Pessimism in Candide

A detailed Summary of Pessimism in Candide

Candide, or Optimism, was written by Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire during the French Enlightenment. In this period, intellectuals in France known as the philosophes sought to apply reason to the laws of nature. Candide follows the travels of a young German who has been expelled from his comfortable existence in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh for a romantic encounter he had with the Baron?s pleasing daughter. Although he might not have been a pessimist himself, Voltaire presents in Candide a pessimistic response to the optimism of the earlier part of the 18th Century.

Voltaire uses Candide?s story as an opportunity to satirize the optimistic philosophy present in the origins of the Enlightenment. Philosophical thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Alexander Pope had proposed that everything in the world is good, and that all events are for a reason, part of God?s divine plan.

Candide is part of a philosophical backlash that prevailed in the latter part of the century to this optimism of the earlier 18th Century. Voltaire lived in a period of deep pessimism in France. So says Voltaire in 1744, ?People are always crying that this world is in the process of degeneration.? Although a part of the ph

Religion, a source of optimism for many at this time, is also satirized by Voltaire. He particularly picks on the Catholic Church, the most common church in France and the one in which Voltaire himself was raised. The Grand Inquisitor, one of the most powerful men of the Catholic Church in Portugal, uses his position of power to force Don Issachar, a Jew, to share the lovely Cunegonde as a love slave. Cunegonde?s maid, known simply has the old woman, was born the daughter of a Pope. These are not the only examples of Catholic priests not practicing their celibacy. Pangloss receives syphilis from Paquette, which she in turn received from a Franciscan. Paquette, a prostitute, settled in Venice where one of her clients was Brother Giroflee, a monk who has found no fulfillment in his monastic life.

Though not completely a pessimist himself, Voltaire satirizes the optimism of the 18th Century in Candide. Through the misadventures of a young German optimist and his philosophical friends, Voltaire satirizes the logic used by the contemporaries of his century to prove that everything is right and happens for a reason. He also ridiculed the view that the world was perfect because God was perfect, including a few poignant jabs at religion, namely the Catholic Church. Voltaire does not forget to include the philosophes, who spend their days using reason to find meaning or happiness in life. Although a philosophe himself, Voltaire might have felt like Candide, who at the end of his tale, forgoes intellectual thought for a simple life in his garden, co

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Approximate Word count = 1052
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English