Leibniz: Philosophy and Theodicy

His argument for God, suffering, and his explanation for evil

By: Lucy Gostwick

Leibniz at the University of Leipzig

Born in Leipzig, Leibniz’s father was an established professor of philosophy, who died when he was just six years old. The young Leibniz was a widely recognised as a child prodigy since he had grasped Latin by the age of eight and Greek by the age of twelve. Leibniz started at the University of Leipzig gaining his doctorate in law in 1666.

Early Encounters with Descartes, Spinoza, and Pascal

The early years of his career he spent as a diplomat in France, England and Holland, where he met a number of influential intellectual figures. In Paris he met the mathematicians Renee Descartes and Blaise Pascal, and in London he became acquainted with the chemist Robert Boyle and in Holland, the eminent Spinoza.

Leibniz's Connection to Sir Isaac Newton

He eventually settled in Hanover, devoting his adult life to devising a universal scheme of human knowledge. Leibniz is widely remembered for having discovered a system of calculus, independently to Sir Isaac Newton, which continues to be used today.

Leibniz's Philosophy and the Existence of God

Leibniz, like many thinkers of his time, was a theist - in other words he believed in God. He thought that the universe was composed of substances, chosen and maintained by God. He declared in his Theodicy that God created the world to be the best of all possible worlds, since God, as a benevolent deity, would not have created anything different. This is a difficult assumption for the modern reader to digest, as we are surrounded by examples of evil every day in the news – take 9/11 for example.

Leibniz's Theodicy and the Existence of Evil and Suffering

Leibniz was, however, able to explain the existence of evil by saying that God allows it temporarily for the greater good. Leibniz maintained that everything in the universe was explicable, and labelled this the “principle of sufficient reason”: "There cannot," he wrote, "be any true or existent fact, or any true proposition, without there being a sufficient reason why it should be so and not otherwise" (Monadology, par. 32.) . Thus evil exists in the world for precise reasons. Leibniz argued that we cannot know the effect of removing certain evils in the world since we cannot see the world from an infinite perspective.

These arguments continue amongst theologians and philosophers of religion. For further debates on this subject, see Great thinkers.