Sunday, March 20, 2016

Perspective and Secondary Qualities

Leibniz is usually associated with Locke with respect to their debate over the existence of Innate Ideas.  However, their significant differences on that topic have overshadowed at least one area of agreement.  For, Leibniz' attribution of a numerical characteristic to all the objects in the universe is equivalent to Locke's classification of that property as a Primary Quality.  Accordingly, therefore, the constituents of a Leibnizian Perspective correspond to Lockeian Secondary Qualities, entailing one important contrast--while the former are 'for me', the latter are 'in me'.  In other words, while Leibniz personalizes experience, Locke privatizes it, the full implications of which become actualized in Smith's Egoism.

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