Guest
Anthony Quinton discusses the 17th-18th century philosophers Spinoza and Leibniz with Bryan Magee in an episode of this 1987 series on the Great Philosophers. Both were rationalist philosophers who developed elaborate philosophical systems out of only a few basic principles of reason, but ended up with quite different views. Spinoza was a monist and pantheist. He identified everything with one substance, what he called “God or Nature“, and understood everything as a mere aspect or mode of this great unity of existence. Thus, there is ultimately only one true entity or being for Spinoza. He rejected any personal conception of God, as well as free will and purpose within nature, leading many to think of him as an atheist. Leibniz, on the other hand, embraced plurality in his system. He posited an infinite array of indivisible substances that he called “monads“ which were immaterial, incorporeal, mind-like points or atoms. These were taken to be fundamental, making Leibniz something of a panp
