Overview

The first English translation based on the Akademie Edition, its 'variant apparatus' and Leibniz's handwritten manuscript making this the closest English edition to Leibniz's original Includes explanatory translator's notes and an extensive commentary on each of the Discourse's 37 sections Provides historical and biographical context for the work and the author himself Designed for teachers and students of Early Modern philosophy Includes a bibliography of primary texts and recommended secondary reading This new translation is based on the Akademie Edition and its variant apparatus, which tracks all the changes Leibniz made to his text. Christopher Johns translates these changes (placing them in footnotes) and shows how they relate to the main text, adding interesting and sometimes essential detail to your understanding of the main text. Johns also compares the Akademie to Leibniz's handwritten manuscript, correcting some errors. Additionally, a chronicle of Leibniz's activities during the years 1685 and 1686 is included, as are several letters previously unpublished in English that shed light on the intellectual context of the time. The result is a truly scholarly, complete and reliable translation and commentary. One of the most important philosophical works of the 17th century, Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics brings together key parts of his system: God's perfections, individual substances, the relation of substances to each other, physical laws, the nature of minds and material bodies, innate ideas and the degrees of knowledge, free will and necessity, sin, grace, and the criteria for the best possible world in sum, a metaphysics of nature and religion.

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9781474457781

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Reviews

"""Christopher Johns' English rendition of Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics is a valuable contribution to Anglophone Leibniz studies. For the first time, a closely detailed study of this important text is available to English readers. And the commentary is both informative and philosophically instructive. Johns has placed students of Leibniz in his debt."" -Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh"

Author Information

Christopher Johns is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. His main areas of research are Early Modern metaphysics and moral philosophy and he regularly teaches courses in the history of philosophy. He is the author of The Science of Right in Leibniz's Moral and Political Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2013).

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