Leibniz and his Correspondents

Unlike most of the other great philosophers Leibniz never wrote a magnum opus, so his philosophical correspondence is essential for an understanding of his views. This collection of essays by pre-eminent figures in the field of Leibniz scholarship is a most thorough account of Leibniz’s philosophical correspondencee. It both illuminates Leibniz’s philosophical views and pays due attention to the dialectical context in which the relevant passages from the letters occur. The result is a book of enormous value to all serious students of early-modern philosophy and the history of ideas.

• This focuses on the philosophical correspondence where Leibniz articulated core ideas • Cambridge has a strong list of books like this in the history of philosophy, e.g. Mercer/Leibniz’s Metaphysics

Contributors; Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction Paul Lodge; 2. Leibniz and his master: the correspondence with Jakob Thomasius Christia Mercer; 3. A philosophical apprenticeship: Leibniz’s correspondence with the secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg Philip Beeley; 4. The Leibniz-Foucher alliance and its philosophical bases Stuart Brown; 5. Leibniz to Arnauld: platonic and aristotelian themes on matter and corporeal substance Martha Brandt Bolton; 6. Leibniz and Fardella: body, substance and idealism Daniel Garber; 7. Leibniz’s exchange with the Jesuits in China Franklin Perkins; 8. Leibniz’s close encounter with cartesianism in the correspondence with De Volder Paul Lodge; 9. ‘All the time and everywhere everything’s the same as here’: the principle of uniformity in the correspondence between Leibniz and Lady Masham Pauline Phemister; 10. Idealism declined: Leibniz and Christian Wolff Donald Rutherford; 11. On substance and relations in Leibniz’s correspondence with Des Bosses Brandon Look; 12. ‘[…] et je serai tousjours la même pour vous’: personal, political and philosophical dimensions of the Leibniz-Caroline correspondence Gregory Brown; References; Index.

‘Often the papers do not deal simply with the doctrines discussed in the various exchanges but throw light on aspects of Leibnizian biography, and portray him as a real historical character with personal agendas, not merely as an abstract mind … a valuable addition to Leibniz scholarship.’

– Roger Woolhouse, University of York

\'The idea on which this volume is predicated - that we have much to gain from taking a closer look at the correspondences themselves - is therefore germane to any serious analysis of Leibniz\'s thought … The result is a collection of good to excellent papers arising from a conference on \'Leibniz and His Correspondents\' held at Tulane University in March 2001 and organized by the editor … As a whole, this is one of the very best collections of papers on Leibniz to have appeared in recent years. It not only advances our knowledge of a number of philosophically rich exchanges between Leibniz and his contemporaries; it also makes a critical historiographical point regarding the necessity of studying philosophical texts by taking fully into account the genre and the context in which they were written. In doing so it helps set an important agenda for future Anglo-American research in the history of philosophy.\'

– British Journal for the History of Philosophy