Heidegger's Leibniz and abyssal identity

When Heidegger pursues his destructive interpretation of Leibniz's doctrine of judgment, he identifies a principle of abyssal ground and a concealed metaphysics of truth that undermine the priority of logic with respect to ontology. His reading turns on an account of Leibniz's methodological generation of metaphysical principles and the relation between reason and identity, which, I argue, is at once deeply flawed and extremely productive. This essay pursues the implications of Heidegger's quickly abandoned suggestion that Leibniz's principle of identity is reflexively self-grounding, arguing that this claim makes possible a rigorous interpretation of Leibnizian method as an abyssal logic of repetition. I hold that the identification of such a methodology requires a modified account of the metaphysics of truth operative in Leibniz that reinvigorates Heidegger's reading even while moving beyond his now exhausted trope of a hidden presupposition of subjectivity.     

The view from everywhere: Disciplining diversity in post–World War II international social science

This paper explores the attempt of social scientists associated with Unesco to create a system of knowledge production to provide the international perspective necessary for democratic governance of a world community. Social scientists constructed a federal system of international associations that institutionalized American disciplines on an international scale. An international perspective emerged through the process of interdisciplinary international research. I call this ideal of coordinating multiple subjectivities to produce objectivity the “view from everywhere.” Influenced by social psychological “action‐research,” collaborative research was group therapy. The attempt to operationalize internationalists' rallying slogan, “unity in diversity,” illuminated tensions inherent in the mobilization of science for social and political reform. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.