Brian Haslett

“If things originate from God in the same way that properties originate from an essence, it follows that God no more wills the existence of particular things than a circle wills to be round; that all things have a necessary character; that the distinction between God and things is merely apparent or perspectival; and that God, in sum, is the sole substance or essence of the world.”
― Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic

“Leibniz’s mathematical investigations initially centered on the summation of infinite series. The concern with indivisibility and the infinitely small was linked in his mind to some fundamental, metaphysical truths about the nature of substance, matter, and mind”
― Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic

“the love of fate is not for the faint of heart. Human beings are weak not just with respect to outside forces, Spinoza cautions, but also with respect to the demons within. The passions are so strong that they can overrule the mind with ease and lead us “to follow the worse course even when we know the better.” The only way to overcome the emotions, he says, is with a higher kind of emotion: you have to fight fire with fire. Spinoza thus distinguishes himself from the Stoics, who argued that the only thing to do with the surly crowd of human emotions is to have them all shot, as it were.”
― Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic

“The paradox with which modern interpreters must grapple, as it turns out, is the same one that would bedevil Leibniz. How can one who denies the very existence of the mind lead a life of the mind? Or, as the contemporary magazine reader might ask, can a materialist be spiritual?”
― Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic