114. - Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716)

Summary

Leibniz’s relation to Spinoza’s thinking has long been discussed. Some saw him as a Spinozist while most scholars wanted him to be untouched by Spinoza’s dangerous ideas. In the mid nineteenth century, the zeal of Leibniz scholars to keep the German and Christian philosopher apart from Spinoza even generated the still widespread continuity thesis: since Leibniz’s mature philosophy had already been contained as “seeds” in his earliest philosophical drafts before he ever read Spinoza, the Dutch-Jewish philosopher could not have made any impact on him (Trendelenburg 1847, 385–86; Foucher de Careil 1854, 6; Kabitz 1909, 3, 127). The discovery of Leibniz’s marginalia in the TTP in 1994 eventually proved that Leibniz studied this book already in October 1670, that is, well before finishing his first metaphysical works (Goldenbaum 1999, 2007).