Abstract

In this study I offer a critique of the interpretation of G. W. Leibniz's doctrine of evil current in English-language Leibniz scholarship, an interpretation which has its origin in Bertrand Russell's pioneering book A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. I offer fresh expositions of Leibniz's doctrines concerning the nature and sources of evil, and of the types of evil , paying particular attention to the fact that Leibniz's theodicy is steeped in the Western Christian tradition of theodicy--self-consciously so. The key to my reinterpretation consists of the thesis that, contrary to what Russell and others suggest, evil is for Leibniz never simply a negation of being or of goodness, but always the absence, or "privation", of a good which should be present. In this respect Leibniz is fully in agreement with such dominant figures in the tradition as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. And an important corollary of this thesis is that Leibniz does not regard what he calls the "original imperfection of the creature"--the inevitable deficiency or limitation of any created being--as an instance of evil, a fact which is important for the correct understanding of Leibniz's project of theodicy