The goal in this article is to compare Bergson’s and Whitehead’s treatment of language and in particular the extent to which each believed that language is capable of expressing the temporal dimension of experience.

This paper examines the role that Leibniz’s philosophy played in the debate between the Idealists and their opponents at the turn of the twentieth century. While it is Russell’s The Philosophy of Leibniz which is most frequently referred to in this context, this paper focuses on John Dewey’s Leibniz’s New Essays which was written twelve years earlier, during the Hegelian phase of Dewey’s career. It is important to shift our attention to Dewey’s commentary not only because it has been almost (...) entirely neglected, but also because it provides a broader perspective on the role of the Leibnizian system in one of the leading debates in the history of philosophy, namely the debate over the intelligibility of the idea of internal relations. In particular, Dewey’s book reveals Leibniz’s involvement in the emergence of the notion of organism which was at the heart of the debate. (shrink)

In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man Thomas Reid draws an analogy between his notion of the self and Leibniz’s notion of a monad. Reid formulates this analogy in order to highlight what he considers to be the essential feature of the self: its unified and indivisible structure. This paper considers Reid’s analogy in the specific context of the diachronic aspect of substantial unity. Its focus is specifically on the role that the idea of continuity plays in establishing (...) the unity and indivisibility of the entities in question (viz., the self and the monad). As part of the ongoing debate over Leibniz’s mature metaphysics of substance, this paper highlights the positive implication of Reid’s analysis of the self (usually viewed as a critical reaction to Locke and Hume) and its place within the early modern debate over the nature of substantial unity. (shrink)

Leibniz’s and Whitehead’s analyses of motion are at the heart of their metaphysical schemes. These schemes are to be considered as two blueprints of a similar metaphysical intuition that emerged during two breakthrough eras, that is, the 17th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and retained the Aristotelian idea that existence requires an active principle. The two philosophers’ attempts to elucidate this idea in the context of their analyses of motion still interact with central, longstanding questions in philosophy, (...) in particular that concerning the ontological status of change. For both thinkers, the phenomenon of motion is an example par excellence, of the metaphysically fundamental principle of action that is required for change in the world. I focus on Leibniz’s and Whitehead’s similar understanding of the concept of transition that is inserted as an essential constitutive component of motion and ensures its status as something real.Keywords: Gottfried Leibniz; Alfred Whitehead; Motion; Change; Relativity; Transition. (shrink)

This paper offers a new look at Whitehead’s criticism of Leibniz’s metaphysics and at the role this criticism plays in the broader context of Whitehead’s philosophy. A re-evaluation of Whitehead’s reading is called for since he takes his own system as an elaboration of the Leibnizian one, and as an effort to overcome what he deemed its major difficulties. Whitehead’s alternative, which is formulated in terms of real connectivity among basic constituents, is aimed at solving what he takes to be (...) the most problematic issue within Leibniz’s system, namely, the analysis of phenomenal continuity. However, I claim that Whitehead’s criticism obscures the fact that he is much closer to Leibniz than he is willing to admit. (shrink)

We argue in this paper that Leibniz’s characterization of a substance as “un être” in his correspondence with Arnauld stresses the per se unity of substance rather than oneness in number. We employ two central lines of reasoning. The first is a response to Mogens Lærke’s claim that one can mark the difference between Spinoza and Leibniz by observing that, while Spinoza’s notion of substance is essentially non-numerical, Leibniz’s view of substance is numerical. We argue that Leibniz, like Spinoza, qualifies (...) the substance as “one” primarily in a non-numerical sense, where non-numerical means per se unity or qualitative uniqueness. The second line of reasoning suggests that the term “one” should be understood as a-unity-presupposed-by-multiplicity in two senses: a) externally, in the sense of being presupposed by higher complex structures, such as aggregates, and, b) internally, in the sense of having itself a complex structure. We develop an analogy along these lines between the role the notion of a fundamental unity plays in Leibniz’s view of numbers and his view of substance. In other words, we suggest that looking at the role units play in Leibniz’s view of mathematics can shed some light on the role they play in his metaphysics. (shrink)