He discusses topics like Plato's "line,"
Leibnizian metaphysics, Berkeleyan metalogical signs and master arguments, the second-order idealism of David Hume, Kantian ethics and the "fate of reason," metamathematical interpretations of free will and determinism, and time-evolution in random universes.
And only the truths that hold for all possible worlds are strictly necessary ones." The
Leibnizian ontology of possible worlds can be viewed as only existing as ideas in the mind of God, with the single and extraordinary exception of the actual world, in which "the domain of possibility is literally an ens rationis, a creature of reason, but of divine rather than human reason.
The optimistic philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in 1828, "I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage." In the previous century, Voltaire's Candide had attacked what its author called "optimism": the
Leibnizian idea that all must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Like a
Leibnizian monad, ravens hold a representation of the entire universe within their mind.
As Leibniz clarifies, the 'efficient cause of [his] present writing' is determined by 'an infinity of past and present shapes and motions'.(25) From this
Leibnizian perspective, the library does not simply hold all possible books, but each possible book also holds the library, or all pasts and presents.
Writing in 1896 about the relationship between photography and perception, Henri Bergson urged, "Call up the
Leibnizian monads: Each is the mirror of the universe." No artist has taken up this directive like Liz Deschenes.
Bassler, Otto Bradley, <<The
Leibnizian Continuum in 1671>>, en Studia Leibnitiana, 30, 1, 1998a, pp.
(It would be possible to read Mansfield's fictional practice as
Leibnizian precisely against Russell I think).
It seems that a lot of identity discourses, be they racial, religious, or national, assume a conception of identity that is akin to that of a
Leibnizian monad, that is, an identity is conceived of as an independent, monolithic, unchanging essence.
My review of the post-2008 US financial reforms reveals a similar
Leibnizian optimism: that the reforms represent the best of all possible worlds.
Every imperial state has always wanted its citizenry to embrace
Leibnizian optimism: Why fret?