Leibniz's Influence On Voltaire

Leibniz was born in Leipzig, Germany on July 1st, 1646. His parents were prominent as his father was a moral professor at the city college however; he passed when Leibniz was only six years old. His mother was the daughter of a reputable attorney. Leibniz was a childhood phenomenon as he exceled in many fields in his time. He learned to speak Latin and Greek on his own by reading inscriptions of illustrated books and comparing them to German types in his father’s library. He also worked with scholars before he was a teenager. At the tender age of fourteen, he started college where he studied law and math. When he was fourteen, he tried to obtain his doctrine at the University of Leipzig in 1666 without avail as he was turned away due

One of his biggest cynics was Voltaire (1964 – 1778) who was a French philosopher, writer, and historian. Voltaire was considered to be one of the most influential writers during Leibniz’s time, and his writings influenced many people. Voltaire severely tainted Leibniz’s name, and persuaded people that Leibniz was not the creator of infinitesimal calculus, but rather it was Isaac Newton who Voltaire was an admirer of. Specifically, with Voltaire’s satire called Candide, Voltaire was able to discredit Leibniz’s years of work in calculus, math, and physics. At that time, most of Europe doubted that Leibniz founded calculus, and that it was Newton. The board that decided this was Voltaire’s peers, so this was an unjust decision. Another controversial topic was Leibniz’s ideology of religion/theodicy. “The Theodicy tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds.” (quote 3) He asserted that since God created all that God would not chose to create an imperfect world because otherwise God would have excluded those imperfections. He also stated that truths between philosophy and religion cannot dispute each