Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach and her Correspondence with Leibniz

VARGAS, EVELYN

Hannover

Congreso; XI International Leibniz Congress ? Le present est plein de l?avenir, et chargé du passé; 2023

Leibniz Gessellshaft

The exchange between Leibniz and Clarke from 1715 to 1716 has been the object of numerous scholarly articles. In fact, the text that is usually known as "Leibniz's first paper" is actually an extract of a letter to Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and therefore not intended for Clarke himself, who would be included only after she passed the extract of Leibniz's letter to him. However, her role in the dispute as more important than a mere intermediary for the dispute has been acknowledged only recently. For example, Domenico Bertoloni Meli (1999) in his article “Caroline, Leibniz, and Clarke” states that his purpose is to take into account “[…] issues such as the intellectual horizon of patrons and gender in conjunction with other themes traditionally associated with Leibniz and Clarke.” (p. 471); but despite his alleged focus on Caroline, her role is not analyzed in detail as proposed in his introduction. More recently, Gregory Brown (2004) offers a detailed account of the evolution of the correspondence between Caroline and Leibniz; in the end Caroline would have assumed the role of a neutral observer “[…] not to declare a winner but to secure and protect a civil forum […]”  (p. 288). But it was Leibniz who “ […] had decided early on that the best way to make his case to Caroline against the Newtonians was to turn the issue to philosophy–to natural religion […]” (p. 273). A similar point is made by Bertoloni Meli (p. 480; 486). This emphasis on Leibniz’s agenda (and his Newtonian counterparts), however, may obscure Caroline’s own point of view. My purpose in this presentation is to focus on her point of view, and my approach is twofold: firstly, I will introduce a perspective that could account for both the historical and philosophical dimension of her role in the dispute, and secondly, I will focus on the few occasions Caroline took to describe how she sees her role in it.