‘Candide’: An Attack on Optimism
A review of ‘Candide’, by Voltaire; 1759.
Sadly it is not that true that, asked on his deathbed if he renounced the devil, Voltaire said, ‘Now, now, my good man, this is no time to be making enemies’. But it is the kind of thing he might have said. He did say, after all, that ‘common sense is not so common’, ‘God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh’ and ‘all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets’. In other words, he had a sense of humour and a gift for irony, and that is the primary means by which he demolishes optimism in his slim guillotine-blade of a satire, Candide.
The plot is absurd. A naïve young man called Candide is cast out of home and sent reeling through a gauntlet of catastrophes. He travels continents, enduring war, earthquake, shipwreck and slavery. At every turn, the refrain of his tutor, Pangloss — ‘all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’—rings like a mantra in his ears. To the sound of collapsing scenery, Candide remans upbeat. Voltaire shows us that this world is ruled not by divine order but chaos and cruelty. In such a world, it is mad to be optimistic. And so Candide is flung from one disaster to another like a cork being tossed around in the ocean.
A naïve young man called Candide is cast out of home and sent reeling through a gauntlet of catastrophes.
Voltaire’s target is optimism in general, but of the Leibnizian kind in particular. In Théodicée, Leibniz defended the justness of God and offered a solution to the problem of evil — the notion that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent yet evil exists. That problem, theodicy, animated and exercised many thinkers of the day. Leibniz’s argument went like this:
1. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent;
2. God created the existing world;
3. God could have created a different world or none at all (i.e., there are other possible worlds);
4. Because God is omnipotent and omniscient, he knew which possible world was the best and was able to create it, and, because he is omnibenevolent, he chose to create that world;
5. Therefore, the existing world, the one that God created, is the best of all possible worlds.
Needless to say, Voltaire thought this was nonsense. One has only to nod in the direction of the latest earthquake, flood or death of a child to make one’s point. Looming large over Candide are historical events, like the Seven Years’ War (up to 1,400,000 dead) and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (up to 100,000 dead). These outraged Voltaire. He could not see how we could possibly live in ‘the best of all possible worlds’ when an an act of God (as it were) could strike at any time.
Looming large over Candide are historical events, like the Seven Years’ War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.
In place of dogma and metaphysics, Voltaire proposed pragmatism. The solution to suffering is to do what we can to prevent it, not to justify or defend it. We do not need to understand everything, he suggests, but enough to get by and survive. The characters in Candide cast light on this idea: they spout philosophical clichés against a background of horror and calamity. As the story unfolds, Pangloss in particular seems almost grotesque, remaining optimistic even while riddled with syphilis.
Voltaire is sceptical, but not cynical. Though he mocks our philosophising, our need to explain and understand our condition, he refuses to abandon humanity. He thinks we have something to give. Pain doesn’t serve some cosmic purpose, he says, and the sooner we see that, the better. For if we do, we might just marshal our wits and our energy in the pursuit of concrete solutions to the problem of suffering and, in doing so, make the world a better place.
