Selected Political Writings of Leibniz (Cambridge History of Political Thought: Facsimile Edition)

Author: (English) Leibniz
Publisher:
Publishing Time: 2003-05-01
Features: First published in 1972. Professor Riley's acclaimed edition of the major political and ethical writings of Leibniz has been revised and updated for publication in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought: this edition includes a further three recently discovered pieces, in addition to a selection of political letters, editorial notes and full critical bibliography. In a detailed but accessible introduction, Patrick Riley outlines the fundamental themes in Leibniz's work, particularly his concepts of justice and social responsibility, and assesses the important differences between Leibniz and his English contemporaries Hobbes and Locke. Professor Riley sees in Leibniz's political writings an essentially late-medieval attempt to visualize everything - politics, law, religion, culture, science - in terms of an architectonic system capped by a rational theology: Leibniz sought to establish a system of justice which could equally explain how men ought to act, and how God actually acted. From a theory of justice reformulated in terms of Christian charity, Leibniz derived a doctrine of social responsibility notably unlike anything to be found in his great liberal contemporaries, and in this Leibniz observed a possible doctrinal solution to the various religious and political schisms that had rent Europe since the sixteenth century. Leibniz was himself an active diplomat and political adviser, as well as a philosopher, and this lends to almost all his political speculation an unusual and potent sense of active engagement.