La res e i termini. Leibniz e la questione della cosa: tra semantica e ontologia

Abstract

Leibniz's treatment of the concept of res should be considered in the context of his semantic-ontological reflections on the relationship of language, thought and reality, profoundly shaped by a nominalistically minded deflationary approach. In this paper I consider (a) the role of res as a kind of super-category and its relationship with ens; then I pass to consider the narrower usage of res to designate a concrete item, in the sense (b) of a subject of inherence as opposed to properties, and (c) of an object as opposed to a concept.