According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn???t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
Candide by Voltaire is one of the quintessential books of the Enlightenment. What does that mean? If you said, ???it???s boring??? you???d be a smart-ass, but not exactly wrong.
The plot of Candide might be boring, but the philosophy is kind of interesting.
So basically, there???s this guy Candide and his tutor Pangloss. Pangloss is an optimist, and he teaches Candide that this is ???the best of all possible worlds.???
What does Pangloss mean by that? Well, this world was created by God (duh), God is perfect (duh), so obviously the world he created is the best possible one. Everything, from the subway you just missed to the dog shit you stepped in, is part of God’s larger design. After all, why would God plan for anything else?
Of course, this philosophy can lead to some complacency. For example, if this is the best of all possible worlds, then this is the best of all possible blog posts.
The rest of the book is basically a refutation against this blind optimism. Take Candide???s affair with Cun??gonde: Their romance first gets Candide kicked out of his home, then Candide thinks Cun??gonde was brutally murdered, only to find out that she was only brutally raped. Once they???re reunited, Cun??gonde leaves Candide for a wealthy politician and is later enslaved. By the time Candide can finally be with her, she???s ugly. If it were the best of all possible worlds, wouldn???t they have just been together? That would have been way more ideal.
By the end of the book, all of the characters who had terrible lives are reunited and work on a farm. At first they fight a lot because you know, farming sucks, and but then Candide meets a farmer who enjoys life by working hard to avoid thinking too much. Inspired, Candide and his friends opt to “cultivate” their garden so they don’t have to consider how miserable life truly is.
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