Leibniz–Clarke correspondence

The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence is a series of letters exchanged in 1715 and 1716 between the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the English theologian Samuel Clarke, who wrote in defense of the views of Isaac Newton. The exchange began after Leibniz wrote to Caroline of Ansbach warning that Newtonian physics was, in his view, harmful to natural theology, and it developed into a debate over the nature of space, whether it was absolute as Newton and Clarke held or merely relational as Leibniz argued, along with questions about divine freedom and whether God must create the best of all possible worlds. The letters were published in 1717, shortly after the death of Leibniz, and have been reprinted many times since. They remain one of the clearest statements of the mature metaphysics of Leibniz, since he had published comparatively little on the subject elsewhere.