Voltaire's Candide

So what Voltaire is doing in the novel Candide is he’s satirizing the sort of happy optimistic rationalism of one of the main characters there, Dr. Pangloss. So what do I mean by that? Well what Dr. Pangloss fervently believes is that this world of ours, created and designed by God, is the best of all possible worlds, and so that whatever happens (however terrible it might seem), is really for the best. 

Now, here’s the thing, the main target of Voltaire’s satire is actually the philosopher Leibniz, whose view is the one Pangloss is made to express. The bottom line is that Voltaire disagreed with Leibniz’s, let’s call it, optimistic theodicy. That’s to say, he disagreed with his view that our existing world is the best world that God could have created. 

But back to the novel. So Pangloss’ philosophical position in the novel is basically something like this:  What he’s saying is that the world doesn’t have to be a terrible place even if it happens to be really bad for me. So the idea here would be that what is bad for me is actually in the big picture good for the general arrangement of things. So I could be living in a vale of tears but really what I don’t see is that ultimately everything is for the best. As the English poet Alexander Pope said in his The Essay on Man, “All discord is harmony not understood, all partial evil is universal good.” 

Actually, Candide quotes Dr. Pangloss about just this sort of idea, and it takes the form of an aesthetic analogy. He says this, he says, the ills of the world are but the shadows in a beautiful painting. And actually Voltaire himself is basically getting this from the great optimist Leibniz I mentioned, who claimed that “shadows bring out the colours”. 

Now what are we to make of this, this analogy with shadows?  I mean in a way, at least when it comes to a work of art, this makes some sense. In a painting the light and dark require each other and they play off one another to form an overall beautiful image. But ultimately the problem with this is that at the level of real life, it’s not shadows we’re talking about, is it?  No, it’s blood soaked stains! Life just isn’t an artwork, despite the many comparisons we might draw between them. The contrast between light and shadow and life and death are two very different ones!  

Anyway, all this said, I think what really bothered Voltaire about Pangloss’ optimism or theory that everything’s for the best, despite all the personal atrocities, was not that it was completely unreasonable maybe, but that it cultivated a heartlessness in people. It made them less sympathetic, more indifferent, to the tragedies of others. I mean for those of us who point out the ways in which the world is not the best that it could be, at least in doing so we seem to be acknowledging the plight and the suffering of others, right? Not so it seems for those who can’t imagine anything being better than it is.  

So that was one criticism Voltaire had. Another one was that this sort of all-is-for-the-best attitude made people more apathetic and less active, it made them more resistant to make changes and to improve things. 

And that’s not surprising. I mean when you believe that certain tragedies are not only unavoidable but necessary than you’re obviously less likely to believe you can or should do something to prevent them. Why strive to improve the world if it’s already completely perfect? This is what was fundamentally wrong with Leibniz’s view; in the words of one commentator, it was a cold philosophical system that tried to demonstrate why human suffering is necessary and because of this not something that we need to get too upset over. In other words, indifference and complacency becomes the consequence of necessity.  

So at the end of the novel, what happens is that Candide and Pangloss find themselves in Turkey, after having travelled around the world (and suffered immensely of course), and they come across an old man who’s sitting peacefully under a tree by his house. What the old man tells them is that he has no interest in getting involved with the affairs of the world, instead, all he wants to do is to cultivate his little garden. Candide takes this to heart, turns to Pangloss, and says, we too must cultivate our garden. 

Ok so what does this ending mean, what does Voltaire mean when he tells us that we have to cultivate our garden? 

Well obviously there are countless interpretations out there. And so hey, it can’t hurt to add another one right? So to be honest the first thing that comes to my mind when I read that line is that Voltaire is in part drawing an allusion to Epicurus’ Garden. So what was that? Well, Epicurus’ Garden, established around 306 BC, was a philosophical school and a society of friends whose sole pursuit was the achievement of tranquility or peace of mind. That’s to say, the Epicureans weren’t interested in trying to answer the big questions about the nature and meaning of the cosmos; no, the only questions they pursued were the ones that were relevant to the attainment of personal tranquility. In other words, for them, the only point of doing philosophy was to promote this one end, and if something didn’t promote it, then there was no point studying it! So basically you could say that philosophy had a strictly utilitarian purpose. Actually, now that I think about it, the Buddha was very similar. He also valued a kind of pragmatic outlook and discouraged all metaphysical speculation that wasn’t conducive to virtue or mental hygiene.  

Anyway, so what does this have to do with this line in Candide, that we must cultivate our garden? Well, first of all, I think that what Voltaire is expressing and counselling here is a kind of Epicurean retirement from the troubles of the larger world. I mean, apparently Voltaire was a great admirer of the country, places free from the hustle and bustle, and the dangers, of city life. To keep a distance between ourselves and the world of public opinion and ambition can be very helpful! 

But it’s not just this of course. More interestingly, I think that what he’s also expressing, not unlike Epicurus, is the abandonment of trying to solve life’s mysteries by metaphysical or philosophical speculation. It’s the suggestion not to seek answers to questions that can have none, especially answers to those questions having to do with natural evil and suffering. 

You see, I think what Voltaire is reacting to are grand philosophical systems. Remember, Pangloss is a teacher of ‘Metaphysico-theologico-cosmolooniology’! Anyway, more specifically, what Voltaire is reacting to is the philosopher Leibniz’s philosophical system, one that claims that the reason for evil can be known and it can be justified or made sense of; a system, in other words, that makes suffering explicable!  For Voltaire, not only can natural evil not be known or made sense of, but to think it can, to rationalize tragedy, to engage in theodicy, is vain and deeply morally suspect, as I discussed earlier. No the bottom line seems to be that this sort of philosophical speculation is an attempt to solve the insoluble, and so, the best response is to stay silent and instead focus on what we can know and what we have some control over. 

So I think something like this is what Voltaire is partly expressing in that line, that we must cultivate our garden. 

Ok, but I said just now that he means for us to focus on what we can know and and what we have some control over. Now this is important and it leads me to what I think is the second part of his meaning. Yes he’s getting us to give up on grand philosophical speculation, but in its place what he’s asking us to do is to get to work and to try to solve life’s actual practical problems, especially as they concern those in our own little local corners of the world. There’s a time to be silent and to admit humility, and there’s a time to take action and to do what we can to make a positive difference. And, think about it, to cultivate a garden is to do just this! It’s to carefully tend to the soil and to make better the environment. It’s to make something beautiful come into existence that wasn’t there beforehand. 

Now I mentioned natural evil before, that’s the kind of evil that’s not of our own doing, you know, like the occurrence of earthquakes and tsunamis. And I mention earthquakes for a reason. And that’s because what partly inspired Voltaire to write Candide was the actual occurrence of a massive earthquake that struck Lisbon in 1755, where over 30000 people were killed. It was a wholesale slaughter and to make matters more questionable, it happened in a Catholic city on the day of a holy festival! 

Anyway, as I said earlier, Voltaire, unlike Leibniz, doesn’t think this sort of evil (natural evil) can be rationalized or made sense of by being made to seem necessary. All is not for the best. You don’t explain or justify suffering by referring to a larger plan or history. It’s perverse to think so! No, as one commentator puts it, for Voltaire, the best response to natural evil is to simply bow our heads and mourn for its victims, to hope for better things to come, and ultimately to acknowledge the incapacity of reason to make sense of such tragedies. Ultimately, to see maimed bodies and the cries of children is enough by itself to prove philosophy conceited and empty!

Anyway, that’s natural evil. But I don’t think the same goes for moral or social evil. And moral or social evil, by the way, refers to the willful acts of human beings. So here I think Voltaire takes the view that such evil, unlike natural evil, is both knowable and controllable. It’s something we can do something about! So (and here’s the point), when he tells us that we must cultivate our garden, he’s ultimately telling us to stop all our boisterous theorizing and instead to do what we can, to work incrementally, to alleviate moral evil. He’s telling us to stop our utopianizing and make actual improvements. He’s telling us to stop our rationalizing and get to work. And, as one commentator puts it, he’s telling us to remove ourselves from the centres of corruption and to work concretely at our appointed task toward the diminution of injustices. 

At the end of the day, it’s a simple message. Through practical action, through the gradual weeding, and the pruning, and the cultivation of the garden, few as those acres may be, we can slowly begin to grow the fruits of a better world!