Gottfried Leibniz and the Problem of Evil
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
If God is all-powerful and all-good, why is there so much evil in the world? In the Theodicy, Gottfried Leibniz, philosopher, mathematician, and trained lawyer, took it upon himself to mount God’s defence.
Many people who have heard of Gottfried Leibniz first heard of him through Voltaire’s satirical Candide (1759), in which Leibniz is caricatured as the deluded Dr Pangloss, ‘the greatest philosopher of the Holy Empire’, a parody that is hard to get past. Insofar as Leibniz is remembered, it is for holding, in the words of Voltaire, that ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’.
Unlike his predecessors Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz received a university education in philosophy, even though, in his day, university philosophy amounted to little more than Aristotelian-Christian Scholasticism. In April 1661, at the age of 14, he enrolled at Leipzig University to study liberal arts. Five years later, in 1666, Altdorf University granted him a doctorate in law, along with the offer of a professorship.
However, he declined the professorship, deeming, perhaps, that a university might not be the best place for an original thinker.
Still, Leibniz now had a licence to practise law. Later, in the Theodicy (1710), he would pose as God’s own lawyer—to defend God against the charge of having introduced evil into the world. ‘Theodicy’, a word that he himself coined, derives from the Greek for ‘vindication of God’.
The Problem of Evil
In 1755, nearly 40 years after Leibniz’s death, Lisbon suffered a magnitude 9 earthquake, sparking fires that led to greater devastation than the earthquake itself. Voltaire has Candide crawling through charred ruins, saying to himself, ‘If this is the best of all possible worlds, what can the rest be like?’
This so-called problem, or paradox, of evil has the pedigree of antiquity, having been attributed by Lactantius (d. 325 CE) to Epicurus (d. 270 BCE): God either wishes to take away evils, but cannot; or he can, but does not wish to. In the first instance, he is less than omnipotent; in the second, less than benevolent.
In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), David Hume eloquently restated the problem:
Epicurus’ old questions remain unanswered. Is [God] willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
Leibniz’s Defence
In the Theodicy, Leibniz’s response to the Problem of Evil is that God, having created the best of all possible worlds, that is, the one that is simplest in theories while being richest in phenomena, does not cause evil but permits it for the greater good. Evil results indirectly or accidentally from the absence of good. Because God did not create evil, evil is not a substance and has no proper existence.
What from our limited perspective appears to be evil in fact contributes to the greater goodness of Creation, like shadows in a painting which bring out its colours, or discordant notes in a piece of music which contribute to its richness.
Leibniz distinguishes between three forms of evil:
- Metaphysical evil, which is the necessary imperfection or limitation in creation—since created things are not God, and if they could be perfect, would merge back into God.
- Natural evil, which is pain and suffering, and a consequence of metaphysical evil.
- Moral evil, which arises from the poorly exercised free will of rational minds, and leads to natural evil.
God could have created a world without minds. But although such a world would have been free from moral and natural evil (and, so, much less evil), it would not have been the best of possible worlds.
Our Role in All This
What’s more, the world, in man, carries within itself the potential for its own optimisation. We can work, first, to improve ourselves, and then, to improve the world and reduce suffering. If asked, what is the meaning of life, Leibniz would reply, ‘To perfect God’s creation!’
Schopenhauer, that paradigm of a pessimist, riffing upon Leibniz, would remark that ours is the worst of all possible worlds.
And if it were any worse, it wouldn’t exist at all—a hypothesis that humanity seems keen to test.
Continue Exploring
To explore Leibniz’s ideas in their historical context—and discover how they influenced Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—see my book, The German Greeks.
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