ABSTRACT
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is undoubtedly one of the major philosophers of the Western tradition, but he is also an unusually difficult philosopher. His two most famous doctrines are apt to appear bizarre and implausible: many readers find it hard to overcome their initial resistance to the theory of monads and the thesis that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds. Indeed, the latter thesis made Leibniz an easy target at the hands of Voltaire in Candide (1759). A further source of difficulty is of a wholly different nature. Although he published one philosophical book, Leibniz never produced a definitive statement of his philosophical theories and arguments; there is no Leibnizian masterpiece which can be set beside Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics (1677) or John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Instead the reader is forced to turn to a countless array of essays and letters in order to gain a coherent picture of his philosophical achievements. Most of Leibniz’s works, both long and short, were unpublished during his lifetime, and have only gradually been exposed to the light of day in the three hundred years or so since his death; indeed many of his writings remain unpublished to this date. Leibniz himself was well aware of how difficult it was for his contemporaries to appreciate his contributions to philosophy, for he wrote: ‘He who knows me only from my published writings does not know me’ (D VI 1 65).
