The Theodicee is the only full-length philosophical book Leibniz published during his lifetime. The Monadology and the New Essays stayed in manuscript, and the enormous correspondence stayed in desk drawers all over Europe; this is his most sustained published treatment of the problem of evil, for which he had to invent a word. A theodicy is a justification of God: an answer to the question of how a God who is good, wise, and all-powerful can preside over a world so full of evil. The book grew out of years of conversation with Sophie Charlotte, the philosopher-queen of Prussia. Its target was Pierre Bayle, who had argued that on the problem of evil reason fails and faith must simply shut its eyes. Leibniz's answer became the most famous and most mocked formula in modern philosophy: this is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire wrote Candide to ridicule the idea. Philosophers have been dealing with it, one way or another, ever since.
This is the fourth edition of the translation, revised from end to end by Johann Christoph Gottsched, professor of philosophy at Leipzig and for a generation the arbiter of German letters, with his own notes and additions, and with Fontenelle's eulogy of Leibniz, newly translated, set at the head in place of an introduction. The dedication, to Friedrich Christian, Royal Prince of Poland and Electoral Prince of Saxony, strikes a note of homecoming. Nearly thirty years after his death, Gottsched writes, Leibniz, a son of Leipzig grown famous in all the world, returns at last to his fatherland to lay his greatest and most important work at the feet of an enlightened prince. Among the new additions to this fourth edition is a German rendering of the late Principles of Nature and Grace, the little summa of monads and pre-established harmony that Leibniz drew up in his last years.
The appendices at the back of the volume are why we wanted this copy. Gottsched prints a description of Leibniz's calculating machine, a pioneering machine designed to multiply as well as add, with a folding copperplate that lays out its brass cylinders and dials for the reader. Leibniz's binary arithmetic, reprinted here from Tentzel's Curiöse Bibliothek, where it had first appeared in German, is taught through worked examples, addition and multiplication carried out in nothing but zeros and ones. It is then applied to the sixty-four hexagrams of Fu Xi from the Chinese Book of Changes, printed in a full table with each hexagram set against its binary value, the broken and unbroken lines read as zeros and ones. Leibniz was convinced that his arithmetic held the key to the oldest riddle of China, and the appendix credits Leibniz with finding an Ariadne’s thread through the hexagrams. A reader in 1744 could hold in one hand the arithmetic that computers run on to this day.
The copy in hand is in its contemporary half vellum, the spine with a gilt-lettered label, the boards covered in decorated paper, the edges sprinkled blue. The engraved portrait shows Leibniz in his great wig, above Latin verses in his praise. The boards are rubbed with losses to the paper covering and the vellum is soiled and spotted; the text shows scattered foxing and some toning, with a single wormhole running through the lower outer corner as far as page 460, well clear of the text, and some fraying to the margins of the preliminary leaves. Complete, with the portrait, the folding plate of the calculating machine, and the full register, the printer's colophon of Zacharias Heinrich Eisfeld of Leipzig at its end.
LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von (1646-1716). Theodicee, das ist, Versuch von der Güte Gottes, Freyheit des Menschen, und vom Ursprunge des Bösen, bey dieser vierten Ausgabe durchgehends verbessert, auch mit verschiedenen Zusätzen und Anmerkungen vermehrt von Johann Christoph Gottscheden. Hannover and Leipzig: Verlag sel. Nicol. Försters und Sohns Erben, 1744. [Fourth edition of the German Theodicee, the first edited by Gottsched.]
Physical Description: Octavo (18.5 x 13 cm), [12] leaves, 64, 843 pp., [26] leaves of register, with engraved portrait frontispiece of Leibniz and one folding engraved plate of the calculating machine at p. 826; colophon at the end of the register (Leipzig, Zacharias Heinrich Eisfeld, 1744). With the Fontenelle eulogy in place of an introduction, the new additions to this fourth edition including the Principles of Nature and Grace in German, and the concluding appendices on the calculating machine and on binary arithmetic, with the table of the sixty-four hexagrams of Fu Xi.
Binding: Contemporary half vellum over boards covered in decorated paper, spine with gilt-lettered label; edges sprinkled blue.
Condition: Boards rubbed with losses to the paper covering, vellum soiled and spotted; text lightly foxed and toned in places, occasionally browned; a single wormhole to the lower outer corner as far as p. 460, well clear of the text; marginal fraying to some preliminary leaves. A sound, unsophisticated copy.
The Theodicee is the only full-length philosophical book Leibniz published during his lifetime. The Monadology and the New Essays stayed in manuscript, and the enormous correspondence stayed in desk drawers all over Europe; this is his most sustained published treatment of the problem of evil, for which he had to invent a word. A theodicy is a justification of God: an answer to the question of how a God who is good, wise, and all-powerful can preside over a world so full of evil. The book grew out of years of conversation with Sophie Charlotte, the philosopher-queen of Prussia. Its target was Pierre Bayle, who had argued that on the problem of evil reason fails and faith must simply shut its eyes. Leibniz's answer became the most famous and most mocked formula in modern philosophy: this is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire wrote Candide to ridicule the idea. Philosophers have been dealing with it, one way or another, ever since.
This is the fourth edition of the translation, revised from end to end by Johann Christoph Gottsched, professor of philosophy at Leipzig and for a generation the arbiter of German letters, with his own notes and additions, and with Fontenelle's eulogy of Leibniz, newly translated, set at the head in place of an introduction. The dedication, to Friedrich Christian, Royal Prince of Poland and Electoral Prince of Saxony, strikes a note of homecoming. Nearly thirty years after his death, Gottsched writes, Leibniz, a son of Leipzig grown famous in all the world, returns at last to his fatherland to lay his greatest and most important work at the feet of an enlightened prince. Among the new additions to this fourth edition is a German rendering of the late Principles of Nature and Grace, the little summa of monads and pre-established harmony that Leibniz drew up in his last years.
The appendices at the back of the volume are why we wanted this copy. Gottsched prints a description of Leibniz's calculating machine, a pioneering machine designed to multiply as well as add, with a folding copperplate that lays out its brass cylinders and dials for the reader. Leibniz's binary arithmetic, reprinted here from Tentzel's Curiöse Bibliothek, where it had first appeared in German, is taught through worked examples, addition and multiplication carried out in nothing but zeros and ones. It is then applied to the sixty-four hexagrams of Fu Xi from the Chinese Book of Changes, printed in a full table with each hexagram set against its binary value, the broken and unbroken lines read as zeros and ones. Leibniz was convinced that his arithmetic held the key to the oldest riddle of China, and the appendix credits Leibniz with finding an Ariadne’s thread through the hexagrams. A reader in 1744 could hold in one hand the arithmetic that computers run on to this day.
The copy in hand is in its contemporary half vellum, the spine with a gilt-lettered label, the boards covered in decorated paper, the edges sprinkled blue. The engraved portrait shows Leibniz in his great wig, above Latin verses in his praise. The boards are rubbed with losses to the paper covering and the vellum is soiled and spotted; the text shows scattered foxing and some toning, with a single wormhole running through the lower outer corner as far as page 460, well clear of the text, and some fraying to the margins of the preliminary leaves. Complete, with the portrait, the folding plate of the calculating machine, and the full register, the printer's colophon of Zacharias Heinrich Eisfeld of Leipzig at its end.
LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von (1646-1716). Theodicee, das ist, Versuch von der Güte Gottes, Freyheit des Menschen, und vom Ursprunge des Bösen, bey dieser vierten Ausgabe durchgehends verbessert, auch mit verschiedenen Zusätzen und Anmerkungen vermehrt von Johann Christoph Gottscheden. Hannover and Leipzig: Verlag sel. Nicol. Försters und Sohns Erben, 1744. [Fourth edition of the German Theodicee, the first edited by Gottsched.]
Physical Description: Octavo (18.5 x 13 cm), [12] leaves, 64, 843 pp., [26] leaves of register, with engraved portrait frontispiece of Leibniz and one folding engraved plate of the calculating machine at p. 826; colophon at the end of the register (Leipzig, Zacharias Heinrich Eisfeld, 1744). With the Fontenelle eulogy in place of an introduction, the new additions to this fourth edition including the Principles of Nature and Grace in German, and the concluding appendices on the calculating machine and on binary arithmetic, with the table of the sixty-four hexagrams of Fu Xi.
Binding: Contemporary half vellum over boards covered in decorated paper, spine with gilt-lettered label; edges sprinkled blue.
Condition: Boards rubbed with losses to the paper covering, vellum soiled and spotted; text lightly foxed and toned in places, occasionally browned; a single wormhole to the lower outer corner as far as p. 460, well clear of the text; marginal fraying to some preliminary leaves. A sound, unsophisticated copy.
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