Satire in Voltaires Candide - Term Paper Example

Voltaire’s Candide: Criticizing Optimism Term Paper Introduction The most normal and effective way to shed light on the open-minded skepticism of Voltaire is to thoroughly examine one of his works which remains popular far and wide—Candide. This work reveals that Voltaire’s skepticism is most correctly understood through a comparison with Leibnitz’s optimism—the idea that the existing, real world is the ‘greatest’ of all rationally possible things, that God had an adequate justification for creating it, and that it is reasonable as the greatest decision of a ‘wisely charitable’ and ‘universally benevolent’ of God or the ‘Infinitely Perfect Being’ (Levine, 1999, 249). After revealing that the profound distrust of Voltaire of rationalist theology and metaphysics gave him an image of being inescapably ‘anti-Leibnitzien’, it reveals that, oddly, Voltaire, just like Leibniz, was committed to enlightened, open-minded, and liberal political rule which could mitigate suffering and poverty, create educational and scientific traditions, scorn religious discrimination and fallacy, and choose happiness and fortune over violence and war (Levine, 1999, 249-250). This paper explains how Voltaire satirizes the philosophy of optimism as well as other institutions of the day in his work ‘Candide’. Satire is defined as a literary device whose goal is to improve society and the human condition by poking fun at individuals and various institutions with the goal of bringing awareness and reform. Satire can be grouped into three categories, Horatian (mild, good natured, tolerant and sympathetic), Juvenalian (vituperative, biting and filled with moral indignation), and Menippean (attacks on mental attitudes instead of specific individuals). Candide contains both Horatian and Jeuvenalian elements of satire. There are various types of satirical devices among them being, hyperbole, irony, allusion, parody, oxymoron, and understatement. Overview New ideas, fresh interpretations, and original thought characterized the period known as the Enlightenment in the eighteenth Century. Scientific discovery was flourishing which brought new discoveries that challenged the traditional power of religion. Influential writers and philosophers of this age, Voltaire being prominent among them, sought to better the human condition and advance human thinking through truth and humorous criticism. Voltaire employs scathing satire to ridicule the ideologies of the Old Regime by criticizing most of the political, social, and religious ideals of his time. More specifically however, Voltaire chose as his target the philosophy of optimism espoused by Gottfried Leibniz. The age old question of why God allows evil and suffering in the world had long been troubling to Voltaire. From the 1750s onward, a series of events took place which led Voltaire to exposed optimism’s folly. These events were the death of his longtime partner Madame du Chatelet, his exile from France, the Lisbon earthquake in November, 1755, and finally the Seven Years War. Gottfried Leibniz, a German philosopher and mathematician of Voltaire’s time, developed a philosophical system that the world at any given time was “the best of all possible worlds.” Leibniz believed that no matter how terrible things seemed that everything worked out for the best. Voltaire became convinced of the naiveté of the philosophy of optimism. In Candide he shows the world full of natural disasters and brutality. By making the initial setting in Westphalia, Voltaire takes an intentional jab at Liebniz because according to author Haydn Mason, Voltaire considered Germany to be “backward, provincial, and unenlightened” (Mason, 1992, 8). The real aspirations of Voltaire and Leibniz are not very different, although their beliefs about ‘finding’ ideals of common justice which are binding for human beings and God alike differ seriously and totally. Leibniz’s and Voltaire’s ‘first philosophies’ are very distinct from each other—Leibniz was against skepticism, a neo-Augustinian, Christian-Platonic rationalist who believe that ‘English’ empiricism was misleading and erroneous in many ways, whereas Voltaire embodies the skepticism of Pascal and Bayle, Charron, and Montaigne, and the empiricism of Newton and Locke which he established (Levine, 1999, 250). Even so, Leibniz and Voltaire deeply shared a belief in social development, liberalism, and enlightenment. Both of them may embrace the popular saying, ‘crush the infamous’, although they disagree over what qualifies as ‘infamous’ and deserves being crushed. However, Leibniz not once said that ‘all is well’; he said that the world is ideal or ‘best’ (Williams, 1994, 82). Yet, ‘best’ is not tantamount to ‘good’; only God is flawlessly good, plain and simple. Being ‘best’ is, and ought to be, in harmony with the actual presence of Dr. Goebbels and Caligula; the world, according to Leibniz, is best in spite of being fraught with ‘moral’, ‘metaphysical’, and ‘physical’ sin (Levine, 1999, 250). And hence Voltaire’s unbearably hilarious account of earthly calamities and tragedies in Candide—common injustice, Spanish Inquisition, Lisbon earthquake, drowning, mutilation, incest, sodomy, syphilis, bestiality, cannibalism, slavery, vivisection, hanging, beating, rape, and murder—could not harm sheer ‘bestness’ in the manner that it would be lethal to direct ‘goodness’ (Fisher, 2008, 19-20). When Candide is brought back together with the allegedly deceased Dr. Pangloss—who by this time suffers from acute syphilis—the below dialogue results (Voltaire, 1991, 81): --Well, my dear Pangloss, Candide said to him, now that you have been hanged, dissected, beaten to a pulp, and sentenced to the galleys, do you still think that everything is for the best in this world? --I am still of my first opinion, replied Pangloss; for after all I am a philosopher, and it would not be right for me to recant since Leibniz could not possibly be wrong. However, Leibniz did not claim that all things—taken separately—are “for the best in this world” (Fisher, 2008, 20); Leibniz argues that the world, in general, is best. However, what Voltaire opposes is any attempt to justify evil or immorality, to make it understandable, justifiable, and tolerable within an allegedly ‘universal jurisprudence’ (Mason, 1992, 33). Certainly, for Voltaire, human beings should experience and withstand evil—because it is unavoidable for predetermined, conscious beings; but we should not—and in fact cannot—find a ‘rationality’ for it. Voltaire argues, “One must at least grant that this puny animal [man] has the right to cry out humbly, and to seek to understand, while crying out, why these eternal laws [of the ‘best’ world] are not made for the well-being of each individual” (Levine, 1999, 251). On this final argument, virtually without recognizing it, Voltaire underlines the serious problem in Leibnizian optimism. Hence if Leibniz did not assert that ‘all is good’, he did certainly argue that the world is and ought to be best. However, Voltaire not once mentions the most inexcusable problem in Leibniz’s argument: ‘why would a wisely charitable and universally benevolent etre infiniment parfait [be infinitely perfect] create in time (when he need not) any ‘world at all—a world which is (at best) ‘best’, but not good?’ (Levine, 1999, 251). Leibniz raises the fundamental question in the Principles of Nature and Grace—‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ (Wootton, 2000, 84). Voltaire, basically, does not understand what is ‘worst’ in the ‘best’ of the Leibnizian world; how to shift from God’s omnipotence to the sheer ‘bestness’ of a real, formed world. Candide Candide is regarded as the most hilarious and lengthiest of Voltaire’s narratives. It is obviously a satire on ‘optimism’. It is also a parody on systems; a discourse on the issue of evil; a quest for the secret of happiness; an analysis of reality and Utopia; and, primarily, a humor. Candide is a defining moment in Voltaire’s vocation. In this work an entire array of previously applied components are combined in a single effective formula. The worldwide journey of reason; the naïve spectator; the mixture of actual occurrences with the unbelievable stories; the account of evil; the bizarre combination of the irreligious and religious; the institute of experience; the acceptance of an unclear doctrine of realism over metaphysics; the manuscript of a translation (Pearson, 1993). Voltaire discloses the silliness of human self-importance and deception and the truth of human desires, the foolishness of metaphysics and the central value of facts or realities. Candide is the ultimate allegory of reason. The primary role of the earthquake in Candide is not really to question an all-powerful and generous God, but to mock the systems by which people try to understand and rule their lives. With regard to the anguish and damages brought about by the earthquake, the Leibnizian faith of Pangloss appears simply as absurd as the idea of the Coimbra intellectuals that an Inquisition will certainly thwart another (Pearson, 2006). Obviously, Leibnizian optimism is harshly parodied in Candide. Instability, political violence, prostitution, cannibalism, disease, earthquake, shipwreck, hanging, torture, discrimination, religious persecution, carnage, pillage, and rape—all is well! (Levine, 1999). Through the power of satire, the practices and traditions of both Leibniz and Pope are mocked. Neither Pope nor Leibniz claimed that all is well. They recognized the existence of evil and, whereas Pope believed that it belongs to a ‘good’ plan, Leibniz did not think that every evil automatically resulted in ‘good’. Without a doubt neither of them thought, as Pangloss does, that “private misfortunes are public benefits; so that the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good” (Voltaire, 1991, 9). Voltaire keenly opposes the pragmatic and intellectual idleness to which faith in this system can encourage. To some extent this is because he views Leibnizian optimism as a kind of fatalism, even though Leibniz clearly advices against this notion of ‘fate’. Voltaire argues, “We need a God who speaks to mankind. Optimism is hopeless. It is a cruel philosophy under a consoling name” (Williams, 1994, 75). Hence he tries to dishonor optimism not merely by illustrating its principles in incompatible juxtaposition with evidence which disproves such principles, but also by reiterating them as slogans to indicate moral and intellectual spontaneity. ‘Sufficient reason’, ‘effects and causes’, ‘best of all possible worlds’, ‘all is well’—each reappears with the regularity of a ‘Hail Mary’ unconsciously mumbled (Pearson, 2006, 4). The fact that optimism is criticized ‘as being’ a system instead of simply ‘as being’ optimism is manifested from the parody of other systems in Candide. Candide is submerged in misery because of the inability of Cacambo to go back but, in a way suggestive of the merciless Pangloss. The entire subplot of Cacambo’s message to return Cunegonde is intended to give proof of Cacambo’s faithfulness and goodness in which to disprove Martin’s negative prediction that Cacambo will do nothing (Pearson, 2006); thus, Voltaire concludes the part portraying this message with a definite sign: “Cacambo set the same day: it was a very good man that Cacambo” (Voltaire, 1991, 50). Martin has correctly envisioned that the goodness of Candide in offering cash to Paquette and Giroflee would have a negative outcome, but the strength this endows the Manichean philosophy is much more undesirable than their misery because it indicates that such systems can be a good guide (Pearson, 2006). The military system is also questionable because of its violation of individual freedom; the church also with its strict laws especially regarding food. The caste system, the metropolitan system, and the deductive logic system are also all questionable (Pearson, 2006). The deductive logic system is questionable because it consumes its own idea: “Im still on my first feeling, replied Pangloss, because finally I am a philosopher: it does not suit me to retract me” (Pearson, 1993, 115). The entire Candide is dedicated to the interpretation of this false rationality, and the story works on two major lines—(1) at the clear, usual line of Candide himself whose learning shows how the result of an education system can turn into a person; and, (2) at a hidden, dangerous line, because of which the audience is continuously exposed to risks, to an evolution from the incorrectness of stereotype and the language symbol to the factuality of the proof (Pearson, 1993, 115-6). Voltaire applies in Candide a romantic style with a hero to criticize optimism. The hero, in a quest for his true love, goes through several trials by which he successfully overcomes and proves him deserving of his true love—but, sadly, that she is not that valuable to him anymore. Obviously, much of the humor in Candide comes from the blown up, growing, and strange characteristic of these trials. Here it is obvious that optimism is heavily focused on. “All events are chained in the best of all possible worlds” (Pearson, 1993, 116), says Pangloss in the end: yet both his series of occurrences and his unclear view of happiness as felt in the eating of “candied citron and pistachios” are ridiculous. Candide replies, “this is well said”. Such are only good words; but actual deeds are important. In fact, the concept of ‘sequence’ is weakened by the story’s discontinuous structure which does not support a divine intervention or destiny (Pearson, 1993, 116-7). Because Pangloss’s optimism is mocked, alongside the sequence of romance story, where thus should either the audience or Candide search for harmony in such disorder? In spite of its criticism of optimism Candide is in fact a more optimistic story than Zadig with this regard. In Zadig the last edition takes out the promise of a happy ending and shows Zadig still confused in the end (Pearson, 2006, xvii). In contrast, in Candide, there is a certain extent of harmony to the episodes, the structure of education. Also, this harmony works at the two lines discussed earlier—of the audience and of Candide. With regard to Candide, everything occurs to him unexpectedly, with no clear reason or order. But he always consider these experience for his last remark that “we must cultivate our garden” (Voltaire, 1991, 87) appears automatically from his experiences. The discontinuous insanity of romance is corrected by the aspects of what would be popular as the ‘roman de formation’ or ‘coming of age story’. For the audience, every new scene in the tale may also appear dependently attacked to the previous, but it becomes obvious that every story scene belongs to a structured ‘argument’ stressed throughout the story-- “all events are strung together in the best possible stories” (Pearson, 1993, 117). Candide, ultimately, challenges the belief of Pangloss in chapter 13 (Voltaire, 1991, 173): This is unfortunate, said Candide, the sage Pangloss was hanged against the couturne in an auto-da-fé, he would tell us wonderful things on the physical evil and moral evil which cover the earth and the sea, and I feel strong enough to dare to do it respectfully few objections. Candide at last rejected optimism when he witnessed the consequences of slavery in Surinam (Voltaire, 1991, 193): O Pangloss! cried Candide, you had not guessed this abomination this is done, it will take until the end I give up your optimism. - What quoptimisme? Cacambo said. - Alas! said Candide, it is the rage to argue that all is well when we are wrong. And when informed of the candidates for the work as his friend, he is certain of his changed belief (Voltaire, 1991, 196): He thought that he Panglossà each adventure recounted. This Pangloss, he said, would be embarrassed to show his system. I wish he was here. Certainly, if all goes well, it is in Eldorado, and not in the rest of the world. This is the final point in the sequence of Candide’s satire; the final point of Voltaire’s mockery of Leibnizian optimism. Candide in the end starts to understand the impossibility of Pangloss’s belief. Voltaire closes his story by allowing Candide to find out the truth to life of the Turk: “… the work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice and need” (Voltaire, 1991, 86). He and his companions take into account these words and made a decision that they “must cultivate their garden” (Voltaire, 1991, 87). Although they have embraced the rural way of life, the optimistic Pangloss tries to show how all their previous problems and bad lucks belong to the fixed sequence of events so that they could attain happiness. Voltaire describes Pangloss as the real model of a fool optimist, never understanding the mistakes of his reasoning. Candide in the end realizes how to attain happiness despite bad lucks. He realizes that so as to achieve contentment, he should belong to a society where there is shared objective and cooperation. Candide realizes that work and effort removes the three misfortunes of humanity—vice, boredom, and want. So as to build a society like this, people should adhere to the following—avoid assumptions, learn how to successfully overcome a misfortune or problem, be careful, be fair, and love others. Voltaire says this final condition for this society—“Let’s work without speculating; it’s the only way of rendering life bearable” (Topazio, 1967, 42). Although an Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire exploits Candide as a way to reject the total optimism of his colleagues. His choice of satire in the narrative has a valid reason. Voltaire chose satire as a way of describing prejudice, inequality, unfairness, and malice, and made it appear readable and understandable. Voltaire all the time has a thoughtful purpose behind the humor in his stories. Voltaire criticizes the focus of philosophy, and he also exerts a lot of effort mocking the ridiculous optimism he connects to Enlightenment. Candide is usually mentioned as one the best documents of the enlightenment period, yet actually numerous of the beliefs expressed through the story are disapproving of the Enlightenment, mainly those communicated through his characters. For example, Candide is very optimistic and inexperienced which are finely expressed through his words and deeds. Although audiences are to think Candide is an adult, he does not have good judgment or common sense, and is completely lacking of understanding of life which would usually be learned from actual experiences. He lacks critical thinking, and accepts fully all he hears. Candide’s immature trustfulness and overall irrationality is a mirror of Voltaire’s disapproval of the supporters of the Enlightenment movement. In general, Voltaire’s satire criticizes those who lack good judgment or critical thinking, or those who believe in everything they see and hear. Voltaire thinks that Enlightenment advocates are gullible or too trusting. The major weakness of Candide, therefore, is not that he is quite naïve, but that he lets his innocence or dim-wittedness to put him in risky circumstances. In contrast, Pangloss is the image of the perfect enlightenment thinker. He is reflective and introspective. The satire appears when Pangloss communicates his ideas to other people. Pangloss exerts much effort teaching Candide of his beliefs, numerous of which are too optimistic and impractical. Here Voltaire expresses his main criticism of the Enlightenment; he views the principle of the Enlightenment as excessively optimistic, and thus seriously mistaken. Such belief is shown in the Pangloss’s popular expression “This is the best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire, 1991, 1). This is the kind of reasoning that Pangloss uses in his life. Obviously, it gives him contentment but his belief encourages him to take for granted the actual problems in his society. After seeing the terrible cruelties and hearing dreadful tales of bloodshed and rapes, Candide asks (Voltaire, 1991, 13): “If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?” Conclusion Therefore, the audiences are left with the thought that all the beliefs of Pangloss could be untrue. It becomes obvious that although Voltaire is mocking social institutions or systems, he is not actually aiming for impractical reforms; he only desires to decrease the foolishness of the existing conditions in the society. Apparently, Voltaire wants to show in Candide that there is no such thing as destiny. He believes that we are the masters of our own fate. We should not ignore the evils of this world and work toward solving the problems of society. Too much optimism, Voltaire believes, is unhealthy, both to the individual and the larger society. References Fisher, B. (2008). Candide. New York: Opera Journeys Publishing. Levine, A. (1999). Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration. UK: Lexington Books. Mason, H. (1992). Candide: Optimism Demolished. New York: Twayne Publishers. Pearson, R. (1993). The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire’s ‘Contes Philosophiques”. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pearson, R. (2006). Candide and Other Stories. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Topazio, V. (1967). Voltaire: A Critical Study of his Major Works. New York: Random House. Voltaire (1991). Candide. New York: Courier Dover Publications. Williams, D. (1994). Voltaire: Political Writings. UK: Cambridge University Press. Wootton, D. (2000). Candide and Related Texts. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Read More