Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe: Allgemeiner Politischer und Historischer Briefwechsel [Book Review]
Abstract
The latest volume of Leibniz’s “General Political and Historical Correspondence” in the great Berlin-Brandenburg Academy Edition, covering the period May to December 1699, contains a number of letters bearing on Leibniz’s central practical idea—that “universal” justice, rightly conceived, is a positive, other-aiding caritas sapientis seu benevolentia universalis ; that such justice “contains” or encloses all of the moral virtues; and that it relates to “the common good” or “the perfection of the universe” or “the glory of God”— where these three distinct things are morally equivalent in Leibniz’s usual sense.