PhilosophersGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
We live in the best of all possible worlds.
Rationalism1646 – 1716 GermanyRationalistBelieverMathematicianMetaphysical optimist
Inspirations
Platon innate ideas
Aristote form, entelechy
Descartes extension is not the essence of bodies
criticSpinoza against "blind necessity"
criticLocke the New Essays answer him
criticHeirs
Christian Wolffsystematised his philosophy
Voltaire Candide mocks optimism
criticKant criticises the cosmological proof
criticHeidegger takes up "why something rather than nothing?"
Bertrand Russell commentator and critic
criticSimilar and opposite philosophers
how it is computedClosest
Hugo Grotius Dutch jurist and thinker who grounds natural law in the sociable, rational nature of man, valid even without appeal to God.
100 %Martin Luther King Jr. Minister and leader of the civil rights movement: he defends nonviolent disobedience to unjust laws, openly and accepting the penalty.
100 %Desmond Tutu South African archbishop: through ubuntu, "a person is a person through other persons".
100 %Francisco de Vitoria The peoples of America were the true owners of their lands: neither sin, nor unbelief, nor a supposed lack of reason takes that right from them.
100 %