Kant believed that true enlightenment is the use of reason freely in public. This book systematicaaly traces the philosophical origins and development of the idea that the improvement of human understanding requires public activity. Michael Losonsky focuses on seventeenth-century discussions of the problem of irresolution and the closely connected theme of the role of volition in human belief formation. This involves a discussion of the work of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz. Challenging the traditional views of seventeenth-century philosophy and (...) written in a lucid, non-technical language, this book will be eagerly sought out by historians of philosophy and students of the history of ideas. (shrink)

(2011). Diotima's Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 353-355.

While he was in the employ of the Elector of Mainz, between 1668 and 1671, Leibniz produced a series of important studies in natural law. One of these, dated between 1670 and 1671, is especially noteworthy since it contains Leibniz's earliest sustained attempt to develop an account of justice. Central to this account is the notion of what Leibniz would later come to call `disinterested love', a notion that remained essentially unchanged in Leibniz's work from this period to the end (...) of his life. Through his notion of disinterested love, Leibniz sought to resolve the supposed conflict between self- and other-regarding motives. For a variety of reasons, many commentators have failed to understand the basis of Leibniz's proposed resolution. My purpose in the present paper is to clarify the terms in which Leibniz effected this resolution, as well as to point out important developments in his later thought concerning the relation between pleasure, good, and happiness. (shrink)