History of Modern Philosophy: From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present TimeFalckenberg, Richard
Philosophy
History of Modern Philosophy: From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time
Falckenberg, Richard
Philosophy, Modern -- History
house of Brunswick; and a journey which he made in order to study for this
purpose was extended as far as Vienna and Rome. Upon his return he took
charge of the Wolfenbüttel library in addition to his other engagements.
The marriage of the Princess Sophie Charlotte with Frederick of
Brandenburg, the first king of Prussia, brought Leibnitz into close
relations with Berlin. At his suggestion the Academy (Society) of Sciences
was founded there in 1700, and he himself became its first president. In
Charlottenburg he worked on his principal work, the _New Essays concerning
the Human Understanding_, which was aimed at Locke, but the publication of
which was deferred on account of the death of the latter in the interim
(1704), and did not take place until 1765, in Raspe's collective edition.
The death of the Prussian queen in 1705 interrupted for several years the
_Theodicy_, which had been undertaken at her request, and which did not
appear until 1710. In Vienna, where he resided in 1713-14, Leibnitz
composed a short statement of his system for Prince Eugen; this, according
to Gerhardt, was not the sketch in ninety paragraphs, familiar under the
title _Monadology_, which was first published in the original by J.E.
Erdmann in his excellent _Complete Edition of the Philosophical Works
of Leibnitz_, 1840, but the _Principles of Nature and of Grace_, which
appeared two years after the author's death in _L'Europe Savante_.
While Ernst August, as well as the German emperor and Peter the Great,
distinguished the philosopher, who was not indifferent to such honors, by
the bestowal of titles and preferments, his relations with the Hanoverian
court, which until then had been so cordial, grew cold after the Elector
Georg Ludwig ascended the English throne as George I. The letters
which Leibnitz interchanged with his daughter-in-law, gave rise to the
correspondence, continued to his death, with Clarke, who defended the
theology of Newton against him. The contest for priority between Leibnitz
and Newton concerning the invention of the differential calculus was later
settled by the decision that Newton invented his method of fluxions first,
but that Leibnitz published his differential calculus earlier and in a more
perfect form. The variety of pursuits in which Leibnitz was engaged was
unfavorable to the development and influence of his philosophy, in that it
hindered him from working out his original ideas in systematic form, and
left him leisure only for the composition of shorter essays. Besides the
two larger works mentioned above, the _New Essays_ and the _Theodicy_, we
have of philosophical works by Leibnitz only a series of private letters,
and articles for the scientific journals (the _Journal des Savants_ in
Paris, and the _Acta Eruditorum_ in Leipsic, etc.), among which may be
mentioned as specially important the _New System of Nature, and of the
Interaction of Substances as well as of the Union which exists between the
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