Leibnizing

Richard Halpern argues that Leibniz offers a powerful, productive model for transdisciplinary thinking that can push back against the narrowness of the humanities today.

Richard Halpern is the author of six books on topics ranging from Shakespeare to Norman Rockwell. At his retirement, he was Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Literature at New York University.

Justin E. H. Smith, coeditor of Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses:
Richard Halpern's Leibnizing is a thrilling and original investigation of the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from an angle that will be completely unfamiliar to most philosophers: the angle of style. But the philosophers' Leibniz is a mere shadow of the hot-blooded Leibniz that comes through in Halpern's masterful treatment, which shows that there can be no easy distinction between style and substance. This work both stands apart from the past several centuries of Leibniz scholarship, and at the same time holds the rare promise of renewing this field, and causing us to see the object of our scholarly interest in a fundamentally new way.

Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism:
In this brilliant and sprightly book, Richard Halpern reinvents the philosopher and polymath G. W. Leibniz for the twenty-first century. For Halpern, Leibniz is both a proto-science fiction writer and a mad tinkerer who invents a perpetual-motion machine. Speculative thought in the manner of Halpern’s Leibniz leads us to continually new insights and offers us continually new occasions of delight.

Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life:
This engaging and highly original book welcomes the reader into the experience of meeting Leibniz with Richard Halpern as our guide. Proceeding little by little—monad by monad as it were—we go on a journey that is unexpectedly festive, funny, and full of surprises. By carefully selecting themes and passages and providing occasional illustrations from Leibniz’s papers, Halpern has deftly created a dazzling series of windows into the world of Leibniz.