Leibniz is a dull writer, and his effect on German philosophy was to make it pedantic and arid. His disciple Wolf, who dominated the German universities until the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, left out whatever was most interesting in Leibniz, and produced a dry professorial way of thinking. Outside Germany, Leibniz’s philosophy had little influence; his contemporary Locke governed British philosophy, while in France Descartes continued to reign until he was overthrown by Voltaire, who made English empiricism fashionable.
