A central doctrine of Leibniz’s Theodicy is the classification of evils as metaphysical, physical and moral. Moral evil is sin; physical evil is suffering; and metaphysical evil, Leibniz says, is “simple imperfection”. It has been common-place in Leibniz scholarship to understand metaphysical evil as identical with the Leibnizian notion of the “original imperfection of the creature,” or the limitation which inevitably characterizes any created substance. This is Russell’s interpretation; and its pervasiveness is no doubt due to the powerful influence which (...) Russell’s Leibniz book has exercised in this century. In my paper I challenge this interpretation. (shrink)

As the global communication network matures, the systems and procedures for regulating the growing network and its use are being challenged. The general proliferation of services or the specific demand for electronic transactions require guidance and control which the market alone cannot supply. Meanwhile, traditional regulatory regimes remain far from global or coherent. This article distinguishes between coordination and regulation to clarify areas where government intervention is unnecessary and where indispensable. It explores the current patchwork of regulatory approaches, reviews different (...) regulatory areas and strategies, identifies trends, and highlights problem areas particular to electronic commerce and third party protection. (shrink)

People's sense of being subject to digital dataveillance can cause them to restrict their digital communication behavior. Such a chilling effect is essentially a form of self-censorship in everyday digital media use with the attendant risks of undermining individual autonomy and well-being. This article combines the existing theoretical and limited empirical work on surveillance and chilling effects across fields with an analysis of novel data toward a research agenda. The institutional practice of dataveillance—the automated, continuous, and unspecific collection, retention, and (...) analysis of digital traces—affects individual behavior. A mechanism-based causal model based on the theory of planned behavior is proposed for the micro level: An individual's increased sense of dataveillance causes their subjective probability assigned to negative outcomes of digital communication behavior to increase and attitudes toward this communication to become less favorable, ultimately decreasing the intention to engage in it. In aggregate and triggered through successive salience shocks such as data scandals, dataveillance is accordingly hypothesized to lower the baseline of free digital communication in a society through the chilling effects mechanism. From the developed theoretical model, a set of methodological consequences and questions for future studies are derived. (shrink)

This fascinating and expertly edited little volume brings to light some hitherto neglected works, illustrating Leibniz’s lifelong interest in the calculus of combinations, and in the problem of the progress of human culture. In fact both interests are united in these works in a characteristically Leibnizian way. Leibniz’s project in De l’Horizon de la Doctrine Humaine is well expressed in its lengthy subtitle: “Meditation on the number of all possible truths and falsities, enunciable by humanity such as we know it (...) to be; and on the number of feasible books. Wherein it is demonstrated that these numbers are finite, and that it is possible to write, and easy to conceive, a much greater number. To show the limits of the human spirit [l’esprit humain], and to know the extent of these limits”. Following in the tradition of the mathematical curiosities of Clavius, Mersenne, and Guldin, Leibniz offers a formula for the calculation of the number of possible words, significant or nonsignificant, pronounceable or unpronounceable, which can be generated from an alphabet of 23 letters. Even though the product of this calculation is prodigiously great, it is finite, and given a sufficiently lengthy lifespan of the species all truths would very likely be exhausted, and novelty give way to repetition. This observation yields the notion of a “horizon of human doctrine”, an extrinsic limit to the number of truths statable in language, and confirms the “vulgar expression that 'nothing is said which has not been said already’”. (shrink)

Many distinct, controvertial issues are to be found within the labyrinthine\ntwists and turns of the problem of evil. For philosophers of the\nseventeenth and early eighteenth centures, evil presented a challenge\nto the consistency and rationality of the world-picture disclosed\nby the new way of ideas. In dealing with this challenge, however,\nphilosophers were also concerned with their positions in the theological\ndebates about original sin, free will, and justification that were\nthe legacy of the Protestant Reformation to European intellectual\nlife. Emerging from a conference on the (...) problem of evil in the early\nmodern period held at the University of Toronto in 1999, the papers\nin this collection represent some of the best original work being\ndone today on the theodicies of such early modern philosophers as\nLeibniz, Suarez, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Pierre Bayle. (shrink)

A central doctrine of Leibniz’s Theodicy is the classification of evils as metaphysical, physical and moral. Moral evil is sin; physical evil is suffering; and metaphysical evil, Leibniz says, is “simple imperfection”. It has been common-place in Leibniz scholarship to understand metaphysical evil as identical with the Leibnizian notion of the “original imperfection of the creature,” or the limitation which inevitably characterizes any created substance. This is Russell’s interpretation; and its pervasiveness is no doubt due to the powerful influence which (...) Russell’s Leibniz book has exercised in this century. In my paper I challenge this interpretation. (shrink)

Since 1951, English-language readers of Leibniz’s Theodicy have been well-served by the elegant and readable translation of E. M. Huggard, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul and Open Court, and edited by Austin Farrer. However, this edition has some conspicuous failings: it leaves Latin, Greek, and German phrases untranslated; provides a name index only, thus omitting Leibniz’s own useful topical index; and completely omits the interesting and substantial synopsis, Causa Dei Asserta. The French paperback edition of the Essais de Théodicée (...) published by Garnier-Flammarion does provide Leibniz’s own topical index to his work, as well as compendious and invaluable notes on the text, but of course, this does not help readers with no French. There exists, then, very little help for the reader wishing to mine the depths of Leibniz’s massive work, and who is thus forced to read it through from end to end to find out what is in it. (shrink)

Since 1951, English-language readers of Leibniz’s Theodicy have been well-served by the elegant and readable translation of E. M. Huggard, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul and Open Court, and edited by Austin Farrer. However, this edition has some conspicuous failings: it leaves Latin, Greek, and German phrases untranslated; provides a name index only, thus omitting Leibniz’s own useful topical index; and completely omits the interesting and substantial synopsis, Causa Dei Asserta. The French paperback edition of the Essais de Théodicée (...) published by Garnier-Flammarion does provide Leibniz’s own topical index to his work, as well as compendious and invaluable notes on the text, but of course, this does not help readers with no French. There exists, then, very little help for the reader wishing to mine the depths of Leibniz’s massive work, and who is thus forced to read it through from end to end to find out what is in it. (shrink)

Since 1951, English-language readers of Leibniz’s Theodicy have been well-served by the elegant and readable translation of E. M. Huggard, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul and Open Court, and edited by Austin Farrer. However, this edition has some conspicuous failings: it leaves Latin, Greek, and German phrases untranslated; provides a name index only, thus omitting Leibniz’s own useful topical index; and completely omits the interesting and substantial synopsis, Causa Dei Asserta. The French paperback edition of the Essais de Théodicée (...) published by Garnier-Flammarion does provide Leibniz’s own topical index to his work, as well as compendious and invaluable notes on the text, but of course, this does not help readers with no French. There exists, then, very little help for the reader wishing to mine the depths of Leibniz’s massive work, and who is thus forced to read it through from end to end to find out what is in it. (shrink)