Roland Faber has written a massive, ambitious, and thought-provoking book of 730 pages, of which 641 are the main text. Taking his cue from a passing remark of Alfred North Whitehead, in which he suggested that someone should write a book about “The Mind of Leibniz” (Whitehead, MT 3), Faber undertakes here to do exactly that in reference to Whitehead himself. In pursuing this substantial task, Faber does not seek to carry out either a psychological profile or a historical reconstruction of the development of Whitehead's thought. Rather, he offers his own extensive thematic and synchronic portrait, and, like any portrait, it reflects as much about the author as it does about the subject. By “synchronic” I mean that Faber incorporates Whitehead's numerous writings simultaneously in his collage of Whitehead's thinking, rather than chronologically or developmentally. Hence, later works, such as Modes of Thought, are interwoven side by side...
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