AP European History
Candide Essay (20 points)
Due Monday, December, 12th
Margin Notes
Your copy of the book is designed for margin notes, which you should make as you read and as we have
our discussions.
With your margin notes and highlighting of important passages, start to look for themes that emerge out
of the story and the characters that are introduced.
Essay
On December 12th you will turn in an essay about the novel Candide. In terms of knowing what to write
about, treat this essay as practice for the paper that you are soon to write on your own book project, the
instructions for which are equallly vague.
However, if you are really struggling for direction in your reading, here are some general, and somewhat
overlapping, questions that might suggest themes to look for:
1. What criticisms does Voltaire level against specific institutions and groups of people? How do such
criticisms show the way Enlightenment authors reacted to their society in eighteenth-century
Europe?
2. What is the larger significance of Candide’s travels to such places as Lisbon, the Americas, Venice,
Constantinople, and the adventures that he has? How does his luck, good or bad, fit with
Enlightenment views of the human condition?
3. In what way(s) do the people and the events described in Candide represent Enlightenment thinking
about social and political reform and contemporary society?
4. Voltaire includes each character in this story for a reason. Most support a particular philosophic view
or serve as a target of satire. Try to figure out why Voltaire included each of them.
5. Note the development of Candide’s character. How does he change, how does his philosophy of life
change, and how do his life-lessons reflect the themes of the book?
Contemporary Philosophers and Ideas
(Adapted from Anna Marie Roos, University of Minnesota, Duluth)
Note: Not all of those who follow were Voltaire’s contemporaries, but all were crucial in shaping the
philosophical thought of Voltaire’s time.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) and the philosophy of Optimism
A German philosopher and mathematician (calculus). He supposed that the universe was composed of
indivisible monads, each an individual microcosm mirroring the universe in some way. The universe,
which is made of these monads linked together in a chain of cause and effect, has been designed
according to divine plan, but humans are unable to appreciate the greater good of this plan. Hence, they
may question many divine principles, because they fail to recognize how superficially negative events,
such as earthquakes and wars, can contribute to universal harmony. Leibniz felt that this truly was the
best of all possible worlds, and thus, God was benevolent, even if humans were too ignorant to
recognize His actions as such.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Pope’s Essay on Man popularized the philosophy of Optimism, although Pope denied that Leibniz
influenced him. His Essay on Man includes the idea of an infinite God who created the best of possible
worlds, and the notion of a greater synergistic good. Pope was most noted for his poetry, however, and
his mastery of the heroic couplet set the standard for the eighteenth-century. Here is an example, his
Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton, from March 21, 1727:
Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
(Also see next page)
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)
Bayle was one of the leading opponents of Optimism. A religious chameleon (started Protestant, became
Catholic, changed back to Protestant, and then became a Pyrrhonian), he was considered a great skeptic.
He advocated tolerance, attacked superstition, argued for independence of religion. His Dictionnaire
historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary), 1697, advocated free and independent thought
in nearly all matters.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
A vocal opponent of science, technology, urbanization, and anything modern, Rousseau argued that
these things corrupted mankind and that the preferred state for all of man was a primitive one. Rousseau
claimed that mankind brought many disasters and much evil upon itself, especially by choosing an urban
rather than a pastoral life. He wrote an epistle to Voltaire in response to Voltaire’s poem on the Lisbon
earthquake, arguing that there may have even been some in Lisbon who are happier dead – not merely
better off dead. Rousseau’s return to nature and simplicity laid an early foundation for Romanticism.
Anabaptists
The Anabaptists were a loose collection of religious sects who believed in the necessity of adult
baptism, and the corresponding lack of validity of childhood baptism. Pacifists holding to complete
separation of church and state, they were feared and hated throughout Europe, and persecuted quite
savagely, though there was some religious tolerance for their beliefs in the Netherlands.
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, was an order within the Roman Catholic Church. Recognized in 1540,
their chief task has traditionally been teaching. The order made many contributions to the sciences. The
founder, Saint Ignatius Loyola, felt the pursuit of scientific knowledge could be spiritually beneficial. As
an international order in the age of the strong centralized state, the Jesuits managed to be exiled from
every country in Europe at one time or another. Bourbon monarchs would induce the Pope to outlaw
them completely in 1773, at which time they found refuge in Prussia.
Jansenists
An intensely devotional sect of Catholicism having similarities with Calvinism that included a focus on
human depravity and predestination, the Jansenists hated the Jesuits, accusing them of being too wordly
and politically ambitious. Jansenism appeared during the 1640s, and Pascal was heavily influenced by it
in his turn away from science shortly thereafter. Jansenism was never accepted by the Papacy.
Deists
Using Newton’s work as a starting point, Deism assumed that the World was governed entirely by the
universal laws that God had set up at the Creation. Deism rejected Christian teachings and revelation,
and instead focused mainly on the innate religious knowledge of man, and whatever could be explored
by reason. Deists frequently attacked supernatural elements of all religions, preferring pure reason to
insight. Voltaire was a Deist, as were Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington.
Manicheans
With pre-Christian roots, they argued that a benevolent God only ruled half the universe, the other half
of which was ruled by the Devil. Thus God has no control over the Devil or evil, and the Devil is
sovereign in his own sphere of influence. The logical consequence of this is that God is not omnipotent,
which anwers the perennial question of why bad things happen to good people. Needless to say, the
Manichees were branded as heretics.
Remember:
This book was meant to be funny. Though you may not get all the historical references, there are
universally comic events for you to enjoy. Have some fun with it and learn to read between the lines to
see what Voltaire is really describing.