Leibniz, by Anthony Kenny, in his Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy

LEIBNIZ

Both Malebranche and Spinoza were important influences on the thinking of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz was born in 1646, the son of a professor of philosophy at Leipzig University. He started to read metaphysics in early youth, and by the age of thirteen became familiar with the writings of the scholastics, to which he remained much more sy…