Candide

Voltaire, Candide

Voltaire wrote Candide in 1759, during the Enlightenment Era.

Voltaire – philosopher, skeptic, poet, playwright, satirist – was infamous in his time, persecuted and prosecuted, exiled from France, jailed in the Bastille, reviled and beloved. 

Though religious, he had real issues with many parts of the Christian bible, and particularly with the ways in which that text was interpreted and used in the world; and he had similar issues with other religions. 

Nonetheless, he argued for religious tolerance – very much a rarity for that time and place.  Further, he was also an abolitionist, speaking out against slavery; and he was a strong proponent of free speech and very much against censorship.

Many of these concerns show up in Candide.

Another concern he had was with the very notion of the Enlightenment itself – the belief that humans, with their ability to collect facts and evidence, and then reason about them, could make a more perfect world.

Finally, he is likewise concerned with the opposite point of view, with the one which we read about in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, the belief that we humans don’t need to worry about fixing the world, because the world is perfect the way it is: Whatever is, is right.

Candide is a satire; and, as I noted above, it was written during the Enlightenment.  It is also a picaresque novel.

Satire points out, usually in funny ways (though not always), the contemporary errors a society is making. 

The aim is to get us to recognize that what we’re doing isn’t a good idea; the aim is to get us to change.

This is also Voltaire’s aim.  He wants change from his culture.  The text has to be entertaining, or no one would read it.

One of the smart ideas that Voltaire mocks throughout Candide is a philosophical idea put forth by Gottfried Leibniz – the same idea celebrated by Alexander Pope in “Essay on Man.”

Known as Optimism, or The Best of All Possible Worlds theory, this philosophical theory attempts to explain the problem of evil.

[The problem of evil: How do we explain the presence of evil in the world if God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good?  That is, if we posit an omnipotent God – one who can do anything – and an omniscient God – one who knows everything – and an omnibenevolent God – one who would not do anything wrong – then why do evil things exist in this world? See this, written by David Barfield, for more on this question:

VOLTAIRE AND PHILOSOPHICAL OPTIMISM

The centuries old debate about the existence of suffering and evil in the world

Philosophical Optimism was an attempt to solve the problem of suffering and evil in the world- a question which has been discussed by philosophers and theologians for centuries.  The basic question can be expressed in the following way:

"If the creator is benevolent and all powerful why is there evil and suffering in the world?"

Christianity offers two explanations

1. The first explanation was that Man had fallen from God’s grace. He had abused the free will which God had given him and had chosen evil.

The objection to this was that suffering was often not proportionate to any possible sin and many of those who were made to suffer were evidently innocent, undeserving of their cruel fate

2. The second explanation was that an alternative, negative, destructive force was active in the world. (Satan.)  It was difficult, however to reconcile this explanation with the existence of the omniscience, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God of traditional Christianity, because:

a) If God was all-powerful but allowed his people to undergo such hardships, he could not be benevolent.

b) If God was benevolent but could not protect his people from these hardships, he was not all powerful.

In previous centuries some Christians were prepared to accept that the good God that they worshipped was not able to fully protect them from suffering and evil and formed the conclusion that there was a second malignant power active in the world.  This was the Devil, who was sometimes portrayed as a fallen angel.

The church condemned those that put forward these views as heretics, labelling them “Manichaeans” to associate these deviant Christians with the dualistic theology of a Persian religion by this name which was strong from 300 to 600 AD.

(In the text of Candide, it is Martin who recommends Manichaeism.  In Chapter 10- page 112, Candide consoles himself that a violent thief had drowned with all his ill-gotten gains and justice was done, Martin reminded him of the deaths of the innocent)

 «Vous voyez, dit Candide à Martin, que le crime est puni quelquefois; ce coquin de patron hollandais a eu le sort qu'il méritait..
« Oui, dit Martin; mais fallait-il que les passagers qui étaient sur son vaisseau périssent aussi? Dieu a puni ce fripon, le diable a noyé les autres.»

["You see, said Candide to Martin, that crime is sometimes punished; that rascal Dutch skipper has the fate he deserved ..

'Yes,' said Martin; but  the passengers who were on the ship who perish too? God has punished the knave, the devil has drowned the others."]

THE REVIVAL OF DEBATE ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL IN THE 18TH CENTURY- THE SCHOOL OF OPTIMISM

During the monarchy of Louis XIV (1643- 1715), when the King and the Church formed together one absolute and unshakable authority, there was no room for questioning either political or theological. 

Under the Regency that followed the death of Louis XIV and after 1723, when the new king, Louis XV, came of age, a freer atmosphere began to prevail and 18th century France became a period of new thinking, political, philosophical, moral and religious. The monolithic structure of monarchic rule, which had reached its height in the previous reign, was beginning to weaken and fall apart. The Monarchy and the Church maintained their resistance to change and this was reflected in the constant threat that Voltaire and his fellow reformers lived under.  It was to take the Revolution of 1789 to remove the Old Order.

During the repressive reign of Louis XIV, nevertheless, a French theologian. Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), had raised again the controversial question of the existence of evil. Having found asylum in Holland, he forcibly argued the case for Manichaeism.  He stated unequivocally that God could not be both all-powerful and all-good, since if He were, there would be no evil in the world, and it was obvious that evil abounded.  Bayle’s view was therefore pessimistic.

At the same time in Germany, the eminent German rationalist philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), confronted these questions and came to conclusions more compatible with conventional Christianity.  His metaphysical ideas were complex, subtle and not very amenable to popular interpretation, but there was drawn from them an assertion of one single God, in conflict with the ideas of the Manicheans.  His ideas in general supported an Optimistic view of creation.

VOLTAIRE AND PHILOSOPHICAL OPTIMISM
Voltaire was acquainted with the ideas of Optimism through his friendship with the English poet Alexander Pope, whom he got to know during his period of exile in England (1726-1728).  Pope was a great admirer of Leibnitz and in his verse he expressed the creed of Optimism at its most simplistic.

All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, “Whatever IS, is RIGHT.”

                                    (Pope, Essay on Man)

Voltaire admired Pope but had little patience for all the abstract complexities of Optimist theory.  He confided that:….tout l'ouvrage de Pope fourmille de pareilles obscurités (all the work of Pope is full of such obscurities)

However, at this stage of his life, Voltaire, in spite of setbacks he had suffered, still showed the optimism of his early years.  As long as he had the feeling that life was good, the ideas Philosophical Optimism did not offend him.  

For the next ten years or so of his life, circumstances allowed Voltaire to continue in this mainly optimistic frame of mind. He was now rich and famous.  He had the love of his mistress the very talented Mme Du Châtelet.  He found favor in the French royal court, where he was given honors and posts of importance.

It was during this period that Voltaire learned more about the ideas of Leibnitz.  He had started a correspondence with King Frederick the Great of Prussia., a great admirer of the works of Christian Wolf, who explained and popularised the Optimist theories of Leibnitz.  Frederick sent Voltaire French translations of two of Wolf’s books.

As with Alexander Pope’s interpretations, Voltaire found the writings difficult to understand and he had little patience to struggle through the intricacies of their metaphysics.  Now his reaction to Optimism was beginning to turn from tolerant bemusement to hostility.   This change in outlook coincided with the moment when good times for Voltaire began to draw to an end, in the middle of the 1740s.  He fell totally out of favor with the King and had to retire into semi-exile. There was disappointment and sadness in his personal life. Mme Du Châtelet took a new lover and tragedy struck when she died in childbirth.  His stay with Frederick the Great ended in acrimony and Voltaire’s final humiliation.  France was no longer a safe home for him because he had offended both the State and Church authorities.  He eventually found a refuge outside France which allowed him some respite.  Then a terrible human catastrophe made him see life in totally pessimistic terms.

In November 1755, Lisbon was shattered by an earthquake in which between thirty and forty thousand people lost their lives. Voltaire was profoundly affected.  Now Optimism appeared to him as a cruel deception.  He asked: “Si Pope avait été à Lisbonne, aurait-il osé dire, tout est bien?” ("If Pope had been in Lisbon, would he have dared to say, all is well?")

He could see no other explanation but the Manichaeism of Bayle, with his doubts about the divine power that controlled our lives: “La balance à la main, Bayle enseigne à douter » ("The balance in hand, Bayle taught to doubt")

Candide was written four years later.  ]

Gottfried Leibniz, the philosopher who Voltaire satirizes in writing Candide, argues that such a God would want as many good things in the world as possible, and that therefore he must allow some bad things in the world; that you could not have (for instance) heroes without villains, and heroes are a good thing, and therefore we need some villains; and that you can’t have strong fathers without something for strong fathers to protect their families from, and therefore we need some scary bad guys; and you can’t have skilled surgeons without disease, and THEREFORE…

Voltaire thinks this theory is so much nonsense, and writes Candide, in part, to demonstrate his objections.

And it is easy to see why Leibniz is wrong.  To say that people need – for instance – to be raped or beaten so that heroes will have an opportunity to be heroic; or (as I saw argued not long ago) that poor people exist so that other people can experience the virtue of charity; these are to reduce people to objects.

It makes – that is – rape victims and hungry children and beaten people into objects that exist so that other people can learn from them.

That is, Leibniz is arguing that God lets children starve so that other people (me, for instance, here in America) can learn the blessings of charity when I give something to that starving child.  Okay.  I get to learn that giving is a good thing.  This is good for my soul.  But this makes the child into an object.  This turns that child’s very real pain and the real damage done to her and her life into nothing but a lesson for me.

The question Voltaire (and Leibniz) is raising is why these evils (hunger, rape, the slaughter of innocents) exist in the world – why these people suffer and die in these ways.  So that these other people have a chance to learn or to be heroic does not seem to be a sufficient answer.

Martin (who we meet in Chapter 19) is a Manichean.

Manicheaism is a philosophy or a religion that explains the problem of evil in the world by holding that there are two equally powerful gods, one good and one evil, who are fighting for control of the earth.  The earth, then, is their battlefield, and everything in the world, including humanity, is used as a pawn or a prize on that battlefield.  In other words, according to this worldview, we are all objects, used in some other’s benefit – it’s just that the other is a god.

St. Augustine was (for a time) a Manichean

*** *** ***

Candide is also a parody of then common (and still common) Romance/adventure novel, in which the young, handsome (often illegitimate) orphan wants to marry the princess but can’t for some reason, and goes off to have adventures, getting to marry her at the end, while she is still young and beautiful, and they live happily ever after.

The appalling things that happen to both Candide and Cunegonde mock these adventure novels – these are (slight) exaggerations of events in those novels.

*** *** ***

Candide is also, as I mentioned above, a picaresque novel.  That is to say, it is an episodic and satiric novel which follows a hero on his travels through the world. 

The picaresque is also, usually

·        Realistic in detail

·        Realistic in language (that is, using street language instead of literary language)

·        Plotless

·        Written in first person

·        Dealing with a low-born, thug-like hero

Candide fits some of these criteria, but subverts others – Candide, for instance, is low-born technically, in that he’s the Baron’s illegitimate son; but he’s not base-born; and he’s hardly thuggish.  Voltaire is playing against the reader’s expectations.

Voltaire continues to subvert our expectations as we move through the text.  Each time we expect a certain narrative arc to occur, Voltaire swerves the narrative in some other direction.  

We start with Candide and Cunégonde apparently about to commence a love affair – but then Candide is ejected from this story, into a different one, one about his adventures in the army – and then he is ejected from that story, into a story about a religious satire and life in the big city – and then we’re rejected from that story into a story about a natural disaster – and then we’re into one about the Horrors of the Inquisition.

And so on.

And Voltaire never pauses long enough for any of these stories to develop – he refuses, that is, to actually write these stories for us.  Instead, he continually confounds our expectations.

Much of the book, as well, mocks actual current events of the day – for instance

·        the war Candide gets involved with in Chapter 3 in which horrible atrocities are committed on both sides is an actual war which occurred

·        The persecution of the Anabaptist refers to an ongoing religious prejudice of the time

·        The earthquake in Lisbon was a great disaster which Voltaire witnessed and which shocked both him and the world (think of the Tsunami of 2004 – it was of that scale)

·        The punishment of the slave mentioned in chapter 19 – the one who has lost his leg and his hand – is based on real punishments given to slaves in the Sugar Islands in the Caribbean

·        Some of the events in Paris are (loosely) based on actual events in Voltaire’s own life

·        The execution of the admiral which Candide and Martin witness at Portsmouth is based on the execution of Admiral Byng, an historical event Voltaire witnessed, and tried to intervene in

·        All the exiled kings in Chapter 26 are historically accurate

At the heart of this satire lie two basic questions: (1) Why does evil exist in the world and (2) What can we as rational humans be expected to do about it?

Voltaire spends most of his text grappling with the first question – along with many, many digressions as he catches sight of something that seems amusing or worth making fun of (as for instance when we journey to Paris to mock those who have criticized poets and/or those who have dared to criticize Voltaire or Voltaire’s girlfriends) but by the final chapter we are really no closer to an answer to question #1 than we were at the start.

Candide answered: “[A] wise man, who has since had the misfortune to be hanged, taught me everything was marvelously well arranged. Troubles are just the shadows in a beautiful picture.”

“Your hanged philosopher was joking,” said Martin. “The shadows are horrible, ugly blots.”

“It is human beings who make the blots,” said Candide, “and they can’t do otherwise.”

“Then it is not their fault,” said Martin.

Candide, Martin, and later Pangloss continue this argument through the latter half of the book, trying to decide why bad things happen.  Martin argues than man robs, thieves, rapes, and so on for the same reason hawks eat pigeons – because it is in his nature to do so. 

But even if we eliminated the wickedness of man towards man, still there are shipwrecks, earthquakes, fires, sheep falling off cliffs, famines, plagues, and so on to contend with when we try to decide why evil exists in the world.

Free will, says Candide, but that solves nothing.  Free will might give us the ability to contend with the bewildering array of troubles the world throws at us; it doesn’t explain why the troubles exist – why we encounter so many problems (once we get kicked out of Eden).

In the end, the book leaves us with only one (not all that satisfactory) answer for all these questions: don’t worry, be happy.

Or – to quote Voltaire – cultivate your garden. 

(Why a garden, do you suppose? Consider where we started this semester – where do most cultures have mankind originating?)