Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Leibniz and the Monadology

by Anthony Savile, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Leibniz is a major figure in western philosophy and, with Descartes and Spinoza, one of the most influential philosophers of the Rationalist School. The Monadology is his most famous work and one of the most important works of modern philosophy.
Leibniz and the Monadology introduces and
*Leibniz's life and the background to the Monadology
*the ideas and text of the Monadology *Leibniz's continuing importance to philosophy
Leibniz and the Monadology is ideal for anyone coming to Leibniz for the first time. It also includes the text of the Monadology , specially translated for this GuideBook by Anthony Savile.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics

247 pages, Paperback

First published July 27, 2000

Reviews

[Madeleine Morrison]

To spare the back story as of why I am returning to this title, if you are interested, it's very similar to the reasoning I gave in my pre-review for Fear and Trembling (found Here). The difference being I read this (or most of it. Never finished reading it.) outside of college on my decision. And the following:
When I first read this, I really liked the book. Which is to say, I really liked Anthony Savile's Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Leibniz and the Monadology. My favourite professor in college was a philosophy professor who I tried to take one or more of his classes each semester. I was unable to the last semester I went to TU and thus took the Kierkegaard class taught by someone else who wasn't a bad professor but wasn't for me. Anyway, although all the classes I took taught by this professor, Dr. Michael Futch, had nothing to do with Leibniz, he was well versed in Leibniz, having written a great deal on Leibniz for various journals and finally writing a "text"-book on Leibniz (Leibniz's Metaphysics of Time and Space - it was published as a text book and that coupled with the fact that the subject matter is very niche, the price of the book has always been super expensive. So if you for some reason have a copy you want to give me...) - The point being, when I wanted to study Leibniz, I wrote to him asking where to begin and he recommended this book.
This is the only Routledge Philosophy Guidebook I've read, so I can't speak for the entire series, but I can say that this one is really well done. And even though when I read most of it, I found Leibniz's philosophy to be "easily" dismissed and basically absurd, I would have recommended this book to anyone wanting to read about Leibniz.
SO TLDR: My Pre-Review is a review of the way Saville approaches the Monadology and Leibniz and the format of this book which I would recommend to anyone wanting to study Leibniz. Saville gets 4/5 star review.
COMING SOON: An actual review that will go more into, you know, the actual topic of the book and not how it's written.