RECENSIONI / Hannes Amberger /
This volume analyses the ‘reception’ of and the ‘research’ on Leibniz and provides an ‘outlook’ on possible future research. It attempts a systematic approach to all the relevant fields of Leibniz’s work, often embedding the review of the secondary literature in an overview of the topic from the author’s own perspective. In this way, the volume constitutes a useful first approach to Leibniz’s life and work, like a German cousin of the Oxford Handbook (with which it shares some of the authors) or the Cambridge Companion. Unlike those works, the present volume focusses on the non-philosophical aspects of Leibniz’s work and offers a refreshing perspective on the «last universal genius» all too often reduced to his philosophical works. Waldhoff’s Quellenkunde, Antoine’s contribution on poetry, and Li’s final chapter on Leibniz’s public image are three examples of topics we do not find in other comprehensive works on Leibniz.
The first and longest (137 pp.) chapter is authored by co-editor Stephan Waldhoff. Under the title Quellenkunde, it provides detailed information on the various sources that offer access to Leibniz’s writings, namely Leibniz’s own publications, the manuscripts and the later editions and the value of each of them for today’s research. Authorship, we learn from this chapter, is a problematic concept in Leibniz’s baroque environment: He rearranged and modified other authors’ manuscripts for his own use, but also drafted letters and memoranda then rewritten and signed by other members of the Hanoverian court hierarchy. With respect to the editions, Waldhoff limits his survey to the older editions of the 18th-early 20th century and the Academy edition and excludes alternative critical editions and translations. An edition as widely used as Gerhardt’s Philosophische Schriften, however, might have deserved more than the brief paragraph dedicated to it (p. 129). The final, very useful section deals with auxiliary resources for the Academy edition, such as the Arbeitskatalog. Waldhoff’s chapter gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of various editions and research and offers a practical guide to Leibniz’s texts; it should be obligatory reading for all aspiring Leibniz scholars.
