You are cordially invited to our next GCMEMT online lecture series event.

On 27 April 2023 from 17.00h to 18.30h (CET), Corey Dyck (University of Western Ontario) will give a talk on Proof Beyond Reason: Leibniz, Wolff, and the Proofs of the PSR (see abstract below).

As usual, the session will take place online via zoom.

We will use the following link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/96427734479?pwd=RVIybVZQeVZSM09IZWR0amxWT1N3QT09

I hope many of you will join.

——————————————

Proof Beyond Reason: Leibniz, Wolff, and the Proofs of the PSR

In the course of his intellectual career, Christian Wolff would offer a variety of proofs of the PSR, none of which have been particularly well-received. Even so, it has long been the scholarly consensus that the specific proofs Wolff offers of the PSR are of less importance, historically, than the (bare fact) that he sought to offer them in the first place. That Wolff should attempt a proof of the PSR, and indeed a derivation of that principle from the principle of non-contradiction, would seem to mark out his rationalism as much stricter than that of Leibniz who maintained the independence of these two principles from one another. Yet, as I will argue in this presentation, Wolff’s differences from Leibniz regarding the proof of the PSR have been greatly exaggerated. As it happens, Wolff’s proofs of the PSR are at the very least directly inspired by Leibniz’s own suggestions, and in any case Wolff is more heavily invested in other means for certifying this principle, means that are more consistent with Wolff’s own philosophical methodology and which do not obviously threaten its independence from PNC.