Customer Reviews

Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays: Discourse on Metaphysics, on the Ultimate Origination of Things, Preface to the New Essays, the Monadolog

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Both Dan Garber and Roger Ariew are excellent early modern scholars, especially on Descartes and Leibniz. This edition contains Leibniz's 'Discourse on Metaphysics', 'On the Ultimate Origination of Things', the Preface to his 'New Essays', and the 'Monadology'. All of these texts are essential to any serious study of Leibniz's thought. However, as Dan Garber carefully explains in his recent book, there is a great prejudice to read too seriously the later Leibniz and interpret very important aspects of his early thought teleologically in light of the later Leibniz of monads. This Hackett edition is sufficient for anyone wanting the most recent scholarly English translations of Leibniz's famous short works that I mentioned. But for a few dollars more, and if you're really interested in Leibniz that money won't be an issue, definitely buy the 366 page Hackett edition of the same translators (rather than this miniscule 84 page edition) to have a variety of short writings of Leibniz written between 1675-1716. The edition linked here: Philosophical Essays contains everything in the smaller Hackett edition, plus numerous other short writings by Leibniz, as well as his writings on some of his contemporaries and some of the very famous letters he wrote to Clarke, Huygens, Wolff, Bernoulli, Arnauld, etc.

Leibniz was an extremely extensive writer. I have read that there are over 75,000 different pieces of writing that are left over for editors to put out (which are still far from being published in anything near a definitive edition). However, if one is serious about studying Leibniz, it is best not to just go right at the Monadology and the Discourse. Much of Leibniz's earlier thought is just as important to read. It's hard to get your hands on a good English copy of Leibniz's work, but you can start with what Hackett gives you, and the Bennett translation of Leibniz's 'New Essays' and the Theodicy can also be found here on Amazon, along with some full volumes of some of his correspondence.