Skip to content
Leibniz episode artwork

Aug 16, 2015 51 min

Leibniz

from Philosophy Talk Hosted by Philosophy Talk

The intellectual domain of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz cannot be captured in a single word. For most of his life, he was a jurist, a courtier, a diplomat, and a librarian; he also made huge contributions to the study of logic, geometry, physics, botany, physiology, linguistics, and of course, the infinitesimal calculus. And yet, many of his ideas remain obscure to the modern reader. What in the world is a Monad? Why does Leibniz care so much about the so-called Principle of Sufficient Reason? And how could he claim that this is the Best of all Possible Worlds? John and Ken discuss the most important philosopher you know the least about with Daniel Garber from Princeton University, author of Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad.

Episode details come from the podcast's RSS feed.

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Leibniz

0:00 51:45

No transcript yet.

Requests help us decide what to transcribe next.

Frequently asked questions

How long is this episode of Philosophy Talk?

This episode is 51 minutes long.

When was this Philosophy Talk episode published?

This episode was published on August 16, 2015.

Can I download this Philosophy Talk episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.