Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal
- Language:
- French
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 712 passages
Cite this work
- APAGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. (n.d.). Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leibniz/essais-de-theodicee-sur-la-bonte-de-dieu-la-liberte-de-l-homme-et-l-origine-du-mal
- MLAGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leibniz/essais-de-theodicee-sur-la-bonte-de-dieu-la-liberte-de-l-homme-et-l-origine-du-mal.
- ChicagoGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leibniz/essais-de-theodicee-sur-la-bonte-de-dieu-la-liberte-de-l-homme-et-l-origine-du-mal.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The only long book Leibniz published in his lifetime, in 1710, and the text that put the word 'theodicy' into circulation: the defence of God in the face of evil.
Context and history
Written in French and aimed at the scepticism of Pierre Bayle, who held that the evil of the world cannot be reconciled by reason with a good and omnipotent God. Leibniz's answer is that this is the best of all possible worlds — which does not mean that it is good, but that any other compatible arrangement of things would be worse on balance; evil enters as the unavoidable limitation of what is finite. Voltaire laughed at this in 'Candide', and the caricature has survived better than the argument: it is worth reading the original before deciding whether Doctor Pangloss represents it. Bayle is in the corpus, and the two works read very well together.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
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