Description
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Leibniz : An Intellectual Biography by Maria Rosa Antognazza
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 (16461716). Maria Rosa Antognazzas pioneering biography provides a unified portrait of this unique thinker and the world from which he came. At the centre of the huge range of Leibnizs apparently miscellaneous endeavours Antognazza reveals a single master project lending unity to his extraordinarily multifaceted lifes work. Throughout the vicissitudes of his long life Leibniz tenaciously pursued the dream of a systematic reform and advancement of all the sciences. As well as tracing the threads of continuity that bound these theoretical and practical activities to this allembracing 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.