Theodicy. Freiherr von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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       Freiherr von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

      Theodicy

      Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664110831

Table of Contents

       EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

       I

       II

       PREFACE

       PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON

       ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

       PART ONE

       ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

       PART TWO

       ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

       PART THREE

       APPENDICES

       SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS

       EXCURSUS ON THEODICY

       § 392

       published by the author in Mémoires de Trévoux

       July 1712

       REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'

       OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL' PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON

       CAUSA DEI ASSERTA PER JUSTITIAM EJUS

       INDEX

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION	page 7
PREFACE	49
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON	73
ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, IN THREE PARTS	123, 182, 276
APPENDICES
SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS	377
EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, § 392	389
REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'	393
OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL', PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON	405
CAUSA DEI ASSERTA	443
INDEX	445

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

I

       Table of Contents

      Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for him. Not at all—he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics, he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.

      Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task to open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical position, if there is a present position. If we want an agreed starting-point,