Overview

Connelly demonstrates how Leibniz's rearticulation of power and its associated concepts is motivated at least in part by the struggles that marked the terrain in which his ideas were rooted - the struggle between Reformed and Scholastic theology, between natural law and natural right, and between mechanistic natural philosophy and human freedom. He locates Leibniz within power's wider evolution, and shows how the universal jurisprudence which Leibniz developed between the 1660s and 1690s can be considered as a transformative encounter between power, activity and modality. Drawing on thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Grotius, Husserl and Deleuze, Connelly traces Leibniz's conceptualisation of power through its applications in his legal texts, revealing that Leibniz in fact reconceptualises power under a new name: the state space. The move amounts to an internalisation of power as a moral world within each individual, submitting each practical agent to a universal set of obligations and prohibitions defined by that world. What though is at stake in bringing the objective world within each individual and submitting it to a public legal order? And what is the significance of this surgical intervention for any archaeology of power?

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9781474418065

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Reviews

"Connelly has crafted an intricate and illuminating analysis of Leibniz' thought that both challenges and enriches our understanding of the philosophy of power. This work is invaluable to scholars of law and philosophy, and makes an important contribution to the history of ideas.-- ""Hayley Gibson, University of Kent"" [Connelly] demonstrates how the Leibnizian theory of will and potentia presupposes the concept of primary matter, which, when applied to a jurisprudential perspective, is identified by Connelly as a 'state place', which allows us to understand the role of universal obligation and prohibition in Leibniz's philosophy and their divergence from the rights of individuals. Uncovering, in an 'archaeological' manner, and explicating this notion can be regarded as actually the most substantial and original element of the reviewed book. [...] the book under review is the result of a highly developed, diligent and revealing study of the Leibnizian philosophy and it will certainly provide inspiration for many researchers.--Aleksandra Horowska ""The Leibniz Review"""

Author Information

Stephen Connelly is Associate Professor of Law at Warwick University. He is the author of Spinoza, Right and Absolute Freedom (2015). His research interests include Corporate and financial law; regulation and supervision in the international financial context; legal theory, including natural right theories.

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