Leibniz

Body, Substance, Monad

By: Daniel Garber

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Paperback | 1 July 2011

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452 Pages

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23.3 x 15.7 x 2.6

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Daniel Garber presents an illuminating study of Leibniz's conception of the physical world. Leibniz's commentators usually begin with monads, mind-like simple substances, the ultimate building-blocks of the Monadology. But Leibniz's apparently idealist metaphysics is very puzzling: how can any sensible person think that the world is made up of tiny minds? In this book, Garber tries to make Leibniz's thought intelligible by focusing instead on his notion of body. Beginning with Leibniz's earliest writings, he shows how Leibniz starts as a Hobbesian with a robust sense of the physical world, and how, step by step, he advances to the monadological metaphysics of his later years. Much of the book's focus is on Leibniz's middle years, where the fundamental constituents of the world are corporeal substances, unities of matter and form understood on the model of animals. For Garber monads only enter fairly late in Leibniz's career, and when they enter, he argues, they do not displace bodies but complement them. In the end, though, Garber argues that Leibniz never works out the relation between the world of monads and the world of bodies to his own satisfaction: at the time of his death, his philosophy is still a work in progress.

Industry Reviews

`Review from previous edition Garber has delivered an unusually rich and subtle reading of Leibniz ... his meticulous story of the development of Leibniz's thought about substance and body from his early years up through the middle years, and in particular his insightful description of the ways in which considerations of unity, persistence, and activity led Leibniz to realize that substantial forms have something to contribute to physics, is by far the best account we have of this subject ... an immensely valuable contribution to the literature. Its combination of first-rate scholarship and provocative interpretive theses will make it essential reading for specialists working on Leibniz's metaphysics. It would be a shame, however, if it were read only by specialists. For the story it tells is an engaging one.' Stephen Puryear, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews `impressive and brilliantly argued ... a fascinating journey through Leibniz's view (or views) of the physical world and its metaphysical grounding from his earliest years to the end of his life. There can be no doubt that the resulting study constitues a milestone contribution which will mark the direction of the debate on Leibniz's theories of substance and of the ontological status of bodies for many years to come.' Maria Rosa Antognazza, Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science

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