Leibnizing: A Philosopher in Motion (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts) - Softcover

Halpern, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231211155 ISBN 13: 9780231211154

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2023

Synopsis

Why read Leibniz today? Can we still learn from him and not just about him? This book argues that Leibniz offers a powerful, productive model for transdisciplinary thinking that can push back against the narrowness of the humanities today.

Richard Halpern recasts Leibniz as a great writer as well as a great philosopher, demonstrating that his philosophical project cannot be fully understood without taking its literary elements into account. He shows Leibniz to be a prescient thinker about art and beauty whose insights into the relationship between aesthetic experience and thought remain invaluable. Leibnizing asks readers to follow the dynamic movement of Leibniz’s writing instead of attempting to grasp a static philosophical system and to pay careful attention to the rhetorical and stylistic registers of Leibniz’s work as well as its conceptual and logical dimensions.

For philosophers, this book offers a novel approach to reading and interpreting Leibniz. For literary and other theorists, it showcases the relevance of Leibniz’s thought to areas from aesthetics to politics and from metaphysics to computer science. Written in a lucid and even witty style, Leibnizing provides readers with an accessible entryway into Leibniz’s sometimes forbidding but ultimately rewarding philosophical vision.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Halpern is the author of six books on topics ranging from Shakespeare to Norman Rockwell. At his retirement, he was Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Literature at New York University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231211155
• ISBN 13: 9780231211154
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328