The world was a tumultuous place in the 1700’s. Wars were fought, corruption was rampant, and a wave of philosophers were beginning to question the social order in a barrage of thought which we now know as the Enlightenment. Most men, while picking out their own convictions from the torrent of ideas swirling about in such a world, might have quietly reflected and been satisfied. In this way, Voltaire was extraordinary: he made his own convictions, and then laid them out for the whole world to evaluate in what would become, arguably, the finest satires of all time. One of the most poignant of these is Candide, the sharply witty story of a naïve young man whose misadventures lead him from a dull life of study to one of adventure, misery, and evanescent fortune. Rejecting both the high-minded doctrines of the Enlightenment movement, and the stagnant opinions of traditional society, Voltaire’s ideas represented a unique and volatile hybrid, which garnered him generous praise and plenty of time in exile. Voltaire uses Candide as a chronicle of his personal criticisms of philosophy, religion, and even the Enlightenment movement.
One of Voltaire’s premier criticisms in Candide is quite in alignment with Enlightenment teachings: the belief that the church has become irrevocably corrupt and hypocritical and is in need of reform is a central theme of the novel. As Candide and his companions travel to a place called Cadiz, they come upon an assembling military fleet, and the narrator provides this reason for the congregation: “A fleet was there getting ready, and troops assembling to knock some sense into the reverend Jesuit Fathers of Paraguay, accused of having made one of the native tribes in the neighborhood of San Sacrament revolt against the Kings of Spain and Portugal” (23). The common association of priests with peace and purity is blown apart by the notion that they may also be the driving forces behind secular disputes. Though the involvement of the church in political affairs has never exactly been a secret, to come right out and insinuate that a society’s supposed holy men are responsible for its wars is extremely irreverent. The genius of the way Voltaire brings the reader to this conclusion is his subtlety. Voltaire doesn’t need to viciously bash the church; he simply makes acute and slightly slanderous observations, and lets the reader calculate what the subsequent situation actually implies. Further evidence of clerical corruption is throughout the tome, and is especially startling in one incident when Candide is dealing with his lover Cunegonde’s brother, the Baron, a Jesuit Priest. Candide and the Baron get along very well, but relations between them turn suddenly sour when Candide mentions that he intends to marry Cunegonde. The Jesuit Baron is so infuriated by this news that he, “[Strikes Candide] across the face with the flat of his sword” (38). The baron’s anger arises chiefly from the fact that his sister and Candide belong to different social classes, and his extreme anger seems unusual and ultra-conservative, even in context. The central point of this exchange is to remove the pious guise behind which most clergy members have the convenience of hiding, and exposing the baron for what he truly is: a bigoted, uncompromising, class-conscious man, who, though pious, is unwilling to leave the business of making judgments to god.
Though many of the book’s criticisms concern the corruption and hypocrisy of the church, much of Voltaire’s critical black humor also centers on the inherent futility of philosophy. As Candide and his companion Pangloss are traveling through Lisbon, there is an unfortunate succession of earthquakes which nearly level the city. The local university-educated philosophers decide on the best way to prevent such disasters: “It had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking” (13). The obvious ineffectuality of such a proclamation aside, the townspeople proceed to burn, hang, and flog several innocent citizens, Pangloss and Candide included. The obvious value of such a scenario is not only to question all of society’s guiding principles, but also to bring to task those public officials who we are trusting to create them. Voltaire not only weaves this singular story of philosophical folly, but he also crafts a parallel situation to further ridicule the school of elevated thought. As Candide and Pangloss weather the initial brunt of the city’s earthquakes, Candide is half-crushed by a wall of falling stone and nearly killed. Instead of taking action to assist Candide, Pangloss, whose only real skills are in the area of philosophy, is completely useless. Because of this, as Candide lay bleeding, Pangloss attempts to engage him in debate, proving himself thoroughly ill-suited to the substantial requirements of life in the real world:
“Some falling stones had wounded Candide. He lay stretched in the street covered with rubbish.
“Alas!” said he to Pangloss, “get me a little wine and oil; I am dying.”
“This concussion of the earth is no new thing,” answered Pangloss. “The city of Lima, in America, experienced the same convulsions last year; the same cause, the same effects; there is certainly a train of sulphur under ground from Lima to Lisbon.”
“Nothing more probable,” said Candide; “but for the love of God a little oil and wine.”
“How, probable?” replied the philosopher. “I maintain that the point is capable of being demonstrated” (13).
Though his friend lay incapacitated in the street, Pangloss has no practical skills, and symbolizes the futility of convoluted philosophical musings. The point, then, is to illustrate that while a man might spend his entire life becoming a scholar of book knowledge, he might still be thoroughly inept at dealing with life’s realistic, daily hazards. Thus, Voltaire asserts that spending one’s life in pursuit of philosophy is fundamentally fruitless, and that vital, functioning individuals should invest themselves in more practical pursuits.
Voltaire lambasts the occupation of philosophy, but he also spends many pages ridiculing the foolish optimism he associates with the Enlightenment. Candide is often cited as one of the premier texts of the enlightenment era, but in fact many of the convictions conveyed through the text are critical of the Enlightenment movement, chiefly those expressed through Voltaire’s characters. Candide, for instance, is possessed with an extreme optimism and naïveté which is subtly articulated through his actions and words. Though we are to assume he is a grown man, he lacks basic common sense, and is utterly bereft of any knowledge which would normally be gained from life experience. He’s somewhat slow on the uptake, and believes wholeheartedly whatever he is told. This innocent gullibility and general dimness is a reflection of Voltaire’s criticism of Enlightenment followers. Candide does begin to draw his own conclusions near the end, when he concludes, from all of his life experience, that man’s only real obligation in life is to “cultivate [his] garden” (88). Generally, Voltaire’s satire is critical of anyone who jumps on any bandwagon too readily, and his opinion of the followers of the enlightenment was that most of them were quickly supporting something which they did not yet fully understand. The main flaw in Candide, then, is not that he is something of a simpleton, but that he allows his lack of knowledge to lead him into undesirable situations. Pangloss, on the other hand, is the model of the ideal enlightenment philosopher. He is thoughtful and contemplative, and though he is not good for anything more than his philosophy, that, at least, is mostly sound. The criticism comes when Pangloss shares his philosophy with others. He spends much of his time filling Candide’s impressionable head with his convictions, many of which are overly idealistic and optimistic. This is where Voltaire meets his chief disagreement with the Enlightenment movement: Voltaire sees the Enlightenment’s philosophy as much too optimistic, and therefore deeply flawed. This sentiment is reflected in one of Pangloss’s most common phrases: “This is the best of all possible worlds” (4). This is the sort of logic that Pangloss applies to everything in Pangloss’s life. It leaves him perfectly content, of course, but his philosophy leads him to ignore the real flaws in his society. Voltaire’s voice enters the novel later in the form of Candide who, after witnessing the horrific atrocities and hearing stories of rapes and murders asks: “If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?” (15). In the end, the reader is left with the feeling that all of Pangloss’s theories might be fundamentally false, but that he, like any philosopher in the real world, does the best he can with whatever he has to work with. It becomes clear that while Voltaire is criticizing social institutions and infrastructure, he’s not really asking for impossible changes: he simply strives to reduce the folly of the status quo.
Voltaire lived in a time period rife with change, in a time when new ideas were brewing and old traditions were being abandoned forever. His satire, all at once political, critical, and philosophical, did not attack any one agenda, but didn’t align with any single institution either. Voltaire wasn’t an orthodox follower of anything, and his often scathing humor exposed the silliness in all parts of society, laying bare the flaws in institutions of religion, philosophy, and even the popular all-encompassing movement, the Enlightenment.
Works Cited
Voltaire. Candide. New York: Oxford Classics, 1999.
