The early Russell on the metaphysics of substance in Leibniz and Bradley

While considerable ink has been spilt over the rejection of idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the end of the 19th Century, relatively little attention has been directed at Russell's A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, a work written in the early stages of Russell's philosophical struggles with the metaphysics of Bradley, Bosanquet, and others. Though a sustained investigation of that work would be one of considerable scope, here I reconstruct and develop a two-pronged argument from the Philosophy of Leibniz that Russell fancied--as late as 1907--to be the downfall of the traditional category of substance. Here, I suggest, one can begin to see Russell's own reasons--arguments largely independent of Moore--for the abandonment of idealism. Leibniz, no less than Bradley, adhered to an antiquated variety of logic: what Russell refers to as the subject-predicate doctrine of logic. Uniting this doctrine with a metaphysical principle of independence-...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: SYNTHESE
• Authors: T. Allan Hillman
• Keywords: Bertrand Russell, Considerable Ink, Leibniz, SYNTHESE 2008