In this work, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of another. The work was originally written in French, and the version by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, based on the only reliable French edition (published in 1962), first appeared in 1981 and has become the standard English translation. This...

An extremely suitable focus for the study of Leibniz's thought and of the traditions of rationalism and empiricism in relation to one another.