The shorter Leibniz texts: a collection of new translations

Abstract

diplomat.In 1686 he was given the duty of writing a history of the House of Brunswick.Although Leibniz lived for another thirty years, he never completed this history and spent much of his time with projects that were clearly much closer to his heart.In 1682 he assisted in the founding of the journal Ada Eruditorum, in which he published a number of important papers.He expended a great deal of effort attempting to facilitate a reunion between the Catholic and Protestant churches.He lobbied tirelessly for the foundation of scientific academies, and was eventually rewarded for his efforts with the setting up of one such academy in Berlin in 1700 (of which Leibniz was made president).He created calculating machines, drew up plans for the development of a universal encyclopaedia that would contain everything that was so far known, wrote Latin poetry, funded alchemical research, and undertook studies on the origin of languages.But such projects by no means exhausted Leibniz's interests -during his life he made original contributions to physics, mathematics, logic, geology, law, politics, economics, linguistics, and of course philosophy.Much of Leibniz's philosophy was developed in his spare time, through short papers written for himself, book notes, and hasty jottings.In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was common for thinkers to communicate their ideas to others via letters, which were often copied and distributed to other scholars or even published, and Leibniz often disseminated his philosophical ideas this way.During his life he counted among his correspondents many of the finest minds of Europe -as well as Malebranche and Arnauld, Leibniz had fruitful exchanges with heavyweight thinkers such as Christian Wolff, Pierre Bayle, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Samuel Clarke, as well as with interested amateurs such as the Electress Sophie of Hanover and her daughter, Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia.Leibniz also published some of his ideas in the handful of scholarly journals that existed in his day.By and large this piecemeal approach to the diffusion of his ideas suited Leibniz just fine; by his own confession, he did not have the inclination to write a lengthy treatise that brought all the parts of his philosophical system together.His two longest philosophical works -the New Essays on Human Understanding (written 1703-4 though not published until 1749) and the Theodicy (1710) were by no means straightforward expositions of his system, but rather detailed responses to the work of John Locke and Pierre Bayle respectively.