Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chronological Table
- Introduction
- PART I YOUTHFUL VOCATIONS (1646–1676)
- 1 The Birth of a Vision: Background, Childhood, and Education (July 1646–February 1667)
- 2 The Vision Broadens: Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Mainz (March 1667–March 1672)
- 3 Old Wine in New Bottles: Paris, London, and Holland (March 1672–December 1676)
- PART II DREAMS AND REALITY (1676–1716)
- Appendix
- References
- Index
1 - The Birth of a Vision: Background, Childhood, and Education (July 1646–February 1667)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chronological Table
- Introduction
- PART I YOUTHFUL VOCATIONS (1646–1676)
- 1 The Birth of a Vision: Background, Childhood, and Education (July 1646–February 1667)
- 2 The Vision Broadens: Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Mainz (March 1667–March 1672)
- 3 Old Wine in New Bottles: Paris, London, and Holland (March 1672–December 1676)
- PART II DREAMS AND REALITY (1676–1716)
- Appendix
- References
- Index
Summary
War and Peace: Problems and Prospects
When gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig on the first day of July 1646, representatives of the princes of Germany and the great powers of Europe had already been meeting for three years in Münster and Osnabrück, three hundred kilometres to the west, where they would continue to negotiate for another two years and more. The purpose of these protracted negotiations was to bring to an end an even more protracted war: a war which raged for thirty years, the most destructive conflict of an era plagued by virtually incessant warfare. The product of these negotiations was the Peace of Westphalia, perhaps the most important treaty signed in the early modern period. But the difficulties which had prolonged first the war and then the peace negotiations lay several layers deep; the deeper strata lay well below the Westphalian diplomats' immediate concerns or responsibilities; and the solutions to the more superficial problems which they hammered out in Münster and Osnabrück in any case brought further problems in their wake. The provisions of the treaty would structure the political life of the Holy Roman Empire until the Empire itself was swept away by the armies of Napoleon a century and a half later. Small wonder then that the terms of the peace, and the intractable problems which underlay it, would also structure a great deal of the intellectual life of the generation born in Germany as the Thirty Years War came to a close.
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- Information
- LeibnizAn Intellectual Biography, pp. 17 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008