In this paper we shall examine the eighteenth-century reception of Leibniz’sĭoctrine of the best world in order to get a clearer understanding of what its fate Has become accepted wisdom not through sheer weight of evidence but through sheer Optimism was devastated by the Lisbon earthquake is a commentators’ fiction that Of these possible claims is intended as all are false.

Optimism gaining fewer adherents, or both. It is unclear, for example, whether the claim is that theĮarthquake led declared optimists to abandon optimism, or whether it resulted in Second, they are surprisingly vague about how exactly the Lisbon earthquake is supposed First, they are invariably made withoutĪny supporting evidence, as if they were somehow self-evident or self-confirming. There are two curious features of such claims. Good while, at least until the 1755 Lisbon earthquake shattered the rosiest glasses Many successors seem to have satisfied the eighteenth century’s needs for a God’s ways intelligible to man, the efforts of Leibniz, Bishop King, and their In spite of all the questionable and even naive assumptions that went into making Of the Enlightenment collapsed in the experience of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755’ Moltmann claimed that ‘The optimistic conception of the world held by the thinkers Optimism of the Enlightenment suddenly turns into pessimism’ ( Weinrich 1971, 71). The Lisbon marks the turning point of the century, when the 1 Decades later, Harald Weinrich wrote: ‘For all of Europe, ‘The earthquake unsettled the unthinking comfort of optimism’ More than a century ago, Wilhelm Lütgert claimed that ‘England,įrance and Germany were dominated by optimism at the beginning of the 18th The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that itĮnjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massiveĮarthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. As we shall see, while Leibniz’s doctrine did win a good number of adherents in the 1720s and 1730s, especially in Germany, support for it had largely dried up by the mid-1740s moreover, while opponents of Leibniz’s doctrine were few and far between in the 1710s and 1720s, they became increasing vocal in the 1730s and afterwards, between them producing an array of objections that served to make Leibnizian optimism both philosophically and theologically toxic years before the Lisbon earthquake struck.

In this paper we shall examine the reception of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world in the eighteenth century in order to get a clearer understanding of what its fate really was. Despite its long history, this story is nothing more than a commentators’ fiction that has become accepted wisdom not through sheer weight of evidence but through sheer frequency of repetition. The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. Lloyd also runs a website that contains many of his translations of Leibniz’s writings: X close In addition to numerous journal articles he has published eight books: Leibniz Reinterpreted (Continuum, 2006), Shorter Leibniz Texts (Continuum, 2006), Leibniz and the Two Sophies (University of Toronto Press, 2011), Leibniz’s Monadology (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Leibniz on God and Religion (Bloomsbury, 2016), Tercentenary Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Leibniz (Palgrave, 2017), The Philosophical Writings of Prémontval (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), and Proofs of God in Early Modern Europe (Baylor University Press, 2018).

His principal research interests are Early Modern Philosophy (especially Leibniz), and Philosophy of Religion.

He has previously taught at Lancaster University, the University of Central Lancashire, and the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. Lloyd Strickland is Professor of Philosophy and Intellectual History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Optimism philosophy