https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/13/leibniz-in-his-world-the-making-of-a-savant-audrey-borowski-book-review-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds-a-life-of-leibniz-in-seven-pivotal-days-michael-kempe
Gottfried Leibniz was not the first philosopher to think that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He may have been the unluckiest, suffering the posthumous fate of being skewered in the best of all possible parodies, Voltaire’s “Candide” (1759). When Voltaire was writing, four decades after Leibniz’s death, the German polymath was renowned for his work in several sciences, philosophy, history, law, and, especially, mathematics—he and Newton had, independently, invented calculus, but it’s Leibniz’s notation that’s still used today. Over the years, Leibniz’s reputation continued to grow as more unpublished work came to light, some of which would make him the godfather of the digital age. But he will never quite live down Voltaire’s ridicule.