The Best of All Possible Worlds - by Steven Nadler (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Originally published: New York: Farrar. Straus, and Giroux, 2008.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>In the spring of 1672, German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz arrived in Paris, home of France's two greatest philosopher-theologians of the period, Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas de Malebranche. The meeting of these three men represents a profoundly important moment in the history of philosophical and religious thought. <p/> In <i>The Best of All Possible Worlds</i>, Steven Nadler tells the story of a clash between radically divergent worldviews. At its heart are the dramatic--and often turbulent--relationships between these brilliant and resolute individuals. Despite their wildly different views and personalities, the three philosophers shared a single, passionate concern: resolving the problem of evil. Why is it that, in a world created by an all-powerful, all-wise, and infinitely just God, there is sin and suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad people? <p/><i>The Best of All Possible Worlds</i> brings to life a debate that obsessed its participants, captivated European intellectuals, and continues to inform our ways of thinking about God, morality, and the world.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br><p>"<i>The Best of All Possible Worlds</i> is a wonderfully engaging book. Nadler, with his characteristic clarity, has produced a true and rare philosophical page-turner."<b>--Michael Della Rocca, Yale University</b></p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>[I]f you want to know about pictures of Descartes, this is the place to look. The colour plates in themselves are a justification for having the book to hand, (let alone the many black and white images including one of Descartes in a baseball cap).<b>---Martin Cohen, <i>Philosopher</i></b><br><br>I can't imagine a better guide to 17th-century philosophical thought.<b>---Michael Dirda, <i>Washington Post Book World</i></b><br><br>Why did a loving God create a world marred by so much evil? In three seventeenth-century intellectuals who wrestled with this question, Nadler recognizes how a single inquiry can profoundly engage markedly different minds.<b>---Bryce Christensen, <i>Booklist</i></b><br><br>Nadler knows as much about Spinoza and Malebranche as any man alive, and enough about Arnauld and Leibniz to engage at need with detailed issues of scholarship. He is a serious scholar at the peak of his powers. . . . What he has given us here is a wonderfully vivid and lifelike portrait of one of the great debates that dominate Early Modern Philosophy, the echoes of which continue to reverberate down the ages.<b>---Andrew Pyle, <i>Metascience</i></b><br><br>Nadler's remarkably accessible comparative analysis of these difficult seventeenth-century concepts and flights of theological speculation shows us the deep grammar of our times.<b>---Jeffrey T. Zalar, <i>European Legacy</i></b><br><br>The centerpiece of this intellectual history is a vicious late 17th-century debate between three unlikely combatants. . . . Nadler's superb study makes for a larger space for Leibniz, Malebranche, and Arnauld alongside such giants of the period as Descartes and Spinoza.-- "Publishers Weekly"<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Steven Nadler</b> is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of <i>Rembrandt's Jews</i>, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, as well as <i>Spinoza: A Life</i> and <i>Spinoza's Heresy</i>.
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