̷ ̷ˈ ̷ ̷ ̷ ̷əˌnizəm noun
( -s )
Usage: usually capitalized
: the philosophy of Leibniz and his followers distinguished by (1) its monadism (2) its theory of preestablished harmony (3) the viewpoint that this is the best of all possible worlds because God has chosen it out of an infinity of possible worlds for that reason and apparent evil is not a positive reality but a mere privation and (4) its proposals for a universal calculus of reasoning and scientific language, presaging symbolic logic — compare optimism 1a