Perspectives and argumentative structure in the Leibniz-Clarke debate: the hidden perspective

Abstract

The paper analyses the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. The corpus consists of two times five letters. I restructure the corpus horizontally and vertically in order to make the text readable from the perspective of debated themes and argumentation as well. Horizontally, I reconstruct the debate through low resolution debate analysis, focusing of the notion of space and related terms (natural law, atom, vacuum, gravitation). Vertically, I investigate different argumentative patterns in the text. Finally, I consider the interpretative value of these new analytical perspectives.