Book 3: Chapter 11, Leibniz Summary and Analysis

Leibniz (1646-1716) was industrious, temperate, but honest. He wrote for approbation, resulting in two systems of thought, such as optimistic and shallow as well as profound, Spinozistic, and logical. He was born towards the end of the Thirty Years' War. His father taught moral philosophy. He studied law, obtained a Doctor's degree at Altdorf, and started to work for the archbishop of Mainz. In 1684 he published his discovery of the infinitesimal calculus.

He learned a neo-scholastic Aristotelian philosophy, but became influenced by Cartesianism, the materialism of Gassendi, and later Spinoza. He abandoned scholastic schools, and was in service of the House of Hanover since 1673, while from 1680 he was their librarian at Wolfenbuttel, later being hired to write the history of Brunswick. He died in 1005.

His philosophy was part of the Monadology and the Principles of Nature and...