Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who invented calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics and statistics. He has been called the ‘last universal genius’ due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became less common during the Industrial Revolution and spread of specialized labor after his lifetime.
As a philosopher, Leibniz was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism. Leibniz’s philosophical thinking appears fragmented because his philosophical writings consist mainly of a multitude of short pieces: journal articles, manuscripts published long after his death, and letters to correspondents.
We propose to our readers today
A Philosopher’s Creed (
Confessio Philosophi, 1673), a philosophical dialogue that represent Leibniz’s early thoughts on the problem of evil, in which he formulates a general account of God’s relation to sin and evil that becomes a fixture in his thinking.