Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz

In recent decades, there has been much controversy over the basic ontological commitments of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. This volume brings together papers from many of the leading scholars of Leibniz's thought, all of which deal with the cluster of questions surrounding Leibniz's philosophy of body.

In recent decades, there has been much scholarly controversy as to the basic ontological commitments of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). The old picture of his thought as strictly idealistic, or committed to the ultimate reduction of bodies to the activity of mind, has come under attack, but Leibniz's precise conceptualization of bodies, and the role they play in his system as a whole, is still the subject of much controversy. One thing that has become clear is that in order to understand the nature of body in Leibniz, and the role body plays in his philosophy, it is crucial to pay attention to the related concepts of organism and of corporeal substance, the former being Leibniz's account of the structure of living bodies (which turn out, for him, to be the only sort of bodies there are), and the latter being an inheritance from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition which Leibniz appropriates for his own ends. This volume brings together papers from many of the leading scholars of Leibniz's thought, all of which deal with the cluster of questions surrounding Leibniz's philosophy of body.

Offers articles from some of the best Leibniz scholars working today Is a unique collection of articles focused on the relations between Leibniz's distinctive notion of natural machine and his notion of corporeal substance Presents recent and updated research on the complex origins of the concept of organism in Leibniz's writings Represents a groundbreaking instance of collaboration and cross-pollination between the Anglo-Saxon and French traditions of history-of-philosophy scholarship

Autorentext
Justin E. H. Smith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (Princeton University Press, 2010). In 2011 he will be a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Ohad Nachtomy is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. He is the author of Possibility, Agency, and Individuality in Leibniz's Metaphysics (Springer, 2007).

Inhalt
Preface; Dan Garber.- Introduction; Justin E. H. Smith and Ohad Nachtomy.- 1. Leibniz vs. Stahl on the Way Machines of Nature Operate; François Duchesneau.- 2. Leibniz's Animals: Where Teleology Meets Mechanism; Glenn Hartz.- 3. Monads and Machines; Pauline Phemister.- 4. Leibniz on Artificial and Natural Machines: or What it Means to 'Remain a Machine to the Least of its Parts'; Ohad Nachtomy.- 5. The Organic vs. the Living in the Light of Leibniz's Aristotelianisms; Enrico Pasini.- 6. The Machine Analogy in Medicine: A Comparative Approach to Leib-niz and His Contemporaries; Raphaële Andrault.- 7. Sennert and Leibniz on Animate Atoms; Andreas Blank.- 8. Continuity or Discontinuity? Some Remarks on Leibniz's Concepts of 'Substantia Vivens' and 'Organism'; Antonio Nunziante.- 9. The Organism, or the Machine of Nature: Some Remarks on the Status of Organism in the Substantial Composition; Jeanne Roland.- 10. Action, Perception, Organisation; Anne-Lise Rey.- 11. Perceiving Machines: Leibniz's Teleological Approach to Perception; Evelyn Vargas.- Bibliography.- Name Index.- Subject Index.