Old friend

It's been years, but I'm about to start keeping company with Leibniz again. Not one but two gigs in the Fall will bring me back to the community of Leibniz scholars of which I was briefly a member through my dissertation work: a conference on the effective history of the Theodicy in Lisbon in October (my slightly crazy topic: "Leibniz' Theodicy as a metaphysics for 'lived religion'"), and a panel on the reception of Leibniz at AAR in November (on Lessing's "Leibniz und die ewigen Strafen"). When my visiting Australian relatives head home, I'll head to the UCSD library to reconnect with the German Universalgenie. This reunion is unexpected - I didn't seek it out - but certainly not unwelcome. And there's something nice about its coming soon after my visit to China, a land from which he felt the West could learn much. (Indeed my only real publication on Leibniz is an extended review of a book on Leibniz and China.)