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WorkGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Theodicy

Leibniz's reply to Bayle on the problem of evil: this is the best of all possible worlds.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz784 passages held

  • French, the original language
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Original title
Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal
First published
(aged 64)
Original language
French

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Overview

The book began in conversations at the Prussian court, where Leibniz, Queen Sophie Charlotte and others around her discussed Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary. Bayle, a French Protestant scholar living in Rotterdam, had argued that reason cannot defend God's goodness, justice and freedom against the facts of evil, and that the believer must rest on faith. Leibniz thought that surrender both false and dangerous. The queen died in 1705 and Bayle at the end of 1706, before anything was printed. At friends' urging Leibniz stitched his notes into a book, written in French to reach beyond the learned; Isaac Troyel published it at Amsterdam in 1710 without its author's name, which appeared only in the second edition of 1712. The title word is Leibniz's own coinage, from the Greek for God and justice. Its argument is that a perfectly good, wise and powerful God must have chosen the best of all possible worlds, which need not be a world without evil: the world is so connected that removing a single evil would change everything, and the best whole may contain parts that, taken alone, are bad. God permits sin as part of that plan without willing it, and human choices are certain without being necessary. Three appendices follow: one reduces the controversy to formal arguments, one takes on Thomas Hobbes on liberty and necessity, and one answers a recent London book on the origin of evil. In 1759 Voltaire's Candide made the doctrine the refrain of the tutor Pangloss.

Key concepts

What does the word ‘theodicy’ mean?

A justification of God: Leibniz’s own coinage, from the Greek words for God and justice. The book that bears it defends God’s goodness, wisdom and justice against the objection from evil. The full title names the three questions at stake together, the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of evil.

What does ‘the best of all possible worlds’ actually claim?

That a perfectly good, wise and powerful God must have chosen the best of the worlds he could have made, not that this world is free of evil. The world is so connected that removing a single evil would change everything, and the best whole may contain parts that, taken alone, are bad. The claim is about the whole.

What was Bayle’s argument, which the Theodicy answers?

That reason cannot defend God’s goodness, justice and freedom against the facts of evil, so the believer must rest on faith. Pierre Bayle, a French Protestant scholar living in Rotterdam, made the case in his Historical and Critical Dictionary. Leibniz thought the surrender both false and dangerous, and the book grew out of discussing Bayle at the Prussian court.

What does ‘certain but not necessary’ mean for human choices?

That a choice can be settled in advance, since God foresees it, without its opposite becoming impossible. Leibniz uses the distinction to keep both God’s foreknowledge and human freedom: what someone will choose is certain, but the choice is not necessary in the way a mathematical truth is. God permits sin within the same plan without willing it.

What are the Theodicy’s three appendices?

Three shorter pieces after the main essays. One reduces the whole controversy to formal arguments, objection by objection. One takes on Thomas Hobbes on liberty and necessity. The third answers a recent London book on the origin of evil. Together they show Leibniz testing his position against three kinds of opponent.

Who is Pangloss, and what did Voltaire do with Leibniz’s doctrine?

The tutor in Voltaire’s Candide of 1759, whose refrain is the Theodicy’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds. Because the Theodicy was the book by which the eighteenth century knew Leibniz, the refrain was aimed at his best-known argument, the one he had set out against Bayle.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Can a perfectly good God have made a world with this much evil in it? Leibniz answers that the best world need not be a world without evil, and Voltaire made the answer a punchline.

A perfectly good, wise and powerful God, Leibniz argues, must have chosen the best of all possible worlds. The best need not mean a world without evil. The world is so connected that removing a single evil would change everything, and the best whole may contain parts that, taken alone, are bad. The claim is about the whole, and it asks for goods and evils to be weighed there rather than one at a time. It made this the book by which the eighteenth century knew Leibniz, and in 1759 Voltaire’s Candide turned it into the refrain of the tutor Pangloss.

  • best possible world
  • possible worlds
  • problem of evil
  • moral evil
  • divine goodness
  • divine wisdom
  • theodicy
  • divine providence

Enter a dialogue

Can Reason Defend God? Leibniz Against Bayle

When reason cannot answer the facts of evil, should the believer simply rest on faith? Bayle said yes, and Leibniz thought that surrender both false and dangerous.

Pierre Bayle, a French Protestant scholar living in Rotterdam, had argued in his Historical and Critical Dictionary that reason cannot defend God’s goodness, justice and freedom against the facts of evil, so the believer must rest on faith. The book grew out of conversations about that argument at the Prussian court, with Queen Sophie Charlotte and others around her. Leibniz wrote it in French to reach beyond the learned, under a title of his own coinage from the Greek for God and justice. One appendix reduces the whole controversy to formal arguments, meeting Bayle on reason’s own ground.

  • faith and reason
  • reason and faith
  • reason
  • argumentation
  • divine justice
  • theology

Enter a dialogue

Sin Permitted, Choice Unforced

If God foresees every choice and permits every sin, what is left of human freedom, and of God’s innocence? Leibniz holds that God permits sin without willing it, and that choices are certain without being necessary.

The argument about freedom runs alongside the argument about the best world. God permits sin as part of the plan without willing it, as a whole may require parts that are bad taken alone. Human choices are certain, since God foresees them, without being necessary, since their opposite remains possible. Leibniz tested the position against Thomas Hobbes in an appendix on liberty and necessity. The full title names the three things at stake together: the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of evil.

  • free will
  • necessity
  • determinism
  • predestination
  • divine foreknowledge
  • divine will
  • sin
  • moral responsibility
  • contingency
  • grace
  • punishment
  • agency

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
784
distinct concepts
748
by passages held, corpus-wide
#84

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “divine providence” and “problem of evil”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 83 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
divine providenceproblem of evil49
free willnecessity38
free willmoral responsibility36
divine providencefree will34
free willproblem of evil25
problem of eviltheodicy22
causationfree will20
divine justiceproblem of evil18
divine providencemoral responsibility18
moral responsibilityproblem of evil15
divine providencetheodicy13
divine justicefree will11
moral responsibilitynecessity9
divine justicetheodicy8
divine providencenecessity8
divine justicedivine providence6
free willtheodicy6
causationmoral responsibility4
causationnecessity4
causationproblem of evil4
divine justicemoral responsibility4
moral responsibilitytheodicy4
necessitytheodicy4
divine justicenecessity3
causationdivine providence2
causationtheodicy1
necessityproblem of evil1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1684 Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et ideis)

    A journal article of 1684, written into the Arnauld–Malebranche quarrel over ideas; its grades of knowledge return in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the New Essays.

     LA
  2. 1691 Whether the Essence of a Body Consists in Extension (Lettre sur la question si l'essence du corps consiste dans l'étendue)

    Against the Cartesian view that body is nothing but extension: a letter to the Paris Journal des Sçavans in 1691, followed by a second in 1693.

     FR
  3. 1695 New System of Nature (Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances)

    Leibniz's first public statement of his system, printed in Paris in 1695; his replies to Foucher and Bayle kept it in the journals until 1698.

     FR
  4. 1698 On Nature Itself (De ipsa natura)

    An answer to Johann Christoph Sturm in the Acta Eruditorum of 1698, defending forces inside created things and tying the dynamics to the metaphysics of substance.

     LA
  5. 1710 Theodicy (Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal) you are here FR
  6. 1717 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Recueil des lettres entre Leibniz et Clarke)

    Ten papers exchanged through the Princess of Wales in 1715–16, cut off by Leibniz's death and published by Clarke in 1717.

     FR
  7. 1718 Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison)

    A companion summary from the same Vienna months as the Monadology, long mistaken for it and printed before it, in 1718.

     FR
  8. 1720 Monadology (Monadologie)

    Written in French in 1714, it was known for over a century only in German and Latin translation.

     FR
  9. 1765 New Essays on Human Understanding (Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain)

    The book-length reply to Locke, written as a dialogue in 1703–04, withheld after Locke's death and first printed in 1765.

     FR
  10. 1840 Discourse Touching the Method of Certitude and the Art of Discovery (Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et l'art d'inventer)

    A plea for royal patronage of the sciences, addressed to an unnamed king, apparently Louis XIV, setting out the method of certainty and art of discovery Leibniz pursued for decades.

     FR
  11. 1840 On the Ultimate Origination of Things (De rerum originatione radicali)

    A short Latin essay of 1697 on why there is a world at all, left in manuscript until 1840.

     LA
  12. 1840 Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit (Considérations sur la doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique)

    A French essay written in 1702 at the Prussian queen's palace outside Berlin, and left unprinted until 1840.

     FR
  13. 1846 Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de métaphysique)

    The opening statement of Leibniz's mature metaphysics, written early in 1686 and left unprinted until 1846.

     FR
  14. 1846 The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Correspondance de Leibniz et d'Arnauld)

    The exchange of 1686 to 1690 between Leibniz and Arnauld over the Discourse on Metaphysics, every letter carried by the Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels.

     FR
  15. 1854 Refutation of Spinoza (Animadversiones ad Joh. Georg. Wachteri librum de recondita Hebraeorum philosophia)

    Private Latin notes on Wachter's book about Spinoza and the Kabbalah, given their title by the French scholar who published them in 1854.

     FR
  16. 1890 Tentamen Anagogicum: An Anagogical Essay in the Investigation of Causes (Essai anagogique dans la recherche des causes)

    A French essay of about 1696, from the years of Leibniz's dynamics, defending final causes against the mechanical philosophers.

     FR
  17. 1903 New Openings (Nouvelles Ouvertures)

    Written in French in 1686, by the Academy edition's dating, and left in manuscript until Couturat printed it in 1903.

     FR
  18. 1903 Preface to the General Science (Préface de la Science générale)

    Probably from 1677, an unfinished preface to the universal language of reasoning, unprinted until 1903.

     FR
  19. 1915 Confessio Philosophi (Confessio philosophi)

    Leibniz's first developed theodicy, a Latin dialogue from his Paris years; revised after Steno's objections, its account of sin returns much changed in the Theodicy of 1710.

     LA
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