Leibniz, Spinoza and an Alleged Dilemma for Rationalists

McDonough, Jeffrey K.

doi:10.3998/ergo.12405314.0002.015

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Leibniz takes the bottom level to comprise a plurality of interactionaless monads; his version of reductionism is one of the richest and most widely discussed ones in both the historical and contemporary literature (for discussion, see e.g. Jauernig (2010), Della Rocca (2012), McDonough (2015). McTaggart followed closely in Leibniz's footsteps in both regards, whereas Spinoza, Hegel, and Bradley all defend monistic ontologies, where the reduction strategy is, roughly, a monistic flavor of (one thread of) Leibniz's strategy (for discussion of Spinoza and Bradley, see Della Rocca (2012); for discussion of Hegel, see Taylor (1977) and Rosen (1984)).…”

Section: E N D N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontological Collectivism

Saucedo

2022

Philosophical Perspectives

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Given some things, what's prior: those things taken individually or those things taken collectively? Is each of them prior to them, or are they prior to every one of them? Is each thing prior to the things, or are the things themselves prior to each thing itself?This is, at a very rough first pass, the general question at the heart of a neglected debate in foundational ontology, the debate over the relative ontological priority of individuality and collectivity.What's prior, each of some entities or those very entities? Are some objects taken separately prior to those objects taken together, or are the objects taken together prior to the objects taken separately?Using a common piece of jargon: given some things, what's prior, every single such thing or the plurality of them?¹ The question ought not to be confused with others that have interested metaphysicians both across history and in more recent years. For instance, what's at issue is not the relative priority of some entities and a further entity that's somehow made out of those entities (a mereological fusion of them, a class or set of them, a fact or proposition about them, and so forth). That concerns the relative priority of some things (whether taken individually or collectively) and a somehow composite thing to which they bear some sort of intimate, constitutive relation (parthood, membership, etc.). The question is instead over the relative priority of each of some objects and those very objects-the focus is on individuality and collectivity proper, not on compositeness and componency.

show abstract