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date: 28 February 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines the three ways in which God was conceptualized by leading philosophers in early modern Europe. Gottfried Leibniz and Nicholas Malebranche's rationalist God was conceived as an analogy with a rational human being whose actions are explained by their purposes. René Descartes and Antoine Arnauld's voluntarist God was conceived Antoine Arnauld. Baruch Spinoza equated God with an eternally existing, infinite nature.

Keywords: God, Europe, Gottfried Leibniz, Nicholas Malebranche, René Descartes, Antoine Arnauld, Baruch Spinoza

Steven Nadler

Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison and the co‐editor of Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy. His books include Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999) and The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God and Evil (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008).

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