Borges, Leibniz and the Metaphysics of Mirrors
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Abstract
Sceptical by vocation, Borges defended, despite the vast philosophical reservoir that animated his work, a singularly provocative conception of metaphysics: it is only a branch of the literature of fantasy. From this sentence, which prima facie seems to invalidate metaphysics in its epistemic pretensions, we will address some connections between Borges’s and Leibniz’s letters in relation to what we will call a ‘metaphysics of mirrors’. Borges will often invoke the name of Leibniz and give ‘literary form’ to a set of theses being at the core of Leibnizian metaphysics. Although distant in time and space, it seems that a ‘dialogue’ takes place between both of them in the cenacle of a common tradition.
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