"Leibniz was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable. He had, it is true, the virtues that one would wish to find mentioned in a testimonial to a prospective employee: he was industrious, frugal, temperate, and financially honest. But he was wholly destitute of those higher philosophical virtues that are so notable in Spinoza. His best thought was not such as would win him popularity, and he left his records of it unpublished in his desk. What he published was designed to win the approbation of prices and princesses. The consequence is that there are two systems of philosophy which may be regarded as representing: Leibniz: one, which he proclaimed, was optimistic, orthodox, fantastic, and shallow; the other, which has been slowly unearthed from his manuscripts by fairly recent editors, was profound, coherent, largely Spinozists, and amazingly logical. It was the popular Leibniz who invented the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds; it was this Leibniz whom Voltaire caricatured as Doctor Pangloss." Bertrand Russell
I think that sums it up well. Leibniz was a logician, yet built himself a stature as a religious propagandist whose metaphysics, whilst pertaining an air of profundity does not in the least deviate from the popular prejudices of the Christian community. In short, his philosophy, as a whole was no more than an apology for the Church--the champion of wilfull ignorance and sanctimony. Indeed this is the best of all possible worlds that we live in, obviously God (I mean the church) couldnt do any wrong...all the evil things that we have..like child molestation and pogroms are obviously necessary entailments of all the good things that there are..Those who protest obviously know not what they say or what they do, their religion knows better...you suffering in this world will be shown to be a good thing in the world to come..or even more likely! This goodness is manifest in this world already, we are just too blind to see!
And indeed there is also free will, god forbid anyone say a word to the contrary to the book of dogma..the whole world is immaterial..noone gives a shit how counter-intuitive this is..and its comprised of monads..and monads are the human souls...Yes the human souls..the highest essence of the universe that there is..not only do we have souls..but our God is so great that he has blessedALL OF HIS CREATIONS IN HIS BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS with a soul! This table..this chair..my cat..all bursting with inner vitality and self-approbation, they are all living things! Such is the glory of our God!
Oh yes..since God is infinite, all worlds are possible..we could be swimming in the lake of fire for all that we know..but God..since he is so magnanimous, has only kept those potentials in mind and only actualized what is BEST! And yes it is best for only us...At first..I cringed at this idea thinking that Leibniz must not mean its the best of all possible worlds in a moral sense, that he must have meant this metaphysically. That with the way it is constructed in terms of mechanics, it functions better and has nothing to do with how it makes us feel..But noo...it is best for us and only us..than otherwise, Leibniz asserts, there is no reason to call it the best of all possible worlds..as indeed it sounds like he is using that emotionally, rather than attempting to be linguistically precise.
I dont get how he reconciles the infinity of God with the assertion that monads are fundamental to the essence of ultimate reality, and that God exists exactly the way he does in scripture, in 3 persons. In infinity, there could not be quantity. And in the finite world, having the axioms that we established, whatever is theoretically possible exists, and what isnt, doesnt exist. There couldnt be any possible worlds..and Leibniz knew this..he was just trying to win favor of his queen...
To this day students of philosophy, after having gone through Hume, Kant and Spinoza..and having gotten a firm handle on all of their philosophies..Leibniz isnt making any sense at all..why his system is the least Intuitive and of lowest utility in terms of epistemic pragmatism..That is because it was all a sophism. It was aimed not at the quest for the truth, but for the appeasement of the vainglory of the multitude! And indeed he knew Spinoza personally and borrowed many of his ideas upon which the unpublished aspects of his philosophy were erected upon, and was secretely a Spinozist himself..scorned himself to shivers at mentioning the very idea that he had something to do with Spinoza..
And when all of the ignorance and hypocrisy that Leibniz dedicated his whole career to espousing, has been exposed in the Theological-Political Treatise, Leibniz begged a learned theologian friend of his to write a refutation of Spinoza's 'monstrous heresy'...and about five years down the road he was down at Hague talking to Spinoza's former landloard, wishing to set up a meeting (Apparently he thought that just because his scribblings are held in high esteem he now has the right to waste time of great men)..The landloard refused to comply, but Leibniz actually pestered him into giving away some information from the Ethic..which he.very soon turned over to those who matter..where was thoroughly exploited in glory of Mother Church..
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Unless he is merely publishing the works of others, I have a hard time seeing him as any kind of "P" type. He definitely has a one size fits all, traditional gender roles are everything, type of shtick.
