Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
But meanwhile a painful dispute had broken out between Leibniz and the disciples of Locke and Newton, in which the English, and perhaps Newton himself, were much to blame, and Leibniz thought it impolitic to publish his book. It was not issued until long after his death, in the middle of the century.
The spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of pain, is only decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is part of a world of mutually reflecting substances, a world which also includes the cudgel. Leibniz distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things occur in the mind, of itself, but not chosen by it.
But if so, why does Leibniz keep saying that the harmony is pre-established, by special and infinitely elaborate divine decrees? Leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes interaction. By representing environment a mind does not do anything to environment, that is plain. But it is no less plain that environment does nothing to it, either.
Descartes's rivals and successors attempted several solutions, which it would be too long to examine here. They dissatisfied Leibniz and they have certainly no less dissatisfied posterity. It will be enough for us here to consider what Leibniz did. He admitted, to begin with, the psychological fact.
The word 'entelechy' was, indeed, a piece of antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which it stood was the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions. 'Entelechy' means active principle of wholeness or completion in an individual thing.
Leibniz, not to be defeated, set to work upon the New Essays, in which the whole substance of Locke's book is systematically discussed in dialogue. The New Essays were written in 1703.
In favour of the theory which I have briefly outlined, I do not claim that it is certainly true. Apart from the likelihood of mistakes, much of it is avowedly hypothetical. What I do claim for the theory is that it may be true, and that this is more than can be said for any other theory except the closely analogous theory of Leibniz.
It is not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic policy; and God's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from Christian revelation. In one politically important particular the theological attitude of Leibniz differed from that of Locke.
The New Essays remained in Leibniz's desk, the Theodicy saw the light. And so, to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was known as the author of the Theodicy. The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. In 1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding was being prepared at Amsterdam.
This simple faith survives in Descartes and in a somewhat modified form in Spinoza, but with Leibniz it begins to disappear, and from his day to our own almost every philosopher of note has criticised and rejected the dualism of common sense.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking