Leibniz on the Problem of Evil

by Rateau, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780199996506
• ISBN10: 0199996504
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780190054564
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2019-06-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Paul Rateau (Ph.D., 2005, Philosophy, University of Strasbourg, France) teaches early modern philosophy at Pantheon-Sorbonne University (Paris, France) since 2008. He is an alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Fontenay/SaintCloud, France).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction
1. The Existence of Evil
2. Evil Considered in Relation to Justice
3. A Vocation: To Defend God's Justice

Chapter 1: Difficulties Concerning the Justification of God in the Years Prior to 1673
1.1 Early Reading and the Relation of Justice to Power
1.2 A Just God, who is nevertheless author of sin?

Chapter 2: The Confession of a Philosopher: Divine Justice and the Necessity of Sin
2.1 God as Ground, but not Author of Evil
2.2 Permission of Evil and the Distinction of Two Kinds of Necessity: A Limited Rehabilitation

Chapter 3: Theoretical Changes after the Confession of a Philosopher: Towards a New Conception of God, the Possible and Divine Concurrence with Evil
3.1 A Revised Theology and Metaphysics
3.2 The Origin of Evil and God's Physical Concurrence
3.3 God's Moral Concurrence with Evil and the Relation of Part to Whole

Chapter 4: The Genesis of Theodicy: Its Scientific and Apologetic Aims
4.1 From the Project of "Theodicies" to the Composition of the Essays on Theodicy: Systematic Necessity and Occasional Cause
4.2 Theodicy as Defense: Ignorance of Detail, Presumptions and Probabilities

Chapter 5: The Best of All Possible Worlds and Divine Permission of Evil
5.1 The Thesis of the Best of All Possible Worlds
5.2 The Moral Necessity of the Divine Choice
5.3 God's Moral Concurrence with Evil: the Doctrine of Permission

Chapter 6: Evil in Being and in the Actions of Creatures: Reality or Appearance?
6.1 God's Physical Concurrence, the Origin and Nature of Evil
6.2 The Inertial Model and its Application to Creaturely Actions: From Peccability to Malice
6.3 Real Defect or False Appearance: A Dual Conception of Evil

Chapter 7: Human Freedom and Principles of Action
7.1 The Labyrinth of the Free and the Necessary and the Prerequisites of Freedom
7.2 From the Ideal to the Real: the Exercise of Freedom and the Maxims of Leibnizian Ethics

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index