Lloyd Strickland

Leibniz starts with the notion of God as the most perfect substance and then proceeds to draw out a series of consequences of this, such as that God exists, that he is eternal, unique, incorporeal, a mind, and omniscient, omnipotent, good and just. All of these are discoverable by unpacking the definition of God as the most perfect substance. The text ends with the further demonstrations that God’s foreknowledge is compatible with human free will, that God is not the cause of sin, and that our misery cannot be imputed to him. All of this takes place in about 7 pages of printed text!

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Originally published in Natur und Subjekt, eds. Herbert Breger and Jurgen Herbst (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), III: 1126-1133. Republished here with thanks to Dr Strickland, who also maintains the related “Leibniz Translations” website.