LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm von; JAUCOURT, Louis de.

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Essais de theodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme, et l'origine du mal. Second edition of Jaucourt's critical edition, the first to credit him as the author, in a handsome 19th-century binding. Jaucourt's edition includes the Theodicy's four appendices, his biography of Leibniz, and a chronological catalogue of his works. The Theodicy was originally published in 1710. Jaucourt's edition first appeared in 1734.The Theodicy, the only major philosophical treatise that Leibniz published during his lifetime, vindicates the justice and goodness of God despite the existence of evil. Notably, it includes the first statement of his famed argument that this world, despite its manifest problems, is nonetheless the best of all possible worlds."Although the immediate reaction to the book was somewhat muted, the Theodicy soon became commonly associated with Leibniz's name in European culture... Today, Leibniz's name remains closely associated with the project that he developed most fully in the Theodicy. The neologism that Leibniz coined in the title, from the Greek theos + dike (literally: "the justice of God"), has entered the lexicon as a term describing any attempt to reconcile the goodness of God with the presence of evil in the world, a project to which Leibniz had devoted a good portion of his life" (Jorgensen & Newlands, pp. 1-2).Louis de Jaucourt (1704-1779), a prolific Enlightenment scholar, contributed over 25 per cent of the total articles for Diderot's Encyclopéd

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