Платонические мотивы в эвдемонистической этике Г.В. Лейбница

Платоновские исследования. 2022. Т. 16. № 1. С. 161–205.

Osminskaya N.

The paper explores the Platonic sources of Leibniz’s project of Scientia generalis
as the science of happiness. Basing on biographical evidence, correspondences
and several lesser known texts by Leibniz, from the Hannover archive, the author argues
that Leibniz regarded his philosophical system also as an attempt to make strictly
demonstrable the teachings of Plato. The comparison of the main concepts of Leibniz’s
ethics (wisdom, virtue, pleasure, happiness) with those from Plato’s Philebus, Phaedo,
and Republic shows that Leibniz’s eudemonism is quite close to the later Plato’s moral
doctrine as far as it concerns the interpretation of pleasure as the sense of perfection
and the interpretation of true happiness as a lasting state of pleasure and thereby different
from pleasure as a sort of becoming. In his polemic against Descartes, Leibniz,
following Plato, defines virtue not only as a kind of art to regulate the affects, but
also as an active inclination towards the good and practical participation in the Politie.
Leibniz’s system, based on the triple unity of wisdom, virtue and happiness, is
to be regarded as an alternative to Spinoza’s Ethics, which gives rational instructions
towards achieving personal happiness. The publication also presents the first Russian
translation of several interrelated texts from Leibniz’s archive in Hannover.

Keywords: Платон, Leibniz, Лейбниц, wisdom, мудрость, эвдемонизм, pleasure, удовольствие, Plato, eudemonism, scientia universalis, scientia universalis