Theodicy

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — translated by E. M. Huggard (1951), from Project Gutenberg.

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. Public domain in the US only.

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Contents (9)

1. Preface
2. Preliminary Dissertation on the Conformity of Faith with Reason
3. Essays on the Justice of God: Part 1
4. Essays on the Justice of God: Part 2
5. Essays on the Justice of God: Part 3
6. Summary of the Controversy Reduced to Formal Arguments
7. Excursus on Theodicy
8. Reflexions on Hobbes’s Work on Freedom, Necessity and Chance
9. Observations on the Book Concerning the Origin of Evil