subtitled "...Leibniz, Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World," this double philosophical biography (Norton,2006) by Matthew Stewart was an interesting review for me of aspects of both philosophers' works, and I have to confess that I have not read Spinoza's Tractatus or Leibniz' Monadology (both in translation) with any slow, deep reflection since college. But this was a stimulating, if somewhat superficial, refresher of some issues I am still grappling with as I look at systematic theologies as well as newer process theologies.
Relevant to some of the legal and social ramifications of metaphysics is the different tack Stewart takes in comparing the responses to modernity of these two thinkers; it is one which he believes, as stated in his "Note on Sources" at the back, is one of his more original contributions. That is, he looks at Spinoza and Leibniz as moral and political philosophers, too. They were reacting to the rise of modern science, and as Lawrence Principe and others remind students, science and religion were forced apart only gradually. These two philosophers seem to have seen it coming, as it were, and anticipated the consequences but ironically also contributed to them.
Spinoza's seeming "God intoxication" but actual near pantheism and alleged atheism certainly remind one to regard immanence with caution and begins the challenge: materialism or radical infusion of the Divine? And how can this one Substance, be it Mind, energy, even Love, be regarded still as personal? Spinoza certainly seems to have rejected that.
Enter Leibniz- lacking the (ahistorically for the West) "zen" attitude of Spinoza (although I was surprised to learn of his interest in China as just then encountered by the Portuguese Jesuits)but committed to a new view of transcendence. We are still trying to figure out what the monads (and the Monad) are and if they help at all. Certainly the wave/particle and water/wave attributes that we can now accept as co-existing in matter (or rather, in matter/energy) thanks to the quantum perspective may be somewhat like the missing link that Leibniz sought to find. But even after Kant it still comes down to Plato and Aristotle with the former getting it right grammatically and the latter closer to a truth we can take more literally as to the complex of matter and form that every thing seems to be.
But I am still stuck with the God problem and the personal nature of Love. Whether Spinoza was motivated to eliminate God as a model for the monarchs he wanted to overthrow in favor of personal freedom of conscience and a nascent awareness of human rights, and whether Leibniz was motivated by a need to preserve the moral status quo from the anarchy of individual liberty- I leave that to Stewart to go on pondering. I am still in the theological and metaphysical woods, looking for the answer to the disappointment we feel about the seeming lack of immortality of our consciousness in any real, felt way. Even if the ashes are windowless monads, why do we want them to continue to be aware of the Love that Moves us (Dante)?
