Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
I believe. . . that almost all the methods which have been used to prove the existence of God are sound, and could serve the purpose if they were rendered complete.
(New Essays, A VI.vi: RB 438)Few philosophers today would go this far. Even in a period that has witnessed a dramatic rebirth of Anglo-American philosophical theology, the typical strategy has been to embrace a favorite proof while criticizing others or to maintain, more cautiously, that a particular argument has not been refuted. Nevertheless, while most of these philosophers reject the claim that all the classic arguments can be rendered sound, they also dismiss as passé the once prevalent view that proving God's existence is a hopeless task.
Natural theology, then, is on the rise. At such a time, it is reasonable to review the arguments of Gottfried Leibniz, one of its most distinguished proponents. Because he thought deeply about many of the issues that now absorb us, an examination of his ideas is likely to illuminate contemporary concerns.
Leibniz gives his own versions of four traditional proofs of God's existence: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the argument from eternal truths, and the argument from design. According to the ontological argument, God's existence follows a priori from his definition as an absolutely perfect being. Since existence is more perfect than nonexistence, the very idea of God entails that he exists. The cosmological argument, on the other hand, begins with the fact that something exists and derives the existence of God via a causal principle.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.