Leibniz in Five Ideas
the essentialsMonads
Reality consists of simple, mind-like substances — monads — “windowless”, each mirroring the whole universe from its own point of view.
Pre-established harmony
Monads do not interact; God synchronized them from the start, like perfectly set clocks.
Principle of sufficient reason
Nothing is without a reason why it is so and not otherwise.
The best of all possible worlds
God, being perfect, chose the best possible world; its evils are necessary to its overall perfection (Theodicy, 1710).
Truths of reason and of fact
Some truths are necessary (their opposite is contradictory); others are contingent, grounded in sufficient reason.
Leibniz invented calculus independently of Newton, designed a calculating machine, dreamed of a universal logical language, and wrote philosophy mostly in letters and short essays such as the Monadology (1714).
His optimism was ruthlessly satirized by Voltaire in Candide (1759), where Dr Pangloss insists, through earthquake, war and syphilis, that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Arthur Schopenhauer later replied that this is the worst of all possible worlds — any worse and it could not exist at all.
Curiosities
did you know?- He invented calculus independently of Newton — and they fought bitterly over priority.
- He designed a mechanical calculator that could multiply and divide.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Is this the best of all possible worlds?
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
Arguments
argument library →The Best of All Possible Worlds
A perfect God must have created the best possible world — so the evils in it must be necessary to the best whole.
- God is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good.
- God had sufficient reason to create one world rather than another.
- A perfectly good and wise being chooses the best.
∴ This world, with all its evils, is the best of all possible worlds.
2 objections
- Voltaire (Candide, 1759): Say that to the victims of the Lisbon earthquake — Pangloss’s optimism is a mockery of suffering.
- Schopenhauer: This is the worst of all possible worlds — any worse and it could not continue to exist.
In Their Own Words
1 quotationsThis is the best of all possible worlds.
Context & when to use it
God, perfectly good and wise, chose the best possible world, evils included.
For optimism and theodicy — usually with Voltaire’s irony.
⚠ The exact phrase is Voltaire’s mocking formula in Candide; Leibniz argues the thesis.
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsThe Enlightenment
The eighteenth-century movement that put reason, science, tolerance and individual liberty at the centre of human affairs — “Sapere aude!”
British Empiricism
The view that all knowledge comes from experience — the mind begins as a blank slate on which the senses write.
Baruch Spinoza
The excommunicated lens-grinder of Amsterdam who identified God with Nature, wrote ethics in the form of geometry, and found freedom in understanding necessity.
Candide
Voltaire’s comic philosophical tale, in which a naïve young man and his optimist tutor suffer every disaster the eighteenth century could offer — ending with “we must cultivate our garden”.
David Hume
The great Scottish sceptic who showed that causation, the self, and induction cannot be justified by reason — and that reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.
What Can We Know?
The relay race of epistemology — from Plato’s Cave to Kant’s categories, via Descartes’ demon and Hume’s billiard balls.