Voltaire and the Enlightenment
• Voltaire was the most
influential author of the 18th
century, an epochal period
that changed the thinking and
culture of Western Europe.
• He wrote many hundreds of
published works and well over
20,000 letters.
• Voltaire’s published works
Voltaire
range from light verse to epic
poetry, drama, narrative
fiction, essays, a dictionary,
(1694-1778)
philosophical treatises,
pseudonym of
scientific popularizations to
Francois Marie Arouet
the genre he created, the
“philosophical tale” (Kors 1, 452).
Leibniz and Theodicy
• Emilie du Chatelet had introduced Voltaire to Essays on
Theodicy, in which Gottfried Leibniz addressed the question
of why evil exists in a world created by God. “Theodicy” is
that branch of philosophy that addresses the problem of evil.
Leibniz’s optimistic philosophy initially appealed to Voltaire’s
deism.
• In Theodicy, Leibniz argues that God, who is infinitely wise,
powerful and good, would not create a perfect world,
because He is the only perfect being. As God will create,
therefore, an imperfect world, it logically follows, “the best of
all possible worlds.”
• It further follows that God chose everything in the creation
as necessary to the existence of the best of all possible
worlds. Therefore, nothing is truly “evil.” God has a
sufficient reason for all things, and if we had God’s
knowledge, we would understand the good of what we might
think, from our limited perspective, to be evil (Kors 6, 452).
Voltaire and Optimism
• Voltaire had always felt a tension about this
philosophical optimism; in the 1750s, he came to
reject it.
• The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 raised the
question, “How can the evil and suffering of the
world be reconciled with the goodness of God?”
• Voltaire addressed this question in his Poem on
the Lisbon Earthquake, describing the suffering
caused by the earthquake and asking why an
omnipotent God could not have created a world
without such catastrophes (Kors 6, 452).
Lisbon Earthquake
• The Lisbon earthquake of November 1,1755
seared Voltaire’s consciousness and deeply
affected Europe’s intellectual life.
• Voltaire questioned how the evil produced by
nature’s general laws could be reconciled with
the providence of God.
• In his “Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake,” Voltaire
argued that evil is real and incomprehensible.
Rather than attempt to understand God, we
should devote our love and attention to suffering
humanity.
• The arbitrariness of survival motivated Candide.
Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne
(Poem on the Lisbon disaster)
To Voltaire, philosophical optimism equals
fatalism: if “whatever is, is right,” then one’s
attempts to mitigate suffering do not matter.
Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake
•
•
•
•
For Voltaire, one must choose between a
Leibnizian optimism that denies the existence of
evil and a cry of humanistic anguish that admits
it.
Philosophical explanations of suffering add insult
to injury.
Evil is real and incomprehensible.
God exists, but we cannot understand his
providence.
Humanity, not God, requires our love and
attention (Kors 6, 452).
In Rousseau’s Stinging Reply to the Poem on the
Lisbon Earthquate, he asserts that:
• Voltaire has written against
God and denied humans
their solace,
• Our rational knowledge of
God’s nature and necessary
creation of the best of all
possible worlds wholly
outweighs the appearances
of things, and
• Cities are centers of
corruption; humans were
meant to live simply in the
countryside.
• According to Rousseau, God
put earthquakes in nature so
we would know how to live
(Kors 6, 452).
Candide or Optimism
• The word optimism was coined in the 18th century
for a philosophical position which has only a distant
relationship with our modern notion of optimism,
which everyone now considers to be a positive
attitude.
• Leibniz, who believed the world was created by a
perfect God, has to justify the presence of evil by
saying that evil is necessary and is rather like the
shadows in a painting which serve to highlight the
principal figures and objects in the painting. Since
the world is created by God it is necessarily not just
good, but the best of all possible worlds. (optimum –
the Latin word from which optimism is derived –
means "best")
• Voltaire, originally an admirer of Leibniz, soon
realized that such a position justifies the presence of
evil and provides no incentive to improve the lot of
those who suffer evil and injustice in this life (Walsh).
Candide and Pangloss
• Voltaire wrote Candide in
anguish as a reply to
Rousseau.
• In the philosophical tale,
Candide is the student of
Pangloss, whose
Leibnizian philosophy
appears futile, irrelevant,
and absurd in the midst of
human pain and suffering
(Kors 447).
Pangloss
•Philosophical optimism denies the human
reality of irredeemable pain, injustice, and
cruelty.
•Candide voyages through a world of war,
arrogance, abuses of power, religious
persecutions and disease.
•Voltaire argues that evil is real, and we
cannot understand God’s providence.
•In Candide, the only way to avoid despair
is to labor to satisfy human needs. We
must pay attention to the real sources of
well-being and the causes of human
suffering (Kors 6, 452).
Voltaire’s Contribution
• This “shift from theological or
metaphysical concerns to the
human condition” is one of
Voltaire’s main contributions to
the Enlightenment.
• As a result of Voltaire’s assault
of philosophical optimism, it
became legitimate for
intellectuals to refute formal
thought by appeal to human
experience.
• Theology was displaced from the
center of intellectual activity, a
movement that encouraged both
investigation into the causes of
human misery and reform of the
conditions that perpetuated
suffering and injustice (Kors
447).
Sources
Birkenstock, Jane M. “A Love Story—Voltaire and Emilie,”
Chateau de Cirey-Residence of Voltaire (2009). Web. 14
June 2010.
Kors, Alan Charles. “The Assault Upon Philosophical
Optimism: Voltaire,” The Birth of the Modern Mind: An
Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
Course 447. The Teaching Company, n.d. CD.
Kors, Alan Charles, Voltaire and the Triumph of the
Enlightenment, Course 452. The Teaching Company,
n.d. CD.
Walsh, Thomas Readings on Candide. Literary Companion
to World Literature. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press,
2001.