<p><a>While Nietzsche is known as a virulent opponent of conventional morality, the critical dimension of his philosophy cannot be divorced from his novel understandings of nature, society, and the self. This dissertation clarifies Nietzsche’s treatments of these notions by comparing his views to those of other figures in the western philosophical tradition. I defend a comparative approach to Nietzsche’s philosophy and provide an overview of my project in chapter one. In chapter two, I argue that although Nietzsche shares Stoicism’s emphasis on self-discipline and on the affirmation of fate, he rejects the Stoics’ teleological understanding of nature and their view of moral values as descriptively objective. This leads Nietzsche to value passion and suffering for helping us realize the world’s indifference to our all-too human concerns and for prompting value creation. In chapter three, I argue that Nietzsche agrees with Leibniz about the existence and character of unconscious perceptions and appetites – and about the way much of our metaphysics derives from our understanding of the self. Nevertheless, Nietzsche audits metaphysical notions such as God and substance on the basis of his rejection of Leibniz’s view of the self as a monad. This leads him to pursue a naturalistic understanding of consciousness, and of ideas, as emerging to satisfy unconscious drives. In chapter four, I examine Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s notions of the will to power and the Overman. In addition to defending the viability of these interpretations, I show how they inform Deleuze’s later notions of desiring-production and nomadology. These studies demonstrate Nietzsche’s untimely relevance to ancient, early modern, and contemporary philosophical approaches.</a></p>

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz claimed that this is the best of all possible worlds. This view has been widely criticized. Much of the criticism focuses on the fact that it is simply counter-intuitive because of the presence of evil. This paper is intended to be a defense of Leibniz's view against those who would suggest that the presence of evil implies that there could be a better world. After defining terms, the first section of this paper will examine Leibniz's arguments for this being the best of all possible worlds. The idea of "best" will also be examined. Leibniz's conception of best will be examined in Leibniz's writings, and an alternative view of best will be suggested to strengthen Leibniz's arguments. Then, the paper will tum to examine the problem of evil and the attack that it is on Leibniz's view. I will suggest that the problem of evil is not a problem for this belief because the world better accomplishes its purpose with evil than it would without evil.

Cette étude de la pensée de Gilles Deleuze (1925-1975) trouve son origine dans la confrontation avec un texte et un concept qui nous semblent des objets féconds de réflexion. Le pli. Leibniz et le baroque (1988) est la dernière des grandes monographies que Deleuze consacre aux « intercesseurs » de sa pensée. Elle constitue une relecture compliquée et labyrinthique à la fois de l’œuvre de Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) et de la période baroque. Plus qu’une interprétation, elle est le théâtre où apparaît un nouveau concept destiné à jeter, comme dans un après-coup, une lumière inédite sur l’œuvre entière de Deleuze : le pli. Ce dernier, loin de représenter un escamotage interprétatif, traverse sa pensée dans toute sa durée, tout en émergeant seulement vers la fin des années 80, dans la phase finale de son itinéraire intellectuel, comme le fait une vague parcourant sous le niveau de l’eau tout l’océan pour s’élever juste en proximité du littoral. Le pli paraît dans Différence et répétition (1968) et réapparaît dans Foucault (1986) ; mais il est réellement thématisé et développé avec référence à Leibniz, le penseur qui a plus que quiconque déçu et exalté Deleuze. Notre but est de démontrer comment le pli est ce concept en mesure d’exprimer le projet philosophique deleuzien dans son intégralité. En d’autres termes, le pli est le concept de Deleuze. Dans sa formulation nous pouvons retrouver tous les problèmes majeurs de sa pensée : la relation entre différence et répétition, le statut du sujet et de l’objet, la construction du plan d’immanence, la définition de l’art, de la science et de la philosophie et leur interaction. / The subject of my thesis is the concept of “fold” in the work of Gilles Deleuze, as it emerges in the late 80’s. My purpose is to show that the concept of fold can summarise the entirety of Deleuze’s philosophical project. As a matter of fact, its formulation allows to address all of the most important questions of his thought, and to adopt a different approach on the discussion and the solution of some philosophical problems, such as the theme of the subject and Deleuze’s conception of philosophy as a “creation of concepts”. By doing that, I try to follow and underline the several implicit references and the hidden theoretical pattern which compose the text of The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque (1988). My work is composed of five chapters. The first one has an introductive character and consists of a reflexion on Deleuze’s philosophical reading method, which we define as “anamorphic”. The second chapter focuses on the presence of Leibniz in Difference and repetition (1968) and on the relevance of his thought in the creation of Deleuzes’ philosophical terminology. The third one is titled “A thousand folds”, paraphrasing the name of another work of Deleuze and Guattari. There I try to reconstruct the several theoretical lines that compose the concept of fold; furthermore, I try to underline the philosophical multiplicity of this concept. The fourth chapter focuses on the Baroque, which plays a fundamental role in Deleuze’s argumentations. Here I retrace his ideas about infinity and folding during the Baroque era. Then, I try to confront his theory with Walter Benjamin and Jacques Lacan’s lectures of Baroque. The last chapter deals with the concept of neobaroque.

Descartes é considerado tradicionalmente como um racionalista estrito, sendo reconhecido pela clareza e distinção, pela certeza e pelo saber metódico, entretanto, existem conhecimentos que extrapolam tais critérios e mesmo assim ainda ocupam um lugar importante no seu pensamento: a criação das verdades eternas, a união substancial e o homem concreto. Nessa tese, pretendemos mostrar como tais objetos, que extrapolam um saber claro e distinto ou uma compreensão completa, podem ser reabilitados no sistema, como cada um deles mantém uma margem de inteligibilidade e uma margem de ininteligibilidade, como eles são bordas do saber, com uma face voltada para a clareza e distinção e outra voltada para a obscuridade. Deus e a criação das verdades podem ser entendidos mas sem ser compreendidos; já a união substancial é uma noção primitiva mas é da alçada da sensibilidade e não do entendimento. Para ressaltar a originalidade e complexidade do pensamento cartesiano frente aos limites do racionalismo, recorremos ao pensamento de Leibniz, mostrando como as saídas leibnizianas são muito mais tradicionais e condizentes com um projeto de racionalismo estrito. / Descartes is traditionally considered as a strict rationalist, being recognized by clearness and distinction, by certainty and by methodical knowledge, however, there are knowledges that go beyond those criteria and yet take up an important role in the thought of Descartes: the creation of eternal truths, the substantial union and the concrete man. On this thesis, we aim to show how these objects, which go beyond a clear and distinct knowledge or a whole understanding, may be rehabilitated in the system; we aim to show also how each one of those objects maintains an edge of intelligibility and an edge of inintelligibility, how they are borders of knowledge with one side turned to clearness and distinction and the other one turned to obscurity. God and the creation of truths may be understood but without being comprehended; the substantial union is a primitive notion, which, nevertheless, belongs to the sensibility, not to the understanding. To highlight the originality and complexity of Descartes thought front to the limits of rationalism, we recurred to Leibnizs thought, showing how the leibnizians solutions are much more traditional and suitable with a strict rationalism project.

Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät I, Philosophie, Sport, Kulturwissenschaften--Universität Regensburg, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 257-271.

Die Erforschung der deutschen Philosophie um 1700 hat in den vergangenen beiden Jahrzehnten starke Impulse erfahren; es wurden bisher unbekannte Diskussionen und Richtungen entdeckt, darunter der Eklektizismus. Der Eklektizismus war in den letzten Jahrzehnten des 17. und den ersten Jahrzehnten des 18. Jahrhunderts Gegenstand einer europaweiten Debatte, besonders unter Deutschlands Universitätsphilosophen. Inhaltlich geht es um eine Neubestimmung der Philosophie im versöhnenden Ausgleich der Ansprüche von Antike und Moderne, von Aristotelismus und Cartesianismus, deren Konflikt die Problemlage der Akademiker um 1700 allgemein charakterisierte. Figuren der Eklektizismus-Debatte sind durch kontextualisierende Forscher wie Horst Dreitzel oder Michael Albrecht ans Tageslicht geholt worden, in deren Arbeiten das doxographische Bild der Philosophie im späten 17. und im frühen 18. Jahrhundert geweitet und gedehnt wird, so daß heute eine breite (nicht nur philosophische) Kultur das historiographische Feld dort belebt, wo traditionell Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz und Christian Wolff die Geschichte der Philosophie fast allein repräsentierten. Ersetzt oder ergänzt der Eklektizismus unser traditionelles Bild der frühmodernen Philosophie?

Dankbar nimmt man nun aus den Händen italienischer Forscher eine vergleichende begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über die ersten Übersetzungen der Monadologie von Leibniz in die Hand. Deren Übersetzung las das Publikum nämlich früher als das Original, das 1714 entstand. Diese Schrift bestimmte - neben der 1710 veröffentlichten Theodizee - die frühe Wirkung von Leibniz, allerdings eben nicht in der originalen (französischen) Form, denn diese wurde erst 1840 in einer Leibniz-Ausgabe des Hegel-Schülers Johann Eduard Erdmann publiziert. Schon im Jahre 1720 jedoch erschien eine deutsche Übersetzung der Monadologie von Heinrich Köhler, gefolgt im Jahre 1721 von einer anonymen Übersetzung ins Lateinische, veröffentlicht in den Leipziger Acta Eruditorum. Was Antonio Lamarra, Roberto Palaia und Pietro Pimpinella vorlegen, ist ein Vergleich der beiden frühen Übersetzungen mit dem Original.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss relationality in G.W Leibnizs Monadologie (1714). In general terms this essay analyzes the notion of individuation in relation to the concept of monads. The analysis proposes a question regarding the body in this individuation, and what consequences follows for the understanding of the relation between the single individual and other individuals. It will be shown that the irreducibility of having a body transcendens something like ownness, subjectivity, personality and individuation, and this is explained through the pre-established harmony between the monads – where the plurality of monads is detected before the monads singularity. To widen this investigation of relationality between the monads, I will turn to Edmund Husserls phenomenological operation for solving the egological problem of solipsism in Cartesian Meditations (1929). In his meditations, Husserl uses the monad as a self-conscious ego with peculiar ownness. After having outlined the relevant characteristics of Husserl phenomenological methodical operation, I turn to Deleuzes non-phenomenological reading of Leibniz in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1988). In Deleuzes reading Leibniz is ascribed a transcendental philosophy which bears on the event rather than the phenomenon. The purpose is to develop a discussion between Leibniz, Husserl and Deleuze about relationality in relation to the concept of monads, and about the different ways in which we can approach this subject.