Brian Haslett

“Nevertheless, Spinoza acknowledges, seeking one’s best interest and getting it are two different things. He emphasizes that human beings are extremely weak in the face of the external forces arrayed against them, and that even the most reasonable men will find that the objects of hope and fear lie mostly outside their control.”
― Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic

“Leibniz, perhaps alone with Spinoza, grasped the general direction of modern history. But, unlike his eerily self-sufficient rival, he had a far greater concern with the price that humanity would have to pay for its own progress. He understood that even as science tells us more and more about what everything is, it seems to tell us less and less why; that even as technology reveals utility in all things, it seems to find purpose in nothing; that as humanity extends its powers without limit, it loses its faith in the value of the same beings who exercise that power; and that, in making self-interest the foundation of society, modern humankind finds itself pining for the transcendent goals that give life any interest at all.”
― Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic

“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