Buy Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography : Maria Rosa Antognazza

Product Description: Of all the thinkers of the century of genius that inaugurated modern philosophy, none lived an intellectual life more rich and varied than Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Trained as a jurist and employed as a counsellor, librarian, and historian, he made famous contributions to logic, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, yet viewed his own aspirations as ultimately ethical and theological, and married these theoretical concerns with politics, diplomacy, and an equally broad range of practical reforms: juridical, economic, administrative, technological, medical, and ecclesiastical. Maria Rosa Antognazza's pioneering biography not only surveys the full breadth and depth of these theoretical interests and practical activities, it also weaves them together for the first time into a unified portrait of this unique thinker and the world from which he came. At the centre of the huge range of Leibniz's apparently miscellaneous endeavours, Antognazza reveals a single master project lending unity to his extraordinarily multifaceted life's work. Throughout the vicissitudes of his long life, Leibniz tenaciously pursued the dream of a systematic reform and advancement of all the sciences, to be undertaken as a collaborative enterprise supported by an enlightened ruler; these theoretical pursuits were in turn ultimately grounded in a practical goal: the improvement of the human condition and thereby the celebration of the glory of God in His creation. As well as tracing the threads of continuity that bound these theoretical and practical activities to this all-embracing plan, this illuminating study also traces these threads back into the intellectual traditions of the Holy Roman Empire in which Leibniz lived and throughout the broader intellectual networks that linked him to patrons in countries as distant as Russia and to correspondents as far afield as China.

Great Biography of a Great Philosopher (6 of 6 Found this Helpful) January 9, 2010
This well-written, thoroughly researched biography of Leibniz is essential for the library of anyone interested in Leibniz himself or the intellectual life of the seventeenth century. Author Maria Rosa Antognazza has provided both the professional philosopher and the educated general reader with a gem of a book that succeeds in presenting the remarkable diversity of Leibniz's mind in a smoothly flowing narrative that gives the picture of both a man and an age. Leibniz himself appears as a hard working, personable, slightly eccentric man the equal of any mind in a time of great minds. His brilliance was obvious from youth and he was soon employed in important work and in contact with important people. During his lifetime Christian society was trying to reunite itself after the ideological divisions and wars of the Reformation and the understanding of the physical world was being transformed by the microscope, the telescope and new theories concerning the nature of matter. Leibniz, through his own researches and vast correspondence with the major figures of the day, lived at the heart of these debates. The sure hand of Dr. Antognazza clearly lays out Leibniz's vision of his work: all fields of knowledge form a unity because knowledge reveals the unity of God's creation and should be used for the benefit of mankind. Yet, at the end, one is left with the impression that, despite inventing the infinitesimal calculus and being deeply engaged with the science of his day, Leibniz was the last great polymath of the scholastic world that was slowly being forced to give way to the Cartesian and Newtonian theories he had criticized so vigorously. Nevertheless, Leibniz is one of the great philosophers and Dr. Antognazza's book is one of the great philosophical biographies.

Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography

by Maria Rosa Antognazza

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