My midterm paper will be covering the issues of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s Theodicy and the problem of evil as well as the objections to his argument. In life, I favor optimism over cynicism, but sometimes it can be hard when there are so many horrible things that occur within our world. After reading Leibniz’s theory for the problem of evil and why it occurs, I was moved because he finally put in to words my everlasting faith for the reason God does the things that he does. Leibniz’s theodicy is based on the “best of all possible worlds” argument and his “metaphysical evil” argument. The first argument, which I’ll refer to as worlds, first establishes God’s existence and continues on listing the characteristics of Him. Worlds include
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This argument claims that even if evil was necessary for this “greater good”, that Leibniz coined, it doesn’t justify the existence of evil. Then real world examples are introduced to give merit to the argument, such as a child being diagnosed with cancer or the mass holocaust of innocent lives during the Nazi concentration camps. It says that the amount of moral and natural evil is disproportionate to the amount of good and claims that God, being the greatest possible being He is, could’ve limited the amount of evil or made it proportionate. Leibniz responds eloquently by saying, “A little acid, sharpness, or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar, shadows enhance colors; and even dissonance in the right places gives relief to harmony…” (Theodicy 12 p. 262 .pdf) Leibniz acknowledges others disagreement with the amount of evil or lack of good, but these elements are what makes this world the best possible world. A deeper understanding of this theory is analyzed by Dr. Michael J. Murray, Ph.D. He explains that our world is an actual world and to not have these per say evil elements you would have to go against the laws of physics or mathematics that hold this real world together to prevent the evil from occurring, thus making our world imaginary which would defeat God’s
This argument claims that even if evil was necessary for this “greater good”, that Leibniz coined, it doesn’t justify the existence of evil. Then real world examples are introduced to give merit to the argument, such as a child being diagnosed with cancer or the mass holocaust of innocent lives during the Nazi concentration camps. It says that the amount of moral and natural evil is disproportionate to the amount of good and claims that God, being the greatest possible being He is, could’ve limited the amount of evil or made it proportionate. Leibniz responds eloquently by saying, “A little acid, sharpness, or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar, shadows enhance colors; and even dissonance in the right places gives relief to harmony…” (Theodicy 12 p. 262 .pdf) Leibniz acknowledges others disagreement with the amount of evil or lack of good, but these elements are what makes this world the best possible world. A deeper understanding of this theory is analyzed by Dr. Michael J. Murray, Ph.D. He explains that our world is an actual world and to not have these per say evil elements you would have to go against the laws of physics or mathematics that hold this real world together to prevent the evil from occurring, thus making our world imaginary which would defeat God’s