Hence, the human perception that events like pandemics, earthquakes, massacres and tsunamis are bad must be mistaken.įloods and fires: the struggle to rebuild, the search for meaningįrontispiece and first page of an early English translation by T. These two men had defended what the former called “ theodicy”: the idea that a perfect God could only have created the best possible world. In Pangloss, Voltaire is satirising German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the British poet, Alexander Pope. Consequently, they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said: all is for the best.” Legs are visibly designed for stockings - and we have stockings Pigs were made to be eaten - therefore we eat pork all the year round. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles - thus we have spectacles. It is demonstrable,“ said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are for all is necessarily for the best end. The second is admiration for his teacher, Pangloss (“all tongue”), an exalted Professor of “métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie” possessed of the happy ability to explain everything that happens, despite appearances, as “for the best”. The first is abiding love for his sweetheart, Cunégonde. Raised in a magnificent castle in Westphalia, in North-Western Germany, he is moved by just two passions. Wikimedia Commons A simple ladĪs his name suggests, Voltaire’s hero, Candide, is a simple lad. Their death is the price of their crimes’?Ī depiction of the Great Lisbon Earthquake of November 1, 1755. To this appalling spectacle of smoking ashes with, His first response was the impassioned “ Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” of 1755:Īs the dying voices call out, will you dare respond This combination of senseless death and even more senseless human responses outraged Voltaire. Pyres were erected in the streets to burn heretics, as scapegoats for the disaster. Catholics proposed, with equal implausibility, the especial sinfulness of the Lisbonites as the disaster’s cause. Protestants saw in Lisbon’s destruction divine judgement on Catholicism. Within minutes, tens of thousands were dead.
In 1755, meanwhile, on November 1, a huge earthquake had struck the Portugese capital, Lisbon, followed by a tsunami. Politically, he had been forced from exile to exile for his criticism of monastic and clerical privileges in France and his Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations (1756), which treated Christianity as just one world religion, rather than the final revealed truth. Personally, his great love, Émilie du Châtelet had died in 1749.