Offering an invaluable introduction to Leibniz's philosophy, this volume collects many of his most important texts, beginning with the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686) and ending with the Monadology (1714). Also included in this work are critical reactions to Leibniz's work by his contemporaries (Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Bayle, and Simon Foucher), together with Leibniz's responses. The editors provide new English translations for all of the texts, preceding each with a summary explaining its background, structure, and content.

This volume gathers together for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centered on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the "New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication," in which he introduced his strikingly original theory of metaphysics. His "system" became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers, most notably the great French philosopher Pierre Bayle. Woolhouse's and Francks's new English edition gives the only full representation of this...