The Best of All Possible Worlds?

• Published in: A Little History of Philosophy p. 93
• Main Author: Warburton, Nigel
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States Yale University Press 25.10.2011
• Subjects: Axiology; Behavioral sciences; Bestselling books; Communications; Communications media; Disasters; Earthquakes; Epistemology; Ethics; Evil; Health and wellness; Health sciences; Modal realism; Morality; Natural disasters; Normative ethics; Optimism; Personality; Personality psychology; Personality traits; Philosophy; Print media; Psychology; Public health; Social sciences

If you were designing the world would you have done it this way? Probably not. But in the eighteenth century some people argued that theirs was the best of all possible worlds. ‘Whatever is, is right,’ declared the English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744). Everything in the world is the way it is for...