The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence ─ With Selections from the Correspondence With Ernst, Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels

The long-running communication between the seventeenth-century German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Antoine Arnauld, the French philosopher, mathematician, and Roman Catholic theologian, represents a unique exchange of ideas between two extraordinary intellects. In this exceptional volume, editor and translator Stephen Voss explores a profoundly stimulating correspondence that included major discussions on truth, divine freedom, necessity and contingency, and the mind-body problem. Endeavoring whenever possible to present the thirty-seven letters exactly as they were sent and received, Voss offers them in their original French as well as in English translation. This is the first edition of the Leibniz-Arnauld correspondence to include all relevant materials, with annotations to the original text and textual sources, adhering to the highest standards of scholarship and coming closer than any previous publication to establishing the definitive text of a classic ongoing meeting of the minds between two giants of Western philosophy.

Stephen Voss is professor of philosophy at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the editor ofEssays on the Philosophy and Science of Rene Descartes and the English translator of Descartes’sThe Passion of the Soul. He lives in Turkey.