Abstract

The interest in Leibniz's early writings was not spurred on by any doctrinaire motive; for instance, there was no temptation, as there has been in the case of some other thinkers, to hypothesize a youthful view which was subsequently rejected in some dramatic way comparable to Aristotle's break with the Academy or to Kant's being awakened from his dogmatic slumber. So if scholars should come to conclude that there is no essential or major difference between Leibniz's earliest and his latest doctrines, the conclusion would not shock us; and neither would the opposite conclusion. We are uncommitted.