Fred!

A wise woman I met in Wolfenbüttel half an age ago told me that the secret to scholarly success was being able to return with enthusiasm to something you did a decade before: that's the minimum time it takes for some research you've proposed to get done, written up, accepted for publication, actually published, read, and then finally translated into an invitation. (Needless to say, each of these hurdles is a winnow.) Even in the highly unlikely case where everything works, your work will - like the light from a distant star - seem to your inviter contemporary! And your best chance as a contemporary is to play along. So welcome back, Leibnizian Mark! In the Fall of this year I'll be giving two invited papers on my old flame (my dissertation flame, no less), one reviving an old question - Lessing's "Leibniz von den ewigen Strafen" - and one trying to connect to my current interests - Leibniz as a metaphysics for lived religion.