Leibniz on the Problem of Evil

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716

(Wikimedia Commons)

-Discourse on Metaphysics (written in 1686, but not published until 1846)

-Theodicy (Essays of Theodicy on the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of evil) (1710)

-New Essays on Human Understanding (completed 1705; published in 1765)

Leibniz's aim in the Theodicy is to explain how there can be an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God, given that there is so much evil in the world. Below is a link to some images illustrating the themes Leibniz is thinking about. Note: some of the images are disturbing news photos.

http://digitalcollections.library.yale.edu/GroupsView.aspx?qid=5141

From Voltaire, "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster [1755]; Or, an Examination of the Axiom, 'All is Well' ":

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth!

Affrighted gathering of human kind!

Eternal lingering of useless pain!

Come, ye philosophers, who cry, "All's well,"

And contemplate this ruin of a world.

Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,

This child and mother heaped in common wreck,

These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—

A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,

Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,

Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,

In racking torment end their stricken lives.

To those expiring murmurs of distress,

To that appalling spectacle of woe,

Will ye reply: "You do but illustrate

The iron laws that chain the will of God"?

Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:

"God is avenged: the wage of sin is death"?

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived

That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?

--Translated by Joseph McCabe, 1912. Full text here.

For an illuminating brief overview of the main doctrines of Leibniz's philosophical system, focusing mostly on his metaphysics and philosophy of language, watch this video of a conversation with Anthony Quinton on the philosophies of Leibniz and Spinoza.

For a fuller overview of his system, which claims controversially that there are really two systems--one religious and for the vulgar, the other philosophical and for the learned--listen to this recording of Bertrand Russell, "Leibniz," from his great History of Western Philosophy (1945).