Stuart on Leibniz

Here Stuart Elden gives a report on his ONGOING WORK ON LEIBNIZ. (And here you can see why Geography is one of the most interesting academic fields in the world today, seriously. I don’t remember ever having a boring conservation with someone in a Geography Department.)

In closing he refers to the ongoing “underrated philosopher” theme of this blog, and concedes that in some way you can’t really call Leibniz “underrated”: everyone knows he’s a universal genius, a great philosopher, etc.

But in another sense, he is underrated. As one small example among many, just consider the way that OOO has been accused now and then of “Leibnizian weirdness,” and the fact that this considered a devastating strike sheds a lot of light on how Leibniz is viewed today. There are plenty of literal Kantians, and plenty of literal Humeans, and of course plenty of literal Thomists. But it’s hard to find someone who is literally a Leibnizian. People enjoy him as an interesting historical figure, pull out interesting ideas and use them, and so forth. But Kant’s critical turn seems to have ended all chance for Leibnizian to be taken seriously by most people as someone who may be speaking the literal truth. In our time he is the great philosopher most likely to be mocked. And then there was that horrible book, The Courtier and the Heretic, a simple ripoff of Amadeus, with Leibniz cast as a “nerd” version of Salieri: a gawky, resentful, physically repugnant hater who pathetically demanded recognition from Spinoza even while plotting his downfall (indeed, perhaps even murdering Spinoza, according to the wildest innuendo in the book, with the baseless sexual speculations a distant second).

In any case… What is the highest possible ranking for Leibniz on the list of all-time philosophers?

I think 4th is probably the highest you can go. You certainly can’t put Leibniz ahead of Plato or Aristotle, and I don’t see how you can put him ahead of Kant. Nonetheless, Leibniz is an extremely powerful philosopher, quite staggering in his integration of Modern with Scholastic philosophy and with a wonderfully strange result.

But putting him 4th would mean putting him above Hegel— and that was a formidable brain, Hegel’s. Some would put Leibniz lower. For me he’s in the top 5, but not the top 3, much as I wish he were.