Tag: Leibniz

Free Download Ryan Phillip Quandt, "Leibniz on God and Man in 1686"
English | ISBN: 179363324X | 2023 | 182 pages | EPUB, PDF | 971 KB + 2 MB
G. W. Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics is viewed by many scholars as a milestone of his mature thought-his first attempt to systematize various stances. A lengthier, theological work, Examination of the Christian Religion, written a few months after, receives less press. While Leibniz’s intent for writing the theological piece may be left for speculation, Leibniz on God and Man in 1686 demonstrates that there is clear overlap between these two texts. Leibniz borrows from the metaphysics and physics of Discourse in his theology, and he writes that his metaphysical tract addresses "questions on grace, God’s concourse with creatures, the nature of miracles, the cause of sin and the origin of evil, the immortality of the soul, ideas, etc." Despite challenges for drawing them close, Ryan Phillip Quandt argues that these texts converge in the moral quality of God and man that Leibniz took as the cornerstone of his system in 1686. Discourse coheres in a moral and scientific vision, while Examination centers on moral commitments. Love of God is their shared ideal.

Free Download Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice By Reginald Osburn Savage (auth.)
1998 | 198 Pages | ISBN: 940106086X | PDF | 5 MB
In the `Preliminary Dissertation’ of his Theodicy, Leibniz declares himself an apologist for the compatibilist doctrines of original sin, election and reprobation propounded by the theologians of the Augsburg Confession. According to those theologians, man’s actions are determined but man retains the power to act otherwise and therefore is responsible for his actions. Savage argues that Leibniz, in formulating his apology, availed himself of both his doctrine of possible worlds and his finite-infinite analysis distinction (the latter being applied within the former). Savage challenges the dogma that Leibniz’s metaphysical principles entail that individuals are powerless to act otherwise and that God cannot conceive of them acting otherwise. He argues that interpreters deduce the dogma from those principles with the aid of dubious extra-textual premises, for example, that a Leibnizian individual has only one complete concept or cannot be persons other than the person it actually is.