In the summer of 1676, a thirty-year-old Gottfried Leibniz made a detour on his journey from Paris to Hanover that would haunt the history of mathematics for centuries. He stopped in London and paid a visit to the Royal Society, where he was shown some of Isaac Newton's unpublished papers on the method of fluxions. What exactly he saw, how carefully he read it, and how much it influenced the calculus he published nine years later became the subject of one of the most venomous priority disputes in the history of science. Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Leibniz appealed to the Royal Society for a fair hearing. The Royal Society appointed an investigative committee, which Newton then secretly chaired and whose report he largely wrote himself. The verdict, predictably, went against Leibniz. He died in 1716 with the accusation unresolved and his reputation in England in ruins. It took another century for the mathematical community to conclude that both men had arrived at calculus independently, and that Leibniz's notation, the one we still use today, was in many respects the superior achievement.
Known as the last universal genius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician whose intellectual reach remains almost impossible to fully account for. The calculus dispute, for all its drama, was only one thread in a life woven from an extraordinary number of simultaneous pursuits: metaphysics, theology, diplomacy, jurisprudence, history, linguistics, and the design of calculating machines, among much else. He corresponded with virtually every major thinker in Europe, drafted plans for a universal logical language, theorized about the nature of space and time in ways that anticipated later debates, and proposed a vision of reality, built around his concept of monads, that remains one of philosophy's most original and contested constructions.
To do justice to a figure of such scope requires both philosophical depth and biographical patience, qualities that Maria Rosa Antognazza, Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, brings to her work in rare combination. The author and editor of several books on Leibniz, Antognazza has devoted her scholarly career to understanding not just what Leibniz thought but how those thoughts emerged from a life of restless, wide-ranging engagement with the problems of his age.
In the conversation that follows, she guides us into Leibniz's world, illuminating the ideas that made him extraordinary, the controversies that shadowed him, and the question that his career poses to every subsequent age: what does it mean to think without limits, and what is the cost of trying?
Charles Carlini: How were you first introduced to the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz? What about his life and work attracted you?
Maria Rosa Antognazza: I first encountered Leibniz as an undergraduate student, when I read the Theodicy and the Monadology. At the time, I did not find these works particularly attractive. I came back to Leibniz for my Ph.D. from a theoretical angle. My main interest was the exploration of the relationship between faith and reason. I came across a body of virtually unstudied theological-philosophical texts by Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, which raised some key philosophical issues. They seemed very promising for what I was seeking, and indeed they were!
CC: Leibniz was a prolific philosopher who wrote on a broad range of subjects, including the nature of truth, the existence of evil, law, ethics, and metaphysics; yet he published very little during his lifetime. Why?
MRA: The reasons are complex, and I have explored them in detail in my intellectual biography of Leibniz (Cambridge University Press, 2009). There is a historiography according to which Leibniz was a duplicitous character who kept his best, heterodox philosophy to himself and fed the bad, orthodox philosophy to his patrons. I think this is a gross distortion. Leibniz was a man who, more than anything else, wanted to do certain things—his main objectives were to improve the human condition through the advancement of science, reach religious reconciliation, and achieve social and political stability. If he perceived that some of his most striking philosophical views would have bred disagreement and misunderstanding rather than contribute to his main objectives, he preferred to keep them to himself. Moreover, one should not underestimate that publishing papers and books did not have the same status in the early modern period as they have now. For instance, communication of views and discoveries often happened through personal correspondence and “circular” letters, which were sometimes read at meetings of “savants” (that is, learned people, scholars, and scientists). Finally, undoubtedly, some important personality traits contributed to Leibniz’s (comparatively) low publication rate. Leibniz was one of those people who love starting new projects and conceiving overarching, innovative, and creative proposals, but have little time for the painstaking business of bringing fully to completion at least some parts of these grand visions.
CC: Leibniz was concerned with both theology and, according to your book Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography, the "advancement of all the sciences." How did he reconcile these two seemingly conflicting pursuits?
MRA: The key point is that these are not conflicting pursuits, and were certainly not perceived as such in the early modern period. Quite the opposite. Far from being an obstacle to the development of his scientific ambitions, Leibniz’s broadly religious outlook provided him with key motivations. Like other architects of the so-called “scientific revolution,” Leibniz saw the reform and development of all the sciences as the best way to celebrate the glory of God in his creation. His primary aim was to improve, through the advancement of science, the lives of the creatures closest to God due to their rational nature.
CC: Leibniz’s curiosity ranged widely, leading him to develop fruitful correspondences with many of the leading thinkers of his day. What were some of his more notable exchanges?
MRA: Leibniz corresponded with many people from many countries. In fact, according to the most up-to-date estimate, he had around 1300 correspondents. They ranged from members of his extended family to patrons and royals; from diplomats and politicians to the leading philosophers and scientists of the time, including Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, and Nicolas Malebranche. His correspondence with Antoine Arnauld, Samuel Clarke, Burchard de Volder, and Bartholomew Des Bosses is among his most significant exchanges.
CC: Besides being a philosopher, Leibniz was also a distinguished mathematician and logician. What contributions did he make in these fields?
MRA: His most famous contribution to mathematics was his discovery of the calculus independently of Newton. However, he made many other contributions. For instance, he developed a binary arithmetic or dyadic, conceived a new geometry of space, and arrived at the general rule for the solution of systems of linear equations through determinants, now known as “Cramer’s rule.” At some point before 1683, Leibniz also proved for the first time what is known as Fermat’s little theorem. I will also note the exceptionally strong link in Leibniz between logic and mathematics, and his attempts at a mathematization of logic. More generally, from very early on he nurtured the dream of developing an alphabet of human thoughts leading to the creation of a characteristica universalis, that is, a system of signs (characteres) designed to eliminate the ambiguity and fluctuation of natural language. This system of signs would have constituted a universal formal language able to reduce language to an “arithmetical calculation,” thereby allowing the peaceful resolution of controversies. From 1679, this project progressed into the development of an extremely innovative logical calculus.
CC: You are currently teaching a class about Spinoza and Leibniz. How did one's work inform the other’s?
MRA: In brief, I would say that Leibniz tried to reject Spinozism throughout his life but was, on the other hand, haunted by it. For instance, he attacked the lack of contingency in Spinoza’s universe but found it difficult to provide a robust defense of contingency in his own philosophical system. Spinoza and Leibniz’s philosophies have some common features, including a strong endorsement of the principle of sufficient reason, but are very different in other respects, for instance, in their understanding of the relationship between faith and reason, or in their views on the presence of genuine causal powers in individual beings.
CC: In your book Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, you challenge "traditional perceptions of the philosopher as a 'hard' rationalist and quasi-deist." Where do you think these misconceptions come from, and to what degree does it hinder meaningful understanding of Leibniz's role in the philosophical tradition?
MRA: From the re-discovery of Leibniz at the beginning of the 20th century until at least the early 1990s, the dominant historiography dismissed any theological interest in Leibniz, which could not be straightforwardly reduced to metaphysics, as mere lip service aimed at his career advancement. Moreover, the critical edition of Leibniz’s writings and correspondence planned at the beginning of the 20th century left theology out of the main thematic structure of the edition, despite the body of theological writings recorded in the catalogue of Leibniz’s manuscripts. I think this is one of the most compelling illustrations of the dominant historiographical paradigm of the era before the outbreak of the Great War, which linked inevitable progress with irresistible secularization. In my book Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, I have identified, collected, and analyzed a substantial corpus of virtually unstudied philosophical-theological writings, which uncovered a thinker surprisingly receptive to traditional Christian theology and genuinely committed to the defense of a class of truths surpassing the full grasp of human reason. As I have tried to show, his life-long commitment to the defense of central mysteries of the Christian revelation, far from being mere lip-service of a consummate courtier, coheres with his epistemological and metaphysical views, and constitutes an important aspect of his broader philosophical, scientific, and practical agenda.
CC: In your work as an instructor of philosophy, how do you present the incredibly rich and diverse offerings of Leibniz to your students? And what are the particular challenges and difficulties you face when teaching him?
MRA: One main problem is that there are no easy or obvious entry points into Leibniz’s thought. Another is that many of Leibniz’s philosophical proposals are counter-intuitive. I find it helpful to present his thought genetically, starting from his interest in an explanation of the world of experience, and his attempts to uncover what is ultimately real in this world. Students respond well to this approach.
CC: How do Leibniz's contributions continue to resonate in the way we think about philosophy in the modern era?
MRA: Since the Leibniz renaissance of the early 20th century, studies on Leibniz have multiplied. His logical thought had a major impact throughout the last century and continues to fascinate philosophers interested in logic. From the 1990s onward, his metaphysics and philosophy of nature have become a major focus of interest, especially in the Anglo-American world. It seems that Leibniz proposes a coherent metaphysical model that challenges more immediately intuitive accounts and forces us to confront a different and potentially fruitful way to think about reality. Moreover, in the areas of Leibniz’s thought I have studied in more detail—his religious epistemology and his philosophical theology—I find his proposals still powerful, with enduring philosophical relevance.
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