Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Books

This volume contains papers that represent Leibniz’s early thoughts on the problem of evil, centering on a dialogue, the Confessio philosophi, in which he formulates a general account of God’s relation to sin and evil that becomes a fixture in his thinking. How can God be understood to be the ultimate cause, asks Leibniz, without God being considered as the author of sin, a conclusion incompatible with God’s holiness? Leibniz’s attempts to justify the way of God to humans lead him to deep discussion of related topics: the nature of free choice, the problems of necessitarianism and fatalism, the nature of divine justice and holiness. All but one of the writings presented here are available in English for the first time.

The Yale Leibniz is a series of books containing texts and translations of the works of G.W. Leibniz. The series is intended to produce neither a complete edition of Leibniz's writings nor a comprehensive selected works edition...The focus of the series is Leibniz's philosophical thought, but this is interpreted broadly enough to include not only his metaphysics and epistemology, but also his theology, his physics, and even aspects of his mathematics.

With wide format pages to give generous margins for notes, the editor presents the latest Leibniz scholarship in an introduction, and also includes notes, selected criticism and chronology of Leibnitz's life and times.

In order to be truly free, must you act arbitrarily? If an event did not happen, could it have happened? Since there is evil, and God could have made the world without evil, did God fail to pick the best course? Grappling with such simple--yet still intriguing--puzzles, Leibniz was able to present attractively his new theories of the real and the phenomenal, freewill and determinism, and the relation between minds and bodies. Theodicy was Leibniz's only book-length work to be published in his lifetime, and for many years the work by which he was known to the world. Fully at home with the latest scientific advances, Leibniz ultimately rejected the new atomistic philosophies of Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes, and drew upon the old cosmology of Aristotelian scholasticism. There could be no conflict, he argued, between faith and reason, freedom and necessity, natural and divine law. Ingeniously defending his postulate of pre-established harmony, Leibniz made important advances in the precise analysis of concepts.

Introduction to Leibniz's metaphysics, including his conception of physical substance, the motion and resistance of bodies, and the role of the divine within the dynamic universe.

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This collection of letters between two great thinkers of the 17th century provides fascinating insights into their intellectual lives. Touching on a wide range of topics, from theology to mathematics, these letters offer a glimpse into the vibrant intellectual culture of their time.