Borwein–Preiss variational principle revisited

In this article, we refine and slightly strengthen the metric space version of the Borwein–Preiss variational principle due to Li and Shi (2000) [12], clarify the assumptions and conclusions of their Theorem 1 as well as Theorem 2.5.2 in Borwein and Zhu (2005) [4] and streamline the proofs. Our main result, Theorem 3 is formulated in the metric space setting. When reduced to Banach spaces (Corollary 9), it extends and strengthens the smooth variational principle established in Borwein and Preiss (1987) [3] along several directions.