Introduction: Leibniz as Philosopher

Abstract

The 300th birthday of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was widely observed in 1946 but nowhere more appropriately, though unintentionally, than in the complex ritual of exploding the fourth atomic bomb at Bikini on the exact anniversary day, July 1.¹ It is not only that he was the first to argue that force is the essence of matter. It is rather that, second to none is his faith in science, and a forger of its new mathematical tools and social instruments, the academies, he was also vigorous in opposing the divorce between truth and action, and between power and its moral controls, which was already weakening the Western will. No event could better have reminded the thoughtful of the power released by modern science and of the failures of modern wisdom. It was the 17th century whose great achievements and crucial decisions led to our own cultural conflicts, but it was the wise men of that century, too, who first saw the dangers and sought ways of avoiding them. And among these Leibniz was one of the last to offer a unified and inclusive answer for the problems of European life.