Leibniz & Ideology:
Selected Bibliography

Compiled by Ralph Dumain

“And you, my friend,” he [sage from the Sirius star system:] said to a Leibnizian who was present, “what is your soul?”

“It is the hand of a clock,” came the Leibnizian’s reply, “and it points to the time while my body chimes. Or, if you prefer, it is my soul which chimes while my body points to the time. Or else my soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is the mirror-frame. That much is clear.”

— Voltaire, Micromegas (1752) *

We leave aside the fact that all the philosophies of the past without exception have been accused by the theologians of abandoning the Christian religion, even those of the pious Malebranche and the divinely inspired Jakob Böhme, and that Leibniz was accused of being a “Löwenix” (a believer in nothing) by the Brunswick peasants, and of being an atheist by the Englishman Clarke and other supporters of Newton.

— Karl Marx, Rheinische Zeitung, No. 193, July 12, 1842, Supplement

He took a round stroll and he took a stroll round and he took a round strollagain till the grillies in his head and the leivnits in his hair made him thought he had the Tossmania.

— James Joyce, ‘The Ondt and the Gracehoper’, Finnegans Wake (Book III, chapter 1, p. 416)

Aiton, E. J. Leibniz: A Biography. Bristol; Boston: A. Hilger, 1985.

Antognazza, Maria Rosa. Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Berkowitz, Roger. The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

Brown, Stuart; Fox, N. J. Historical Dictionary of Leibniz’s Philosophy. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006. Republished as The A to Z of Leibniz’s Philosophy, 2010. (Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements; No. 66)

Calinger, Ronald. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; with an essay by Leibniz on the German language, translated by Caryn and Bernhard Wunderlich. Troy, NY: Edwin B. Allen Mathematics Memorial, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1976.

Dascal, Marcelo. The Practice of Reason: Leibniz and His Controversies. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010.

Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books, 1990.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque; foreword and translation by Tom Conley. Rev. ed. London; New York: Continuum, 2006.

Deleuze, Gilles. Sur Leibniz (Les Cours de Gilles Deleuze, 1980, 1986, 1987).

    Audio files (5 files, in French, 1980): Sur Leibniz.

Drischler, William Fr. The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the Age of Secret Diplomacy. Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing, 2005.

Duchhardt, Heinz. Europa am Vorabend der Moderne. 1650–1800. Stuttgart: Uni-Taschenbücher M, 2003.

Elster, Jon. Leibniz and the Development of Economic Rationality. Trends in Western Civilization Program, 5. Papers – Chair in Conflict and Peace Research, University of Oslo, 21. Oslo: Chair in Conflict and Peace Research, University of Oslo, 1975. 18pp.

Elster, Jon. Leibniz et la formation de l'esprit capitaliste. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1975.

Elster, Jon. “Marx et Leibniz,” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger, 108 (2), April-June1983, pp. 167-177.

Feuerbach, Ludwig. Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), First Lecture, pp. 1-9. See pp. 7-9.

Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1805-6), translated by E. S. Haldane, 1892-6. See Leibniz.

See also Hegel on Ars Combinatoria & Characteristica Universalis.

Holz, Hans Heinz. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Frankfurt; New York: Campus Verlag, 1992.

Holz, Hans Heinz. Herr und Knecht bei Leibniz und Hegel: zur Interpretation der Klassengesellschaft. Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968.

Holz, Hans Heinz. Säkulare Vernunft : Philosophie und Wissenschaft am Anfang der Neuzeit. Köln: Dinter, 2003.

Kreis, Guido. “Das Individuelle denken. Der vollständige Individuenbegriff bei Leibniz und seine Wiederaufnahme bei Adorno.” VIII. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress Einheit in der Vielheit, Hannover, 24.–29. Juli 2006.

Krömer, Ralf; Chin-Drian, Yannick; eds. New Essays on Leibniz Reception: In Science and Philosophy of Science 1800-2000. Basel; New York; London: Birkhäuser: Springer, 2012.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672-1686; translated, edited, and with an introduction by Richard T. W. Arthur. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. Leibniz on Binary: The Invention of Computer Arithmetic, edited by Lloyd Strickland and Harry Lewis. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. Leibniz: Political Writings, translated and edited with an introduction and notes by Patrick Riley. 2nd ed. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. [1st ed., 1972]

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. [Monadology] The Principles of Philosophy known as Monadology [1714], translated by Jonathan Bennett, 2017. [Epub]

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. Leibniz’s Monadology: A New Translation and Guide, (translated) by Lloyd Strickland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Papers and Letters, selection translated and edited with an introduction by Leroy E. Loemker. 2nd ed. Dordrecht, Holland; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1976 [1969, 1st ed. 1956]). (Synthese Historical Library; v. 2)

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. Politische Schriften, hrgs. und eingeleitet von Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt (a.M.): Europäische Verlagsanstalt; Wien: Europa Verlag, 1966[-?].

Lenin, V. I. Conspectus of Feuerbach’s Book Exposition, Analysis and Critique of the Philosophy of Leibnitz (1914), in Collected Works: Volume 38: Philosophical Notebooks (1895-1916), translated by Clemence Dutt, edited by Stewart Smith, 4th Edition (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 375-387. See also Dumain’s notes.

Marx, Karl. Letter: Marx to Engels in Manchester; London, 10 May 1870; in Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 43: Marx & Engels 1868-70: Letters: April 1868 - July 1870 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), pp. 511-512.

Meyer, Rudolf W. Leibnitz and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, translated by J. P. Stern. Cambridge, UK: Bowes & Bowes, 1952.

Nadler, Steven. The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Peters, Klaus; Schmidt, Wolfgang; Holz, Hans Heinz. Erkenntnisgewissheit und Deduktion: zum Aufbau d. philos. Systeme bei Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz. Darmstadt; Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1975.

Rescher, Nicholas. Leibniz and “The Liar”, in Knowledge at the Boundaries (Cham: Springer, 2020), Chapter 10, pp. 105-111.

Rescher, Nicholas. “Did Leibniz Anticipate Gödel?” in Knowledge at the Boundaries (Cham: Springer, 2020), Chapter 11, pp. 113-134. (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science; vol. 48)

Rescher, Nicholas.“Leibniz’s Quantitative Epistemology,” Studia Leibnitiana, Bd. 36, H. 2 (2004), pp. 210-231.

Roinila, Markku. “G. W. Leibniz's Theory of Rational Decision-Making and the Reunion of the Churches.”

Roinila, Markku. Leibniz on Rational Decision-Making. Helsinki: Department of Philosophy, Department of Social and Moral Philosophy, University of Helsinki, 2007. (Philosophical Studies from the University of Helsinki;16)

Ross, George MacDonald. “The Synthesis of Synchronicity and Diachronicity in Leibnizography.” Delivered at a joint conference of the British Societies of the History of Science and of the History of Philosophy, Cambridge, 12 April 1986.

Shapin, Steven. “Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes,” Isis, Vol. 72, No. 2. (June 1981), pp. 187-215.

Smith, Daniel W. “Deleuze and Leibniz: Difference, Continuity and the Calculus,” in Current Continental Theory and Modern Philosophy, edited by Stephen H. Daniel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), pp. 127-147.

Smith, Justin E. H. Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: Norton, 2006.

Tarde, Gabriel. Monadology and Sociology [1893], edited and translated by Theo Lorenc. Melbourne: re.press, 2012.  Free e-book.

Debaise, Didier. "The Dynamics of Possession: An Introduction to the Sociology of Gabriel Tarde," in Mind that Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millenium, edited by D. Skribna (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2008).

Tuinen, Sjoerd van; McDonnell, Niamh; eds. Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader. Basingstoke [UK]; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

van Atten, Mark. Essays in Gödel’s Reception of Leibniz, Husserl and Brouwer. Cham: Springer. 2015. (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science; vol. 35)

See Part I: Gödel and Leibniz (chapters 2 & 3); chapter 6.4: How Is the Turn [to Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism] Related to Leibniz?.

Leibniz, Universal Language, Race & Politics

Almond, Ian. ‘Leibniz, Historicism, and the "Plague of Islam",’ Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 39, no. 4, 2006, pp. 463-483.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “On the Kidnapped African Boy Who Became a German Philosopher” [Amo Afer], Literary Hub, August 29, 2018.

Cook, Daniel J. “Leibniz and Hegel on the Philosophy of Language,” Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa, 15, 1972, pp. 229-238.

Fenves, Peter. Arresting Language: From Leibniz to Benjamin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. See chapter 1: Anonomasia:The Fate of theName in Leibniz, pp. 13-79.

Fenves, Peter. “Imagining an Inundation of Australians; or, Leibniz on the Principles of Grace and Race,” in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, edited by Andrew Valls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 73-89. See excerpt Leibniz on Language, Race, and Nation.

Fenves, Peter. "Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin," Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, vol. 30, no. 1, 2003, pp. 67-87.

Ishiguro, Hide. Leibniz’s Philosophy of Logic and Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 1st edition, 1972.

Krömer, Ralf; Chin-Drian, Yannick; eds. New Essays on Leibniz Reception: In Science and Philosophy of Science 1800-2000. Basel; New York; London: Birkhäuser: Springer, 2012.

Rossi, Paolo. “The Twisted Roots of Leibniz’s Characteristic,” in The Leibniz Renaissance: International Workshop, Firenze, 2-5 giugno 1986 (Firenze: Olschke Editore, 1989).

Rutherford, Donald. “Philosophy and Language in Leibniz,” in The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, edited by Nicholas Jolley (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 224-269.

Smith, Justin E. H. Leibniz on the History of Nations and the Theodicy of Cultural Difference [Abstract submitted for the Theodicy anniversary conference at Notre Dame, Fall, 2010].

Leibniz and China

Brandt, Bettina; Purdy, Daniel Leonhard; eds. China in the German Enlightenment. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Brown, Kerry; Deng, Gemma Chenger; eds. China through European eyes: 800 Years of Cultural and Intellectual Encounter. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2022.

Kow, Simon. China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Krikke, Jan. Leibniz, Einstein, and China. Amsterdam: Olive Press, 2021.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von. Writings on China, translated, with an introduction, notes, and commentaries by Daniel J. Cook and Henry Rosemont, Jr. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1994. (Part of this book was previously published as: Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977.)

Li, Wenchao, ed. Leibniz and the European Encounter with China: 300 Years of Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017.

Mungello, David E. Leibniz and Confucianism, the Search for Accord. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977.

Perkins, Franklin. Leibniz and China: a Commerce of Light. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Miscellany

Albeck-Gidron, Rachel. The Century of the Monads: Leibniz’s Metaphysics and 20th-Century Modernity. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2007. 

Carr, H[erbert] Wildon. A Theory of Monads: Outlines of the Philosophy of the Principle of Relativity. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1922.

De Federicis, Nico. “Liberty and Identity: A Scaravelli's Interpretation of Leibniz,” Bollettino telematico di filosofia politica, 28/1/2002.

Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography. Online edition, 2014 (2011).

See Part V - Science and Sanity, Chapter 21 - Leibniz’s Dreams.
In Chapter 21 see section 4. The Dream of a Universal Language.

Nemenyi, Daniel. “Robot Makes Free: The Leibnizian cryptowar of Norbert Wiener” Radical Philosophy 2.14, April 2023, pp. 3-20.

Tiffany, Daniel. “Club Monad,” Philosophy and Culture, Romantic Circles Praxis Series, June 2008.

Voltaire

* Micromegas (1752), in Candide and Other Stories, by Voltaire, translated with an introduction and notes by Roger Pearson (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 101-121.

“Micromegas” by Voltaire, editor’s notes by Blake Linton Wilfong

Gutenberg Project Romans - Volume 3: Micromegas (in English), translated by Peter Phalen

Micromegas public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Micromégas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“On the General Characteristic”
by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Leibniz on the Universal Characteristic

Letter to Simon Foucher (1675)
by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Leibniz’s monadological automaton
(Selections from the Monadology)

Leibniz as Löwenix?

Zadig’s Wisdom vs Providence by Voltaire

Ars combinatoria, cybernetics, mimesis & praxis
by Henri Lefebvre

Henri Lefebvre on Leibniz & Ars Combinatoria
by Henri Lefebvre

Heinrich Heine on Leibniz & Spinoza

Quotes from Abelard and Heloise, or the Writer and the Human
by Ludwig Feuerbach

Lectures on the Essence of Religion #1 (Part II)
by Ludwig Feuerbach

Marx to Engels, 10 May 1870 (Letter)

Walter Benjamin on Monadology

John-Paul Sartre on Paul Nizan

Philosophy in Aden
by Paul Nizan

The Watchdogs: Bourgeois Philosophy in Action (Excerpts)
by Paul Nizan

Paul Nizan & Baruch Spinoza

Leibniz on Language, Race, and Nation by Peter Fenves

Leibniz & Games

Logic and Language (The Principles of Logic) by Louis Couturat

Histoire de la Langue Universelle
par Louis Couturat & Léopold Leau (1903)

"Leibniz, Couturat kaj la Teorio de Ido" de Tazio Carlevaro

Hegel on Ars Combinatoria & Characteristica Universalis

The Ascent of GIM, the Global Intelligent Machine (Contents +)
by Teun Koetsier

On James Lawler’s View of Matter and Spirit: Review by Ralph Dumain

Voltaire’s philosophical tales: commentary by R. Dumain

Theory of categorization to be reviewed
(Nicholas Rescher & Patrick Grim)
by R. Dumain

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Study Materials on the Web

Ramon Llull & His Influence: Select Bibliography & Web Guide

Philosophical and Universal Languages, 1600-1800, and Related Themes:
Selected Bibliography

Descartes & Marxism: Selected Bibliography

Spinoza & Marxism (with Basic Spinoza Web Guide)

Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide

Philosophical Style: Selected Bibliography

Pessimism as Philosophy: A Jaundiced Selected Annotated Bibliography

Popularizing Philosophers: A Selected Bibliography

Leibniz blog entry

Leibniz @ Studies in a Dying Culture

Ars Combinatoria @ Studies in a Dying Culture

Ars Combinatoria Study Guide

Offsite:

Ars Combinatoria @ Ĝirafo (blog)

Louis Couturat @ Ĝirafo

Leibniz’s Funny Thought
Jonathan Gray, 30 August 2009

“Let us Calculate!” Leibniz, Llull, and the Computational Imagination
by Jonathan Gray

The Optimistic Science of Leibniz
by Marc Bobro

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
by Brandon C. Look
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013)

Louis Couturat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

De Arte Combinatoria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz
extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque royale de Hanovre,
par Louis Couturat (1903)
Contents

Histoire de la Langue Universelle
par Louis Couturat & Léopold Leau (1903)

Selected chapters of 1903 ed. also online here

Louis Couturat : The Logic of Leibniz

Chapter 3 The Universal Language

The Algebra of Logic
by Louis Couturat (1905, trans. 1914)

International Language and Science
by L. Couturat, O. Jespersen, R. Lorenz, W. Ostwald & L. Pfaundler (1910)
Also at Project Gutenberg

Louis Couturat, modern logic, and the international auxiliary language
by Başak ARAY

Monadologio de Leibniz
Tradukinto Émile Boirac
(1902, 3a eldono 1905)

Monado - Vikipedio

“Araneo kaj Leibnitz”
de Cezar
(poemo en Esperanto & la germana)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Monadology - Wikipedia

Leibnitiana
(maintained by Gregory Brown, Universtity of Houston)

Leibniz Translations

G.W. Leibniz: Texts and Translations

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716
(Some Texts from Early Modern Philosophy)

Leibnizian Resources
(Markku Roinila, University of Helsinki) [defunct]

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Archives [defunct]