Voltaire’s Candide Versus John Stewart Mill’s Concept of Utilitarianism

Voltaire’s exploration of free-will and Pangloss’s voluntary optimism and Martin’s voluntary pessimism is probably birthed from the era of the Enlightenments obsession with civil liberty and democracy in which came the later question, which is the right way to act. Just 28 years after the death of Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, famous French historian, writer, and philosopher was the birth of famous British political economist, politician, and philosopher and proponent of Utilitarianism developed by Jeremy Bentham. Utility as a word means the state of being useful. This concept of Utilitarianism and both Bentham’s and Mill’s role is explained in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn9FuHwX7zw. Utilitarianism is based generally on the belief that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it produces unhappiness. It refutes egoism, the pursuit of complete self-interest regardless of its effect on others. Candide as a novel subtly searches for the right way to live and the right motive. It is interesting that a central question of Utilitarianism is what a man should do and Mill believed that what is right is independent of the motive, it is only joint with the result of good consequences. He believes you should optimize pleasure and reduce pain. Voltaire plays with this theory of Utilitarianism way before it is developed when he explores pain and pleasure and good and bad intentions in his novel through the tragedy, plot, and unique personalities of his characters.

For example, it is interesting to think of Pangloss’s optimism as a form of pessimism. If this really is the best of all possible worlds than there is no way for anything to get better, and no effort made to strive for and achieve more happiness for oneself and others. When Pangloss say’s when they decide to work the garden and everyone is satisfied by their work and Candide replies, “That is very well put . . . but we must cultivate our garden.” Candide almost makes an Utilitarian assertion himself that more happiness can be striven for through work and Voltaire perhaps makes an assertion that what is right for a man to do and what is the right way to act is just to be useful and the most real happiness can be found in that.

One last interesting point to consider is John Stewart Mill’s perhaps most famous quote, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”. And as Voltaire writes in Candide, “Let’s work without speculating, said Martin, it’s the only way of rendering life bearable.” Martin also is quoted saying that humans live “either in convulsions of misery or in the lethargy of boredom.” Voltaire questions the value of being able to bear life when sacrificing being able to explore and speculate it. Ultimately Martin’s characteristic pessimism and Pangloss’s blind optimism are just as empty. Neither is the right way to live and as money, good-fortune, love, and leisure do not bring Candide happiness, Voltaire concludes the novel with Candide achieving his ultimate semblance of a state of happiness through tending to his garden or as John Stewart Mill or Jeremy Benthem might put it as they define Utilitarianism, the state of being useful.