Larry M. Jorgensen provides a systematic reappraisal of Leibniz's philosophy of mind, revealing the full metaphysical background that allowed Leibniz to see farther than most of his contemporaries. In recent philosophy much effort has been put into discovering a naturalized theory of mind. Leibniz's efforts to reach a similar goal three hundred years earlier offer a critical stance from which we can assess our own theories. But while the goals might be similar, the content of Leibniz's theory significantly diverges from that of today's thought. Perhaps surprisingly, Leibniz's theological commitments yielded a thoroughgoing naturalizing methodology: the properties of an object are explicable in terms of the object's nature. Larry M. Jorgensen shows how this methodology led Leibniz to a fully natural theory of mind.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) is one of the most imposing figures in the history of Western thought. In this definitive treatment of his wide-ranging philosophical ideas, Benson Mates has brought his own formidable abilities to bear on the unwieldy--and virtually inaccessible--corpus of Leibniz's work. The result is an elegantly written and meticulously reasoned exegesis of the fundamental Leibniz, one that is destined to be a cornerstone of Leibniz scholarship for years to come.

In the present book, Pauline Phemister argues against traditional Anglo-American interpretations of Leibniz as an idealist who conceives ultimate reality as a plurality of mind-like immaterial beings and for whom physical bodies are ultimately unreal and our perceptions of them illusory. Re-reading the texts without the prior assumption of idealism allows the more material aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics to emerge. Leibniz is found to advance a synthesis of idealism and materialism. His ontology posits indivisible, living, animal-like corporeal substances as the real metaphysical constituents of the universe; his epistemology combines sense-experience and reason; and his ethics fuses confused perceptions and insensible appetites with distinct perceptions and rational choice. In the light of his sustained commitment to the reality of bodies, Phemister re-examines his dynamics, the doctrine of pre-established harmony and his views on freedom. The image of Leibniz as a rationalist philosopher who values activity and reason over passivity and sense-experience is replaced by the one of a philosopher who recognises that, in the created world, there can only be activity if there is also passivity; minds, souls and forms if there is also matter; good if there is evil; perfection if there is imperfection.

This work represents an investigation of the most important properties of the human mind consciousness, apperception and reflection - and of their significance for Leibnizian philosophy. The development of Leibniz's thinking in the course of his treatment of these themes receives especially detailed treatment, and is thoroughly documented on the basis of the original texts. The concepts of consciousness and reflection were the object of intensive discussion in the l7th century. Starting out from the problem of the distinction between humans and brutes - Descartes' view of animals as mere machines was always decisively rejected by Leibniz-Kulstad shows the significance of these concepts in the early writings of Leibniz. He shows how Leibniz was then stimulated by Locke to add the word "apperception" into his philosophy. The author sets out the influence of Locke on Leibniz and demonstrates how Leibniz adopted a firmer and more constant position as to the relation between consciousness and reflection than one finds in Locke's own writings. From the beginning to the end of his life Leibniz defends the thesis that both consciousness and reflection consist in the memory of one mental act via another. The author shows how Leibniz hereby aligns himself with an European philosophihical tradition which can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. Of course, a clarification of the meanings of words such as "consciousness", "reflection" and "apperception" is important not only for an understanding of Leibniz's philosophy but also for contemporary metaphysics and theory of knowledge. Leibniz certainly recognized and thought through the problems associated with these words, but he never developed a final, coherent theory, a fact which certainly reflects in part the complexity of the underlying problems. By exploiting not only all the relevant Leibnizian writings but also the results of more receent philosophy in this field, Kulstad is able to draw a reliable picture both of Leibniz's treatment of these problems and of the influence of his views on his contemporaries and successors.

The essays included in this volume are a mixture of old and new. Three of them make their first appearance in print on this occa sion (Nos III, IV, and V). The remaining four are based upon materials previously published in learned journals or anthologies. (However, these previously published papers have been revised and, generally, expanded for inclusion here.) Detailed acknowl edgement of prior publications is made in the notes to the relevant articles. I am grateful to the editors of these several publications for their kind permission to use this material. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the Western Ontario Series for some useful corrigenda. And I should like to thank John Horty and Lily Knezevich for their help in seeing this material through the press. NICHOLAS RESCHER Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May, 1980 xi INTRODUCTION The unifying theme of these essays is their concern with Leibniz's metaphysics of nature. In particular, they revolve about his cos mology of creation and his conception of the real world as one among infinitely many equipossible alternatives.