Abstract

In his thoughtful and generous review of my book, Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development, Cees Leijenhorst accepts many of its most radical conclusions: that Leibniz’s metaphysics evolved out of an attempt to combine ideas gathered from the great philosophers of the past and to do so in a manner that would solve the theological, legal, and philosophical questions that most concerned him; that although Leibniz’s notion of substance developed out of his interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle, his conception of the relation between God and creatures has its roots in the Platonism that he learned as a young man in Leipzig and Jena; that the views constituting the core doctrines of the mature philosophy were conceived by the time Leibniz went to Paris in early 1672; and that Leibniz rejects the reality of passive extended matter and embraces his own version of idealism as early as 1671. I am tempted to respond with a loud rodeo yell and end it at that. But because the few points on which.