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Single Idea 7842

[filed under theme 28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism ]

Full Idea

Leibniz sailed closer to the winds of unbelief than Spinoza did.

Gist of Idea

Leibniz was closer than Spinoza to atheism

Source

report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.16

Book Ref

Stewart,Matthew: 'The Courtier and the Heretic' [Yale 2007], p.293

A Reaction

This is an unusual view, but Stewart's view is that whereas Spinoza is always sincere in his writings, Leibniz is inclined to put a very conservative spin on his opinions. A key question for Leibniz is "Is God merely a monad?"

The 58 ideas from 'works'

19359 Leibniz aims to give coherent rational support for empiricism [Leibniz, by Perkins]
13086 Metaphysics is a science of the intelligible nature of being [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
16710 Leibniz tried to combine mechanistic physics with scholastic metaphysics [Leibniz, by Pasnau]
16897 Reason is the faculty for grasping apriori necessary truths [Leibniz, by Burge]
3346 For Leibniz rationality is based on non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason [Leibniz, by Benardete,JA]
3347 Leibniz said the principle of sufficient reason is synthetic a priori, since its denial is not illogical [Leibniz, by Benardete,JA]
8627 Leibniz is inclined to regard all truths as provable [Leibniz, by Frege]
9147 Number cannot be defined as addition of ones, since that needs the number; it is a single act of abstraction [Fine,K on Leibniz]
18081 Nature uses the infinite everywhere [Leibniz]
18080 A tangent is a line connecting two points on a curve that are infinitely close together [Leibniz]
7561 Substances are essentially active [Leibniz, by Jolley]
7565 Leibniz proposes monads, since there must be basic things, which are immaterial in order to have unity [Leibniz, by Jolley]
10419 If relations can be reduced to, or supervene on, monadic properties of relata, they are not real [Leibniz, by Swoyer]
12713 Forms have sensation and appetite, the latter being the ability to act on other bodies [Leibniz, by Garber]
13087 The essence of a thing is its real possibilities [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
12701 Leibniz moved from individuation by whole entity to individuation by substantial form [Leibniz, by Garber]
13105 The laws-of-the-series plays a haecceitist role [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
12035 Leibniz bases pure primitive entities on conjunctions of qualitative properties [Leibniz, by Adams,RM]
13091 Leibnizian substances add concept, law, force, form and soul [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
12715 Leibniz strengthened hylomorphism by connecting it to force in physics [Leibniz, by Garber]
11878 Leibniz's view (that all properties are essential) is extreme essentialism, not its denial [Leibniz, by Mackie,P]
11862 Leibniz was not an essentialist [Leibniz, by Wiggins]
16504 Two eggs can't be identical, because the same truths can't apply to both of them [Leibniz]
8650 Things are the same if one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth [Leibniz]
13828 Necessary truths are those provable from identities by pure logic in finite steps [Leibniz, by Hacking]
4307 A reason must be given why contingent beings should exist rather than not exist [Leibniz]
15883 Leibniz narrows down God's options to one, by non-contradiction, sufficient reason, indiscernibles, compossibility [Leibniz, by Harré]
18822 Each monad expresses all its compatible monads; a possible world is the resulting equivalence class [Leibniz, by Rumfitt]
7837 Leibniz proposed possible worlds, because they might be evil, where God would not create evil things [Leibniz, by Stewart,M]
13080 Leibniz has a counterpart view of de re counterfactuals [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
19332 For Leibniz, divine understanding grasps every conceivable possibility [Leibniz, by Perkins]
5509 Leibniz said dualism of mind and body is illusion, and there is only mind [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi]
7568 Leibniz is an idealist insofar as the basic components of his universe are all mental [Leibniz, by Jolley]
8110 Leibniz identified beauty with intellectual perfection [Leibniz, by Gardner]
19354 Leibniz introduced the idea of degrees of consciousness, essential for his monads [Leibniz, by Perkins]
7841 We think we are free because the causes of the will are unknown; determinism is a false problem [Leibniz]
5510 Leibniz has a panpsychist view that physical points are spiritual [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi]
7564 Occasionalism give a false view of natural laws, miracles, and substances [Leibniz, by Jolley]
19372 Concepts are ordered, and show eternal possibilities, deriving from God [Leibniz, by Arthur,R]
13467 Leibniz was the first modern to focus on sentence-sized units (where empiricists preferred word-size) [Leibniz, by Hart,WD]
19365 Limited awareness leads to bad choices, and unconscious awareness makes us choose the bad [Leibniz, by Perkins]
7569 Humans are moral, and capable of reward and punishment, because of memory and self-consciousness [Leibniz, by Jolley]
7574 Natural law theory is found in Aquinas, in Leibniz, and at the Nuremberg trials [Leibniz, by Jolley]
12728 Leibniz rejected atoms, because they must be elastic, and hence have parts [Leibniz, by Garber]
7560 Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz]
16683 Leibniz eventually said resistance, rather than extension, was the essence of body [Leibniz, by Pasnau]
3889 God's existence is either necessary or impossible [Leibniz, by Scruton]
12725 Leibniz wanted to explain motion and its laws by the nature of body [Leibniz, by Garber]
7859 Leibniz had an unusual commitment to the causal completeness of physics [Leibniz, by Papineau]
7842 Leibniz was closer than Spinoza to atheism [Leibniz, by Stewart,M]
15307 Leibniz uses 'force' to mean both activity and potential [Leibniz]
13092 The essence of substance is the law of its changes, as in the series of numbers [Leibniz]
19374 Microscopes and the continuum suggest that matter is endlessly divisible [Leibniz]
19375 The continuum is not divided like sand, but folded like paper [Leibniz, by Arthur,R]
16507 The law within something fixes its persistence, and accords with general laws of nature [Leibniz]
16513 Identity of a substance is the law of its persistence [Leibniz]
13078 Relations aren't in any monad, so they are distributed, so they are not real [Leibniz]
13084 How can things be incompatible, if all positive terms seem to be compatible? [Leibniz]