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Leibniz and the Ideas of Sensible Qualities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
In order to understand the thoughts of Leibniz it is important to stop putting Leibniz into the convenient pigeon-hole of rationalist, and stop thinking of him merely as the metaphysician and constructor of systems so vividly ridiculed by Voltaire in Candide. Most important of all, one should not attempt to see Leibniz's philosophy as a completely articulated and integrated whole or as built on three or five metaphysical and logical principles. It is better to remember that Leibniz was a very prolific writer, who was interested in the most varied aspects of philosophy, logic, mathematics, natural science, jurisprudence, history and philology: a man who was constantly trying to work out a large number of heterogeneous theories and thoughts. The collected editions of his writings make up more than twenty thick volumes, and these hardly exhaust his manuscripts. Yet this was a man who published only one book in his lifetime.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1971
References
page 50 note 1 I was helped in forming the thoughts expressed in the first part of this paper by members of a graduate seminar at Cornell University in Autumn 1969, and especially by discussion with Paul Fischler. I profited from discussing the problem raised in the second part of this paper with Bas Van Fraassen, Hans Kamp and David K. Lewis.
page 50 note 2 New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, bk II, ch. xxix, §3, §4, §5; bk IV, ch. xvii §13.
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page 51 note 2 Ibid.
page 51 note 3 Ibid.
page 52 note 1 It is important to recall that contrary to widespread misunderstanding, Leibniz's so-called ‘substitutivity salva veritate’ principle is meant by him to define the identity of terms, which he says are ‘concepts or ideas’, not the identity of things.
page 52 note 2 New Essays, III iv 16.Google Scholar
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page 59 note 1 Some writers have given this example as a clear case where properties are nomologically coextensive but not identical. I do not think that it is at all clear whether these predicates do ascribe one and the same property to things or not.
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page 59 note 3 Ibid., p. 437.
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