Gábor Gángó presents a working paper on 'The formation of Leibniz’s mature ethics and his Specimen Polonorum'

The study shall contribute to the reconstruction of the efforts of the young Leibniz to find an integral formula for rationality, justice, and happiness. I intend to prove that Leibniz’s treatise Specimen Polonorum (1669), together with another one of his for the Polish royal election campaign, Comparatio propinquitatis Jagellonicae inter Ducem Neoburgicum & Principem Lotharingiae, are indeed relevant to the applicability of his ethical insights to political matters. Nevertheless, I will also demonstrate that the ethical stance of the Specimen Polonorum cannot be understood entirely as a precursor of his love-centred ethics since the concept of ‘amor’ as conceived in this treatise is not relevant directly from the point of view of the formation of Leibniz’s mature ethics.

Leibniz’s everyday experience in the practical school of politics did have impact on his theory, juridical or ethical. Leibniz’s occasional political treatises from the Mainz period tested the theory in concrete situations, helping to draw the boundary of its applicability and simultaneously to search for a higher unity. The most important witness of this knowledge process was the Specimen Polonorum being, similarly to the other major political works form these years, like the Securitas publica interna et externa or the Consilium Aegyptiacum, a detailed case study in a concrete political situation while containing, in contradistinction to them, also theoretical parts closely linked to his research into the science of right.