Best of all possible worlds

In Leibniz's works, the argument about the best of all possible worlds appears in the context of his theodicy, a word that he coined by combining the Greek words Theos, 'God', and dikē, 'justice'. Its object was to solve the problem of evil, that is, to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a perfectly good, all-powerful and all-knowing God, who would seem required to prevent it; as such, the name comes from Leibniz's conceiving of the project as the vindication of God's justice, namely against the charges of injustice brought against him by such evils. from the paragraphs 53–55 of his Monadology, which run as follows:Since this is a very compact exposition, the remainder of this section will explain the argument in more words. While the text refers to "possible universes", this article will often adopt the more common usage "possible worlds", which refers to the same thing, which is explained next. As Leibniz said in the Theodicy, this term should not be misunderstood as referring only to a single planet or reality, since it refers to the sum of everything that exists: Possible worlds Possible worlds, according to Leibniz's theory, are combinations of beings which are possible together, that is, compossible. A being is possible, for Leibniz, when it is logically possible, i.e., when its definition involves no contradiction. For example, a married bachelor is impossible because a "bachelor" is, by definition, an unmarried man, which contradicts "married". But a unicorn, if defined as a horse with a horn, contains no contradiction, so that such a being is possible, even if none exist in the actual world. Beings are possible together, in turn, when they do not enter into contradiction with each other. For instance, it is logically possible that a meteor might have fallen from the sky onto Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's head soon after he was born, killing him. But it is not logically possible that what happens in a given world (e.g. that Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia) also does not happen in the same world (i.e. that Jimmy Wales did not found Wikipedia). While both of these events are logically possible in themselves, they are not logically possible together, or compossible – so, they cannot form part of the same possible world. Leibniz claims in §53, then, that there are infinitely many of these possible worlds, or combinations of compossible beings, in the ideas of God. These are the worlds which God could possibly bring into existence, since not even God, according to Leibniz, could create a world which contains a contradiction. in the Monadology, which is the work at hand, he described it as follows:Since Leibniz adopted his principle, he could not admit that God chose to create this world rather than another – that God's choice was "thus and not otherwise" – for no reason, or "arbitrarily". Leibniz then claims that the only possible reason for the choice between these possible worlds is "the fitness or the degree of perfection" which they possess – i.e., the quality which makes worlds better than others, so that the world with the greatness "fitness" or "perfection" is the best one. As the philosophers Michael Murray and Sean Greenberg interpreted it, this claim may be understood by the consideration that basing the choice on any other quality about the worlds would have been arbitrary, contrary to the PSR. Leibniz claims that God's choice is caused not only by its being the most reasonable, but also by God's perfect goodness, a traditional claim about God which Leibniz accepted. evil is the absence of good, and accordingly, it is technically wrong to say that God created evil, properly speaking. Rather, he created a world which was imperfectly good. According to the privation theory of evil, all examples of evils are analysed as consisting in the absence of some good that ought to be there, or is natural to a thing – for instance, disease is the absence of health, blindness is the absence of sight, and vice is the absence of virtue. Evil may be said to exist in the same way the hole of a donut exists: the donut was created, but the hole itself was not made, it was just never filled in – it is an absence. Leibniz did, nevertheless, concede that God has created a world with evil in it, and could have created a world without it. He claimed, however, that the existence of evil does not necessarily mean a worse world, so that this is still the best world that God could have made. In fact, Leibniz claimed that the presence of evil may make for a better world, insofar as "it may happen that the evil is accompanied by a greater good" – as he said, "an imperfection in the part may be required for a perfection in the whole". ==Before Leibniz==

The philosopher Calvin Normore has claimed that, according to the Stoics, this is the best of all possible worlds, and that this opinion was shared by Peter Abelard. Avicenna argued that divine providence ensures that this is the best of all possible worlds. Thomas Aquinas, in article 6 of question 25 of the first part of his Summa Theologiae, had affirmed that God can always make better what he has made, but only by making more things; "the present creation being supposed, cannot be better." ==After Leibniz==

18th century Following the devastating Lisbon Earthquake (1 November 1755), which occurred decades after the publication of the Theodicy (1710), Leibniz's philosophical optimism and theodicy incurred considerable criticism both from his fellow Enlightenment philosophers and from Christian theologians. Arthur Schopenhauer argued, contrary to Leibniz, that our world must be the worst of all possible worlds, because if it were only a little worse, it could not continue to exist. 20th century The Theodicy was deemed illogical by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell argues that moral and physical evil must result from metaphysical evil (imperfection). But imperfection is merely limitation; if existence is good, as Leibniz maintains, then the mere existence of evil requires that evil also be good. In addition, libertarian Christian theology (not related to political libertarianism) defines sin as not necessary but contingent, the result of free will. Russell maintains that Leibniz failed to logically show that metaphysical necessity (divine will) and human free will are not incompatible or contradictory. He also claims that when Leibniz analyzes the propositions, he is "ambiguous or doubtful..." (O'Briant). That is, Leibniz does not sound sure, and is unsure of himself when he writes his premises; and they do not work together without making Leibniz sound unsure of himself. 21st century The philosopher Alvin Plantinga criticized Leibniz's theodicy by arguing that there probably is not such a thing as the best of all possible worlds, since one can always conceive a better world, such as a world with one more morally righteous person. The philosopher William C. Lane defended Leibniz from Plantinga's criticism and also claimed that Leibniz's theory has pandeistic consequences:{{blockquote|If divine becoming were complete, God's kenosisGod's self-emptying for the sake of lovewould be total. In this pandeistic view, nothing of God would remain separate and apart from what God would become. Any separate divine existence would be inconsistent with God's unreserved participation in the lives and fortunes of the actualized phenomena." and James Franklin, who argues that goods and evils in creation are interconnected with mathematical necessity and hence cannot be separated by divine power. ==See also==