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.
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