Why was some of the greatest satire ever produced written in the eighteenth century? Undoubtedly for a number of reasons, not the least of which includes the fact that optimism was in the air. In the early decades of the eighteenth century, the European Enlightenment was in full swing. \u00a0Over the previous century and a half, spectacular scientific advances, the exploration of the New World, and the rise of enlightened rulers had given rise to a general optimism about human progress and our ability to improve the world around us. The breakthroughs of Galileo, Newton, and others led many to believe that we live in a rational universe, created and overseen by a rational God, a universe whose puzzles and riddles are there for the solving through the systematic and rigorous use of the human mind.<\/p>\n
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Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, one of the greatest of the Enlightenment philosophers, summarized one aspect of this Enlightenment perspective in a memorable claim: \u201cThis is the best of all possible worlds.\u201d A good and omnipotent creating God could do no other than create the best creation possible\u2014the fact that it often appears otherwise from the human perspective is a result of our ignorance, an ignorance that Enlightenment progress promised to reduce and, perhaps, ultimately eliminate.<\/p>\n
Then on November 1, 1755, one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history struck Lisbon, followed by three tsunamis. It was All Saint\u2019s Day; the churches, filled with worshippers, simultaneously collapsed and burst into flames due to the hundreds of lit candles. Thousands of people fled the buildings and headed to the waterfront, just as a wall of water twenty-five feet high came ashore. Eighty-five percent of Lisbon was destroyed; tremors were felt as far away as Finland, North Africa, Greenland, and the Caribbean. Casualty estimates range widely, but it is clear that as many as 75,000 people died.<\/p>\n
The earthquake had wide-ranging effects on the lives of the populace and intelligentsia. It had struck on an important religious holiday and had destroyed almost every important church in the city, causing anxiety and confusion amongst the citizens of a staunch and devout Roman Catholic\u00a0country. Theologians and philosophers focused and speculated on the religious cause and message, seeing the earthquake as a possible manifestation of divine judgment. One of these intellectuals was Fran\u00e7ois-Marie Arouet, better known by his\u00a0nom de plume<\/em>, Voltaire\u2013he\u2019s also on our reading list for Monday\u2019s seminar.<\/p>\n In 1759, a mere four years after the Lisbon earthquake, Voltaire published his masterpiece\u00a0Candide: or, Optimism<\/em>, one of the great works of satire in the Western tradition. Voltaire\u2019s hero, Candide, goes through an outrageous and outlandish series of experiences in the novella, experiences that produce pain, suffering, destruction, and death in increasing frequency and intensity as the story unfolds. Candide is joined in his adventures by a small cadre of companions, including Dr. Pangloss (\u201call tongue\u201d or \u201call words\u201d), an intellectual who is the mouthpiece for Leibnizian optimism.<\/p>\n After each catastrophe, including the Lisbon earthquake itself which occurs in a central chapter, Pangloss ties himself in logical and argumentative knots in his \u201cproofs\u201d that, despite all appearances, this is the best of all possible worlds and everything happens for the best. Pangloss himself is often the recipient of the worst experiences, something that Candide points out to him toward the end of the story:<\/p>\n Candide<\/strong>: Well, my dear Pangloss, when you had been hanged, dissected, whipped, and were tugging at the oar, did you always think that everything happens for the best?<\/p>\n Pangloss<\/strong>: I am still of my first opinion, for I am a philosopher and I cannot retract, especially as Leibniz could never be wrong . . .<\/p>\n Candide, a na\u00efve youngster inclined to believe the authoritative Pangloss\u2019 arguments early in the story, eventually changes his mind in the face of his experiences and comes to define Pangloss\u2019 optimism as \u201cthe madness of believing that everything is right when it is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Panglossian arguments infect our contemporary world everywhere one looks. Just listen for a few minutes (if you can) to politicians from all sides defending and arguing for their pre-established positions concerning Covid-19 vaccination mandates, often in denial of clear facts to the contrary of their positions. Ever present religious rigidity results from the insistence of faithful persons that a handful of doctrines must be true and are unrevisable, even when they explain nothing and do damage on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Toward the end of\u00a0Candide<\/em>, the remaining handful of Candide\u2019s friends reflect on what they have learned. Pangloss admits to something that many of us fall prey to\u2014paying lip service to commitments that one no longer believes are true. \u201cPangloss owned that had had always suffered horribly, but as he had once asserted that everything went wonderfully well, he asserted it still, though he no longer believed it.\u201d<\/p>\n What is one to do when one finds out that what one professes to believe has become, as Macbeth said when reflecting on his wife\u2019s suicide, \u201ca tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing\u201d? For those of us who are honest, even our most cherished beliefs and commitments sound exactly like that on some days. After one hundred pages of disaster, the final episode of\u00a0Candide<\/em>\u00a0offers something both practical and optimistic. Candide and his friends meet an elderly Muslim who has spent his life cultivating twenty acres with his children, noting that \u201cour labor preserves us from three great evils\u2014weariness, vice, and want.\u201d Candide is attracted to this and, as his friends make various suggestions as to how they might move forward, responds \u201cwe must cultivate our garden.\u201d<\/p>\n After Pangloss\u2019 final attempt to prove that this is the best of all possible worlds, Candide turns his back on big-picture argumentation once and for all in the final line of the novella: \u201cAll that is very well, but let us cultivate our garden.\u201d There\u2019s a very important insight here that transfers nicely to our 2021 situation. I like economist Paul Romer\u2019s idea of \u201cconditional optimism.\u201d He explains: \u201cComplacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents. Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse: \u2018If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.\u2019\u201d Pangloss\u2019 optimism throughout Candide<\/em> has been complacent, while Candide has come to something akin to conditional optimism. Things are more likely to work out for the best when we are clear about what we need to be actively doing to make it so.<\/p>\n Candide has learned at a relatively young age what some learn only in their advanced years and many never learn at all: Happiness, contentment, and meaning are local. Cosmic commitments come and go, but what is right in front of us is always in the same place\u2014right in front of us. The prophet Micah expressed it clearly, when answering the question \u201cWhat does God want me to do?\u201d<\/p>\n He has showed you what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?<\/strong><\/p>\n Justice. Mercy. Humility. These are things we can do, and in doing so can move toward the world we optimistically envision. Let us cultivate our garden.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the interdisciplinary Honors course that I am team-teaching in this semester, we are smack in the middle of the 18th century. And that, among other things, means satire. I love satire and frequently use it in class to great effect, an effect heightened by the fact that the average nineteen-year-old can\u2019t tell the difference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":21383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,14,27,35,40,45,48,49,59,61,73,75,94],"tags":[269,865,369,383,463,491],"class_list":["post-24796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belief","category-bible","category-books","category-doubt","category-faith","category-god","category-history","category-human-nature","category-humility","category-justice","category-literature","category-philosophy","category-politics","category-teaching","tag-human-nature","tag-leibniz","tag-old-testament","tag-philosophy","tag-teaching","tag-voltaire"],"yoast_head":"\n