LEIBNIZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM

born July 1 [June 21, old style], 1646, Leipzig died Nov. 14, 1716, Hannover, Hanover Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, coloured stipple engraving. German philosopher, mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his independent invention of the differential and integral calculus. Additional reading Nicholas Rescher, Leibniz: An Introduction to His Philosophy (1979); and Charlie D. Broad and C. Lewy, Leibniz: An Introduction (1975), are excellent overviews of his philosophy; Gottschalk E. Guhrauer, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von Leibniz: eine Biographie, 2 vol. and suppl. (184246, reissued 1966; with partial Eng. trans. by J. Milton Mackie, Life of Godfrey William von Leibniz, 1845), a fundamental work; Wilhelm Totok and Carl Haase, Leibniz: sein Leben, sein Wirken, seine Welt (1966), completes and corrects Guhrauer in several respects; Yvon Belaval, Leibniz: Initiation sa philosophie, 4th ed. (1975), places the philosophical development of Leibniz in the context of the history of his time; Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, 2nd ed. (1937, reissued 1975), still of great value; Leroy E. Loemker, Struggle for Synthesis: The Seventeenth Century Background of Leibniz's Synthesis of Order and Freedom (1972), discusses the intellectual background.