Page "Philosophy of history" Paragraph 15

The story of the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden in Judaism and Christianity can be seen in a similar light, which would give the basis for theodicies, which attempts to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the existence of God creating a global explanation of history with the belief in a Messianic Age.

Theodicies claimed that history had a progressive direction leading to an eschatological end, such as the Apocalypse, given by a superior power.

Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas or Bossuet in his Discourse On Universal History ( 1679 ) formulated such theodicies, but Leibniz, who coined the term, was the most famous philosopher who created a theodicy.

Leibniz based his explanation on the principle of sufficient reason, which states that anything that happens, does happen for a specific reason.

Thus, what man saw as evil, such as wars, epidemia and natural disasters, was in fact only an effect of his perception ; if one adopted God's view, this evil event in fact only took place in the larger divine plan.

Hence, theodicies explained the necessity of evil as a relative element that forms part of a larger plan of history.

Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason was not, however, a gesture of fatalism.

Confronted with the antique problem of future contingents, Leibniz invented the theory of " compossible worlds ", distinguishing two types of necessity, to cope with the problem of determinism.