The Correspondence with Clarke

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-249
Author(s):  
Gregory Brown
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Identity Of Indiscernibles ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World

The correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke—mediated by Leibniz’s erstwhile friend and disciple at the electoral court in Hanover, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, princess of Wales—is arguably the most famous and influential of philosophical correspondences. In this chapter, I begin by tracing the background of the correspondence and the role that Caroline played in its inception and development. I then turn to a discussion of the main themes of the correspondence, paying particular attention to the importance of Caroline’s presence in shaping the themes of the debate: the principle of sufficient reason, the identity of indiscernibles, God’s choice in creating this world, space and time, God’s presence and activity in the world, miracles, and gravity.

scholarly journals Metaphysical Rationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-181
Author(s):  
Martin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Identity Of Indiscernibles ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Limited Scope

This chapter explores the meaning of Spinoza’s Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) and the role it plays in his system. Some commentators have argued that Spinoza’s PSR applies to every truth and that Spinoza relies on it in deriving a great deal of his system. Against such interpretations, this chapter argues that Spinoza’s PSR is restricted to existential truths and is applied only once by Spinoza, to the case of the existence of God. In making this case, it considers Spinoza’s arguments for necessitarianism, causal and conceptual dependence, and the identity of indiscernibles, and it concludes that none of them rely on the PSR. It further argues that the limited scope of Spinoza’s PSR is a philosophical advantage because a fully unrestricted PSR is an unattractive doctrine that creates demands for explanation that cannot be met.

Leibniz's Method and the Basis of His Metaphysics

Philosophy ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 35 (132) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
A. H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Predicate Logic ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Identity Of Indiscernibles ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Deductive Logic ◽  
The Subject

The monumental works of Bertrand Russell and Louis Couturat have set a firm pattern of interpretation which many follow in their approach to the Philosophy of Leibniz. In the Preface to the second edition of The Philosophy of Leibniz, Russell reaffirms his contention that “Leibniz’s philosophy was almost entirely derived from his logic”. He welcomes the support provided in Couturat’s La Logique de Leibniz. Russell remarks “No candid reader—can doubt that Leibniz’s metaphysic was derived by him from the subject-predicate logic. This appears, for example, from the paper ‘Primae Veritates’ where all the main doctrines of the Monadology are deduced, with terse logical rigor from the premises; ‘Always therefore the predicate or consequent adheres in the subject or antecedent, and in this fact consists the nature of truth in general—But this is true in every affirmative truth, universal or singular, necessary or contingent’.” Referring further to Couturat, he points out that in his book the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” and “The Identity of Indiscernibles” are “expressly deduced—from the analytic character of all true propositions”. In short, Russell is contending that in formulating his metaphysics Leibniz (i) used the rigorous methods of deductive logic and (2) employed “models” drawn from logic to construct his “picture of reality”, i.e. his metaphysics.

scholarly journals Wordsworthian Chance

2009 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Andrew Burkett
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
The Novel ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason

Abstract First-generation Romantic poets generally hold a deeply rooted faith in the notion of the limitless nature of possibility, and in reaction to Enlightenment determinism, several of these poets strive for an understanding and representation of nature that is divorced from Enlightenment notions of causality. This essay specifically explores William Wordsworth’s poetic denunciation of such deterministic accounts of causality through an investigation of The Prelude’s (1799, 1805, 1850) complication of the assumption that the natural effect can be traced backward towards a single identifiable cause. I argue that in place of this principle of sufficient reason, Wordsworth embraces the notion of “chance” as possessing the inexhaustible powers of difference. In accordance with his fascination with the potentialities of the novel infinite, the idea of “chance” allows Wordsworth to challenge the notion of “necessity,” or the philosophic claim that steadfast and orderly laws determine all events in space and time. While Wordsworth certainly does not argue with the notion that cause-effect chains can be traced temporally back in time, such a genealogical record, he suggests, can only ever be deduced and constructed a posteriori. Only after the fact of its historical instantiation can the genealogical record of causal relations be deciphered and inscribed, he indicates. Such a genealogy, then, in no way undermines a faith in chance. Rather, according to Wordsworth, the record only makes the idea of chance all the more manifest. Such a posteriori inscriptions provide a distillation of the concept of chance. In this causal record Wordsworth locates the phantom outlines left in chance’s conceptual wake, or perhaps better stated, through the specters of the idea of chance.

Chapter I: The Pre-conscious World: A Space-and-Time Picture

1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (S1) ◽  
pp. 52-56
Author(s):  
Richard Albert Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Complete Network ◽  
Plant Life ◽  
The World

But deepest of all illusory Appearances are your two grand world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time.—CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus, 1830.The Prime, that willed ere wareness was,Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws.THOMAS HARDY, The Dynasts.Question one. What were the nature and characteristics of the world in its three main divisions of matter, plant life, and animal life, before it emerged to its fourth main division in the explicitly conscious life of man? The answer to this question carries us backward in time to a period so remote from the present that no answer would be at all possible were it not that in his emergence to consciousness man rose above the time-stream of sense, and by the help of language has been able to recover and reconstruct the otherwise irrecoverable past. While the actual sense-facts which constituted the natural environment contemporary with man’s emergence have long since vanished in the stream of change, we know now, from our knowledge of the past and present, that in any piece of virgin timber or park land of to-day we should have, substantially and typically, the same natural environment from which man emerged thousands of years ago. We should have, first of all, the same inorganic world of fixed geographic relations and definite structures: sun, moon, stars, clouds, winds, waters, soil, rocks, etc.; second, the differentiated forms of organic insentient life: grass, flowers, shrubs, trees, etc.; third, the various forms of sentient life: fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals; all these multitudinous forms, inorganic and organic, differentiated from each other and united with each other in a complete network of space, time, and causal relations.

scholarly journals Schopenhauer's Contraction of Reason: Clarifying Kant and Undoing German Idealism

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
Metaphysical Claim ◽  
Philosophical Project

AbstractSchopenhauer's claim that the essence of the world consists in Wille encounters well-known difficulties. Of particular importance is the conflict of this metaphysical claim with his restrictive account of conceptuality. This paper attempts to make sense of Schopenhauer's position by restoring him to the context of post-Kantian debate, with special attention to the early notebooks and Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the reconstruction suggested here, Schopenhauer's philosophical project should be understood in light of his rejection of post-Kantian metaphilosophy and his opposition to German Idealism.

A Leibnizian Space

Dialogue ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ian Hacking
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Identity Of Indiscernibles ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

Leibniz said that space and time are well-founded phenomena. Few readers can make much literal sense out of this idea, so I shall describe a small possible world in which it is true. I do not contend that Leibniz had my construction in mind, but I do follow Leibnizian guidelines. The first trick is to reverse the maxim that every monad mirrors the world from its own point of view. Points of view, and hence a space of points, can be constructed from a non-relational account of the perceptions of each monad. But we cannot fabricate space alone. We must build up laws of nature simultaneously. We must also employ a measure of the simplicity of the laws of nature. Moreover we require that, in a literal sense, the perception of each monad is a sum of its Petits perceptions. The identity of indiscernibles, in its application to space, is an automatic consequence of this construction. Although I shall examine only one possible world, there is a general recipe for such constructions, in which none of the above elements can be omitted. This is a striking illustration of the way in which the many different facets of Leibniz's metaphysics are necessarily inter-connected.

scholarly journals Hegel’s logic as the exposition of god from the end of the world

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 852-874
Author(s):  
Jure Simoniti
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute

The article attempts to reconstruct the logical space within which, at the beginning of Hegel?s Logic, ?being? and ?nothing? are entitled to emerge and receive their names. In German Idealism, the concept of ?being? is linked to the form of a proposition; Fichte grounds a new truth-value on the absolute thesis of the ?thetical judgement?. And the article?s first thesis claims that Hegel couldn?t have placed ?being? at the beginning of this great system, if the ground of its logical space had not been laid out by precisely those shifts of German Idealism that posited the ontological function of the judgement. At the same time, the abstract negation, the absence of a relation and sufficient reason between ?being? and ?nothing?, reveals a structure of an irreducibly dual beginning. The logical background of this original duality could be constituted by the invention of the ?transcendental inter-subjectivity? in German Idealism, manifested, for instance, in Hegel?s life-and-death struggle of two self-consciousnesses. The second thesis therefore suggests that ?being? and ?nothing? are elements of the logical space, established in concreto in a social situation of (at least) two subjects one of whom poses an affirmative statement and the other negates it abstractly. From here, one could draw out the coordinates of a sphere by the name of ?public? whose structure is defined by the invalidation of two basic laws of thought, the law of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. The article shows how only the statements capable of absorbing negation, of sustaining a co-existence of affirmation and its symmetrical, abstract negation, can climb the ladder of public perceptibility and social impact.

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