Abstract

Leibniz's basic concept of 'harmony' as a 'diversitas identitate compensata' is not only a type of hermeneutical key to nearly all of his philosophical writings and of his thinking in general that he gave us since, let's say, the early Confessio philosophi from about 1672. Rather it is, as I will try to make evident in the following paper, an expression of a thoroughgoing concept of thinking in early Modern Philosophy from the Renaissance onwards. I will try to outline here three main topics which independently from the fact that we will find all of these topics included in the 'quaestiones' and 'articuli' of an ordinary' cursus philosophicus' in this period worked as a framework in particular in the philsophical discussion of non-scholastic thinkers, namely 1) the theory of mind, 2) cosmology and 3) universal science or 'mathesis universalis'. In each of them I will analyse influences, at least possible influences, on the thinking of Leibniz. Thus I will discuss arguments of Nicolaus Cusanus, Marsilio Ficino and Charles de Bouelles concerning the first point, again Nicolaus Cusanus, Ivés de Paris and Heinrich Bisterfeld concerning the second, and methodology in general concerning the last point.