Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who invented the calculus independently of Newton and quarrelled with him about it for the rest of his life, built a calculating machine that multiplied, and set out the binary arithmetic every computer now runs on. He spent forty years as librarian and councillor to the House of Hanover, and much of that time trying to reunite the Lutheran and Catholic churches. The Theodicy is the one book he published, and the word is his.
Works (4)
- Discourse on Metaphysics — Leibniz’s first full statement of his system, sent in outline to Arnauld in 1686: that God acts in the most perfect way, that each substance expresses the whole universe, and that minds are citizens of the City of God. (1 note)
- The Monadology — The ninety numbered propositions in which Leibniz summed up his philosophy two years before his death, ending with God as the monarch of the City of spirits. (1 note)
- The Principles of Nature and of Grace — The companion to the Monadology, written the same year: from the Monads through the principle of sufficient reason to God, the love of God, and the perpetual progress of the blessed. (1 note)
- Theodicy — The only book Leibniz published in his lifetime, written against Pierre Bayle’s argument that the evil in the world cannot be reconciled with a God at once good and almighty. Its answer is that this is the best of all possible worlds — not that it holds no evil, but that no other whole would be better, the evil in it counted. Voltaire wrote Candide against it. This is the one work in the section that is not in the public domain everywhere: the only complete English translation is E. M. Huggard’s of 1951, which Project Gutenberg publishes as public domain in the United States and which may still be in copyright elsewhere. (9 notes)