Leibniz Was a Genius for the Ages. Can We Give Him a Break?

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Hume

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Gottfried Leibniz was not the first philosopher to think that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He may have been the unluckiest, suffering the posthumous fate of being skewered in the best of all possible parodies, Voltaire’s “Candide” (1759).

Leibniz had, independently, invented calculus, but it’s Leibniz’s notation that’s still used today. But he will never quite live down Voltaire’s ridicule.

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He Was a Genius for the Ages. Can We Give Him a Break?

Gottfried Leibniz made conceptual advances that lie behind our digital world. Yet for centuries he was mocked for a misstep.
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Voltaire completely misunderstood Leibniz.
 
Dr. Pangloss was kind of a ridiculous character but since I came to Leibniz before I came to Candide I actually really like Leibniz. And there's no way he could have been as personally unpleasant and nasty as Newton with whom he shares the invention of Calculus.
 
Daylight63 said:
Dr. Pangloss was kind of a ridiculous character but since I came to Leibniz before I came to Candide I actually really like Leibniz. And there's no way he could have been as personally unpleasant and nasty as Newton with whom he shares the invention of Calculus.
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Many ignore Leibniz's concept of possible worlds. God does not invent the universe, only makes physical one of the possible worlds.
 
Hume said:
Many ignore Leibniz's concept of possible worlds. God does not invent the universe, only makes physical one of the possible worlds.
Click to expand...

I rather like the "Best of all possible worlds" explanation for the problem of evil in Christianity. It was immensely helpful to me when I was still a believer.
 
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