Theodicy
Theodicy
Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's Edition of the Collected Philosophical Works, 1875-90
Book Excerpt
[13]
There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of scientific
thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws of motion
could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if his general
view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much the worse for
the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's more strictly
metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that standard of metaphysical
adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new metaphysicians? His own
disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he learnt it from Reason
herself; but the answer will not pass with us. Leibniz reasoned, indeed,
but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would he have got anywhere if he
had. His conception of metaphysical reason was what his early scholastic
training had made it.
There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been taught,
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