Beginning of Essay
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire was the French author of the novella , also known as "Optimism"(Durant and Durant 724). In , Voltaire sought to point out the fallacy of Gottfried William von Leibniz's theory of optimism and the hardships brought on by the result ....

Middle of Essay
.... dealt with any seriousness. Leibniz, sometimes regarded as a Stoic or Fatalist because his philosophies were based on the idea that everything in the world was determined by fate, theorized that God, having the ability to pick from an infinite number of worlds, chose this world, "the best of all possible worlds." Although Voltaire chose that simple quality of Leibniz's philosophy to satirize, Leibniz meant a little more than just that. Even though his philosophy stated that God chose "the best of all possible worlds," he also meant that God, being the perfection he chose the best world available to him, unfortunately it was a world containing evil. It ....