The Roots of Theodicy. Some Leibniz’s Remarks about Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire

Since, at the age .of :fifteen, he read the De servo arbitrio by Martin Luther and the De /ibero arbitrio by Lorenzo Vqlla, Leibniz became interested in theological matters and in the issue of human freedom (GP nr, p .. 38r). He became particularly concerned with the problem of the nature and 0rigin of evil, and its consistency with G;od's infinite Goodness. Indeed, as he said in Theodicy (T, § 20), his inquiry was grounded in the classical question, asked by BoethiU:s more than ·a thousand years earlier: 'God. exist, where does. evil' come from? (Boethius, I 4, p: 96). For about forty years Leibniz attempted to solve such problem, from his young Confessio philosphi (I672-73) to the Essais de Thiodicfe (I7IO), faCing different kinds of both ancient traditions- such as Manicheisrn, Phyrronism, Origenism, and Platonism,, especially Saint Augustin, who deeply inspired him- and his contemporary philosophy --' such a:s Spinoza's Necessitarianism, and Malebranche's Occasionalism The backgr6und for Leibni.z's speculation about t,he problem of evil lies in . the convergence of these vrious traditions. And this is a first level of interaction. But Leibniz's original s'olutionis the product of his struggle against Pierre Bayle'sManicheism, .after the second. edition of the Dictionn.aire Historique et Critique (I 70 2). Contr()versy is a second and deeper level of interaction, on which I will focus in this paper.