Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

380 LEIBNIZ: TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE AND METAPHYSICS
misguided; on occasion Leibniz seeks to address issues—such as the mind-body
problem—without indicating how far he has departed from the assumptions
which initially gave rise to them. Leibniz may well have been aware of such
stresses in his system, and it may have been because of this awareness that he
never ceased to develop as a philosopher; he continued to seek new ways of
assembling the materials of his philosophy into a coherent whole. Indeed, in
some ways, despite its strangeness, his later idealism is more coherent than the
earlier, Aristotelian metaphysics. But though Leibniz had to struggle to achieve
overall coherence, in the process he made major contributions to philosophical
thought about the issues he discussed; his theories of substance, identity,
causality, space and time, and innate ideas are illuminating and historically
influential. For all its internal tensions and unresolved problems, his system in its
various forms remains one of the most impressive examples of speculative
metaphysics.
ABBREVIATIONS
A
German Academy of Sciences (ed.) G.W.Leibniz: Sämtliche
Schriften und Briefe (Darmstadt, 1923–). References are to
series and volume.
AG
R.Ariew and D.Garber (ed. and trans.), Leibniz: Philosophical
Essays (Indianapolis, Ind., and Cambridge, Mass., 1989)
AT
C.Adam and P.Tannery (eds) Oeuvres de Descartes, 12 vols
(Paris, 1897–1913; reprinted Paris, 1964–76)
CSM
J.Cottingham, R.Stoothoff and D.Murdoch (trans.), The
Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1985)
F de C A.Foucher de Careil (ed.) Nouvelles Lettres et Opuscules
Inédits de Leibniz (Paris, 1857)
G C.I.Gerhardt (ed.) Die Philosophischen Schriften von
G.W.Leibniz (Berlin, 1875–90)
Grua G.Grua (ed.) G.W.Leibniz: Textes Inédits, 2 vols (Paris, 1948)
L
L.E.Loemker (ed.) G.W.Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and
Letters (Dordrecht, 2nd edn, 1969)
MP
H.T.Mason (ed. and trans.) and G.H.R.Parkinson (intro.) The
Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Manchester, 1967)
NE
New Essays on Human Understanding (Nouveaux Essais sur
l’Entendement Humain). References are to series VI, volume
6, of the Academy edition and to the Remnant and Bennett
translation. The pagination of Remnant and Bennett is
identical with that of the Academy text; one page number thus
serves for both