New Essays on Leibniz's Theodicy

289 Pages·2014·2.14 MB·English

by  Larry M. Jorgensen

New Essays on Leibniz’s Theodicy

New Essays on
Leibniz’s Theodicy
EDITED BY
Larry M. Jorgensen
and Samuel Newlands
1
1
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For Caitlin and Kristy

Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to several individuals and institutions for help-
ing us with this volume. First and foremost, we would like to thank everyone who took
part in the “Leibniz’s Theodicy: Context and Content” conference at the University of
Notre Dame in 2010. Many of the essays in this volume sprang from that conference,
and we are indebted to the commentators, session chairs, and audience members for
their fruitful and challenging engagements. A special note of thanks goes to Michael
Rea for his help in organizing the event. We are also grateful to Peter Momtchiloff and
his team at Oxford University Press for their enthusiastic support and graceful help
in bringing the collection to press, as well as two anonymous readers of the original
manuscript.
We would also like to thank the John Templeton Foundation for their generous and
sustained funding of this project, as well as the Center for Philosophy of Religion at
the University of Notre Dame and Skidmore College. Thanks also to our contribu-
tors for their diligent and timely work on this project, and for the encouragement we
have received for the volume from others in the early modern philosophy community,
especially Sean Greenberg, Michael Hickson, Brandon Look, Todd Ryan, and Robert
Sleigh. As in all of our philosophical endeavors, we have been blessed by the unfailing
love and support of our wives, to whom this volume is dedicated, and our children,
who keep us humble.
Additional support for this volume came from the “Problem of Evil in Modern
and Contemporary Thought” research project, housed at the Center for Philosophy
of Religion at the University Notre Dame. For more information on the project, see
<http://evilandtheodicy.com>.

Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
List of Contributors xv
Introduction 1
Larry M. Jorgensen and Samuel Newlands
1. Prefacing the Theodicy 13
Christia Mercer
2. Which “Reason”? Bayle on the Intractability of Evil 43
Kristen Irwin
3. Is Leibniz’s Theodicy a Variation on a Theme by Malebranche? 55
Nicholas Jolley
4. Justice and Circumstances: Theodicy as Universal Religion 71
Donald Rutherford
5. The Theoretical Foundations of the Leibnizian Theodicy
and its Apologetic Aim 92
Paul Rateau
6. Metaphysical Evil Revisited 112
Maria Rosa Antognazza
7. Moral Evil and Divine Concurrence in the Theodicy 135
Tad M. Schmaltz
8. Vindicatio Dei: Evil as a Result of God’s Free Choice of the Best 153
Michael J. Murray
9. Leibniz’s Dilemma on Predestination 172
Agustín Echavarría
10. Justice, Happiness, and Perfection in Leibniz’s City of God 197
Robert Merrihew Adams
11. Monads and the Theodicy: Reading Leibniz 218
Daniel Garber
12. Leibniz’s Theodicy as a Critique of Spinoza and Bayle—and
Blueprint for the Philosophy Wars of the 18th Century 233
Jonathan Israel
Bibliography 245
Index  255