A highly readable book, a decent dual biography, and a good popularization and explanation of Spinoza and Leibniz's philosophies. Stewart was largely A highly readable book, a decent dual biography, and a good popularization and explanation of Spinoza and Leibniz's philosophies. Stewart was largely successful at his main goal, of arguing that Leibniz's monadic philosophy was an attempt to rescue the immortality of the soul from Spinoza's materialistic philosophy. Leibniz's attempt failed, being incoherent at worst and agreeing with Spinoza at best. This is well documented, citing from Leibniz's published writing, his personal notes, and his correspondence with Spinoza and others. The historical record regarding Leibniz's meeting with Spinoza in 1676 is a bit thin, but contributes well to the thesis that Leibniz was alternately fascinated and repelled by Spinoza's work.
Nevertheless, I have a number of complaints about this book.
The book was markedly unsympathetic towards Leibniz. Perhaps this is just historical accuracy, and Leibniz was simply unsavory. Some particularly unflattering aspects of Leibniz's life were his attempt to convince Louis XIV to start a new Crusade against Egypt, and his years spent on a literally quixotic plan to use windmills to dredge water from a mine atop a windless mountain. But the author's disdain still came off a bit strong.
I also found Stewart's personality-based explanations for the contrasting philosophies a bit repetitive and overplayed, but nevertheless plausible. Since Leibniz is portrayed as a "reactionary" versus the "modern" Spinoza, they both must recognize the rise of materialism as a phenomenon, but take different paths as a matter of their personality and their commitments. At the level of commitments, which I find more compelling as an explanatory factor than personality, Leibniz's commitment to 1. the immortality of the soul, 2. the idea that God must not only Be, but Be Good, and 3. the possibility of rebuilding a Universal Church, loomed large.
Finally, I was annoyed by the author's attempt to paint certain thinkers (Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger, Derrida) as unknowing Leibnizian's, remystifying the world by denying Spinoza's equality mind=body. In other words, not only reactionary and anti-enlightenment, but unoriginal! There's a lot to dislike here: 1. This seems like an unfair oversimplification of wildly different thinkers. 2. I don't buy that Monism/Dualism is the most useful dichotomy for classifying thinkers as "progressive" or "reactionary", compared to dichotomies such as Secular/Theocratic, Optimistic/Pessimistic (re. human nature), or pro-Reason/anti-Reason. 3. I distrust arguments that simply repeat the received wisdom that Derrida's deconstructionism in particular, and postmodernism in general, is a form of "anti-enlightenment irrationalism". 4. The author arbitrarily seems to rescue Nietzsche from his negative assessment due to Nietzsche's affinity with Spinoza. Given Spinoza and Nietzsche's influence on post-structuralists such as Deleuze, this attempt to claim Spinoza's influence solely for the side of Pure Enlightenment Reason seems unjustified....more
This is essentially a manifesto for bourgeois revolution. As such, it has really obnoxious things to say about absolute property rights being the founThis is essentially a manifesto for bourgeois revolution. As such, it has really obnoxious things to say about absolute property rights being the foundation for government. But it is a significantly less authoritarian view of politics than Hobbes's.
Some points which stood out to me: -Hobbes identifies the state of nature with a state of war ("of all against all"). Locke, on the other hand, differentiates between the state of nature and the state of war. -To those who say the state of nature is simply a just-so story, Locke replies that rulers of different nations may be considered as being in a state of nature with each other. In other words, the "state of nature" has been defined as a (quasi-)legal category, as opposed to a historical era. -Since the "state of nature" is now a legal category, Locke argues that colonists in the America's can acquire property in the same manner as in his just-so story of the creation of property, by simply putting their labor (or their servant's labor) into the modification and enclosure of nature. -Locke says that property rights precede government, and hence ought to be preserved even over the course of a war or revolution. -Locke argues that power need not be absolutely hierarchical. Here he turns the analogy of Kings with Father, of Sovereign Authority with Paternal Authority, against itself, by arguing that actual mothers and fathers are (or ought to be) co-equal rulers over their children. Marriage is a contract which serves a natural purpose, and can come to an end. Finally, just as parents don't have absolute authority over their children once they come of age, neither should Kings have absolute authority of the property of their subjects. -Locke argues that executive power is merely entrusted by the people to a king, and that if the king abuses that trust, for example by theft of his subject's property, they may legitimately decide that he has entered into an unjust war against the people. The people may then justly overthrow him. Dissolving the government is not so dangerous - it is not the same as dissolving society itself. Moreover, to those who ask: Who may decide when the king has declared war against the people?, Locke replies: only God may Judge, but the People may decide.
Useful for showing the interactions between the French, German, and to a lesser extent British/Scottish enlightenments. Doesn't talk about economics, Useful for showing the interactions between the French, German, and to a lesser extent British/Scottish enlightenments. Doesn't talk about economics, and even its sections on politics/history are rather abstract, more about the philosophy of history than their actual understanding of their place in history, eg. no mention of quarrel of ancients and moderns. Very good at starting from more obscure early Enlightenment thought and showing how it developed. Unfortunately, he is extremely uncritical of Enlightenment philosophy, and writes as if Rousseau, Kant, Herder, & Lessing are unchallenged figures of political, epistemological, historical, and aesthetic thought....more
For all of Kant's talk about the compatibility of theory and practice, he is terrible at putting his seemingly radical moral views to any interesting For all of Kant's talk about the compatibility of theory and practice, he is terrible at putting his seemingly radical moral views to any interesting use. From his moral theory, he derives banal or terrible duties such as "thou shalt not lie" and "thou shalt obey tyrants". His view of historical progress is that the Laws of Human Nature, by encouraging selfish trade a la Adam Smith, will lead to Enlightened Rulers who, for all their other failings, give Freedom of Speech to philosophers. The philosophers will seek to develop Universal Reason and hence better Moral Principles, which eventually the Rulers will adopt of their own accord.
His essays on religion were more interesting than the political essays. He tries to justify the conception of heaven/hell, or at least the Judgement Day, in a rational as opposed to religious manner. His idea is roughly that since we can have no conception of time after our death, our self-view of our "worthiness of happiness" must be thought to be frozen forever, and hence we are forced to imagine an eternity of either guilty or self-satisfied moral feelings.
I did not find his attempts to derive a rational conception of the immortality of the soul as convincing. His logic is that, for the "highest good", a world where moral duty and happiness coincide, to be imaginable, we have to imagine perpetual progress of the world towards that goal. However, he concludes that we must also believe in the perpetual progress of our own moral worth, and hence the immortality of the soul. This seems contradictory with the above argument about heaven/hell, and also full of non-sequiturs. Why do I have to hope for my own perpetual progress to hope for the world's perpetual progress?
It seems to me that if he resolved the contradictions in this argument, he would reject the static conceptions of heaven and hell and be led to either Spinoza's pantheism (which he denies) or to Hegel's world-spirit (which was yet to be written). For it would be more satisfactory to say that, in order for a rational being to act morally, it ought to hope that its moral acts will be incorporated into the eventual progress of the world. In that way the immortality is not of the individual, monist soul, but a world-soul which the rational being partakes in and dissolves back into....more
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