LEIBNIZ ON BODY, FORCE AND EXTENSION

Abstract

G arber in Context. A general and simplified overview of the way commentaries2 of Leibniz's metaphysics have evolved over the past twenty years or so can be given by observing that we have moved successively through two different frameworks. The first framework concentrated above all on Leibniz's nominalism and can be traced back to Benson Mates's book published in 1986. The second framework insisted rather on Leibniz's idealism, starting from Robert M. Adams's book which came out in 1994. This is not to suggest a qualitative judgement aiming at undermining or dismissing other contributions. What Benson Mates and Robert Adams have in common is that they were philosophers who became interested in Leibniz (which is hardly rare), but to such an extent that they really became historians of philosophy, and this is rarer by far. Both of them