal and some (...) insisting that they are intrinsically non-temporal. In this article, I seek to defend the latter interpretation. To do this, I focus on Leibniz’s account of monadic perception and appetition, arguing that the order of monadic states is given by the intentional content represented therein. This view, I suggest, commits Leibniz to the conclusion that monads are intrinsically non-temporal, having only second-order, derivative temporal properties. (shrink)

In this work I critically examine three basic characteristics of the Leibnizian metaphysical system, and study and evaluate their interconnections. In chapter I I discuss Leibniz's version of representation, especially as it refers to the connection between the real and the phenomenal levels of his system. In chapter II I examine Leibniz's principle of continuity. Additionally, continuity as a general feature of every level of Leibniz's metaphysics is critically appraised. The position adopted is that the problem of the composition of (...) the continuum played a central role in the development of Leibniz's non-spatial and non-temporal monadic metaphysics. In chapter III the machinery developed in chapter I and II is used to give a new interpretation of Leibniz's metaphysics of space and time. More specifically, the notion of indirect representation is used and appropriate models are constructed which clarify the nature of the correspondence between the real and the phenomenal levels in the case of the relations of "spatially between" and "temporally between", as well as in the cases of spatial and temporal density. Finally, Leibniz's solution to the problem of the composition of the continuum is discussed. I argue that such a solution is not entirely satisfactory and propose a non-anachronistic alternative which is compatible with Leibniz's metaphysics of substance. (shrink)