Voltaire and the Enlightenment

1. Voltaire and the Enlightenment

2. Voltaire (1694-1778)pseudonym of Francois Marie Arouet • 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 range from light verse to epic poetry, drama, narrative fiction, essays, a dictionary, philosophical treatises, scientific popularizations to the genre he created, the “philosophical tale” (Kors 1, 452).

3. 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).

4. 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).

5. 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.

6. Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon disaster)

7. To Voltaire, philosophical optimism equals fatalism: if “whatever is, is right,” then one’s attempts to mitigate suffering do not matter.

8. 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).

9. 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).

10. 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).

11. 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

12. 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).

13. 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).

14. 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.