Leibniz's Theory Of Morality

Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671-1713) He was later called Lord Ashley, locally known as the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and was the author of Characteristics of Men, Manners. Opinions, and Times (1711), in which he based morality on an intuitive sentiment. As the organs of the body function together under the direction of the soul, so different individuals are united in higher unities - e.g., united in the species, and the species finally united in God. Hence the universe is a cosmos, a thing of beauty. Life is subject to a conflict of impulses, the selfish and the unselfish. Morality exists in a proper balance between these two. This harmony is felt by a moral sense analogous to the sense of beauty. Man is distinguished from the lower animals

Leibniz (1646-1716) [Leipzig, Mainz, Paris, Hanover]. Leibniz published his Monadology, in 1714, which is often taken as the summary of his doctrine of substance. Periodically during his duties as a man in public life, he managed a thorough study of mathematics and gave the calculus the notation which has since been employed, he developed logic in new directions some of which supplied the roots of present-day symbolic logic, he constructed an idealistic metaphysics, approaching the subject from the side of Cartesian rationalism and balancing Berkley's approach from the side of British empiricism, and he formulated a rebuttal (New Essays on Human Understanding) to Locke's Essay, which he did not publish because Locke died just as it was finished. Leibniz' reply to Locke stated essentially that Locke had sought evidence of explicit innate ideas and had misconstrued Descartes' conception, which referred to latent tendencies to think in certain ways. Leibniz' position is expressed in the sentence: " There is nothing in intellect which is not first in sense, except intellect itself." It was from this standpoint that he had answered Locke's work, paragraph by paragraph. (Leibniz' New Essays on Human Understanding should be read along with Locke's Essay by all students of theory of knowledge.) In his logical studies Leibniz recognised processes such as logical addition and multiplication which had not been given explicit formulation, along with those formulated by

Christian was a man with a very wide range of interests. At the University of Halle he lectured in mathematics, physics and all aspects of philosophy. He was an extreme rationalist, basing his teaching on the work of Leibniz and emphasising the doctrine of pre - established harmony, but for the content of his rationalism, he appealed to experience. He divided the sciences into the theoretical and the practical. For many fields Wolf wrote textbooks, which were widely used in the universities. He helped to popularise interest in philosophy, but his lasting influence was on vocabulary rather than content. One of Wolf's chief works was Rational Thoughts on God, the World and the Soul of Man, and also All Things in General