Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical ExpositionDewey, John
Philosophy
Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition
Dewey, John
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
source is God." Since God is _purus actus_, he is the immediate, the
efficient source only of that which partakes in some degree of his own
nature, or is rational; and here is another clear point of distinction
between space and extension, between time and duration.
But we must ask more in detail regarding their nature. Admitting
that they are relations, ideal and prior to particular experiences,
the question must be asked, What sort of relations are they; how are
they connected with the purely spiritual on one hand, and with the
phenomenal on the other? Leibniz's most extended answers to these
questions are given in his controversy with Clarke. The latter took
much the same position regarding the nature of space (though not,
indeed, concerning the origin of its idea) as Locke, and the arguments
which Leibniz uses against him he might also have used, for the most
part, against Locke. Locke and Clarke both conceived of space and
time as wholly without intrinsic relation to objects and events. It
is especially against this position that Leibniz argues, holding that
space and time are simply orders or relations of objects and events,
that space exists only where objects are existing, and that it is
the order of their co-existence, or of their possible co-existence;
while time exists only as events are occurring, and is the relation of
their succession. Clarke, on the other hand, speaks of the universe of
objects as bounded by and moving about in an empty space, and says that
time existed before God created the finite world, so that the world
came into a time already there to receive its on-goings, just as it
fell into a space already there to receive its co-existences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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