Some thoughts before reading Voltaire:

The privileges and problems of modernity have forced philosophers, politicians, writers, and other social thinkers to consider certain ancient questions much more seriously than they have ever been considered before. Why? Because the answers matter now more than they’ve ever mattered before. Among the most urgent questions are these:

1. Is human nature fundamentally bad, good, or neutral?
2. Are people fundamentally stupid or smart?
3. Are people fundamentally reasonable? That is, if properly educated, will they usually act
in their own best interests? Or will instincts and passions get in the way, as would happen, perhaps, with other animals?
4. Is there such a thing as "right thinking", and do all "right-thinking" people think alike?
5. Are "good" and "bad" or "moral" and "immoral" relative terms or absolute terms? Can societies reasonably differ in their judgments of what's "moral" and what's "immoral," or are all such differences error on some society's part?

Why must modern man pose these questions with a new sense of urgency? Because the answers are no longer academic. In a world where the common man rules, we MUST know the answers to these questions in order to know what kinds of societies to build. Or, to put it another way, we must know the answers to these questions in order to know whether democracies made of common men are really viable forms of government. If the average human being is fundamentally bad and stupid, maybe they aren’t! After all, bad and stupid voters will elect bad and stupid leaders. (And presumably the reverse is also true.)  Some disgruntled pundits do think democracy has often given us the worst possible leaders (See "Best of All Possible Presidencies," by David Ignatius.)

Although modern thinkers have developed some highly individual responses to these questions, most of these thinkers can be classified roughly into two camps:

The debate between optimistic rationalistic idealists and pessimistic romantics is reflected by social and literary trends, political ideas, and historical events of the modern era. While it’s not necessary to talk about all these different time periods at once, it has a certain advantage, given the way we’ve framed the debate. I want you to see the ideas discussed in these introductions not as conventions that are fashionable at a certain time and then become old-fashioned, but rather as beliefs that anyone at any time in the modern era might favor, depending on his life experience and personal convictions.

INTRODUCTION: SOME HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE FIRST CHAPTERS OF CANDIDE

Prior to the rebellion of the German monk Martin Luther in the 1600s (October 31st, 1517) there was only one Christian church (and no non-Christian religion) in Western Europe. There were Greek, Egyptian, and Russian Christian Churches outside that geo-political region, but they weren't involved in mainstream European politics. The one Christian Church of Western Europe was what we today call the Roman Catholic Church, based in Rome. Martin Luther's rebellion against the authority of Rome inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, which eventually resulted in dozens of different Christian sects dominating different geographic regions of every country in Europe. Each sect respected its own authority to interpret the Bible as it wished, but often disputed the interpretations of other sects. By the time of the Enlightenment, as a result, some Christians called themselves "anabaptists," which meant they were opposed to baptism. (Baptism was the ritual required for membership in any particular Christian sect.) Jacques the Anabaptist is one of the few really good characters in CANDIDE. It's not hard to see why, especially if you understand the historical context of constant religious bickering and warfare.

Some people think that Luther's rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church was about dogmatic differences. As I understand it, that was not the main issue. The main issue was the corruption of the papacy and the open immorality and amorality of many of the priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes. The open amorality of the Church was even more disturbing, to most Europeans and to Voltaire, than the sectarianism of the Protestant rebels. For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church had engaged in the massacre and torture of so-called "heretics", by which was meant anyone who disputed the teachings of the Popes of Rome and their interpretations of the Bible. By definition, Jews and Muslims were heretics, but so were many Christians who questioned established church doctrines like the immaculate conception or the Holy Ghost. In practice, as Voltaire points out, officers of the Spanish Inquisition were often torturing and murdering people for doing the very same things they themselves did in private, such as having improper sexual relations, or associating with Muslims or Jews.

What was the Spanish Inquisition? It was a series of church-run trials in which anyone suspected of heresy was brought before priests and questioned under torture. The goal was to prove that he was in league with the devil--or simply that he was Jewish, Muslin, or Protestant, which in the view of the Roman Church was the same thing. The public spectacle of the trial itself was called an "auto-da-fe," and Voltaire has a great time describing one of these spectacles in chapter 6.

What was the real significance of the Spanish Inquisition? Why was the Church so obstinate about hanging on to absolute power over what the common man of Europe believed to be true about the supernatural? The answer is that real political power, not just spiritual power, was at stake. The popes in Rome had the power to excommunicate any European king who did not do exactly as they said. An order of excommunication for a king meant that every subject in his kingdom was also condemned to hell until the king was removed from power by his own subjects. In other words, an excommunicated king was in effect a dead man. It's not exactly surprising that the kings did whatever the popes said they had to, at least until England's Henry the VIII finally got up the gumption to test the loyalty of his subjects to Rome.

With these historical notes behind us, we can examine what the fall of the absolute power of the Roman Church meant intellectually as well as politically.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN EUROPE

The period of the "Enlightenment" in Europe roughly spans the years 1660-1770. The period is called the "Enlightenment" because it represents the liberation of European thought from bondage to the Roman Catholic Church and its dogmas. Until the Church’s hold over the mind of man had been loosened, atheism, agnosticism, Deism, humanism, and other alternative religions could not develop. Trade and cultural exchange was hampered, because other cultures with other religions could not be equally respected. And most importantly, science could not develop properly, since scientists could be burned at the stake for teaching anything contrary to the literal words of the Bible. This is why—prior to the Enlightenment-- Galileo was persecuted for saying that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the reverse, as the Bible appears to teach. This is why—again, prior to the Enlightenment-- Columbus took such a big risk in arguing that the earth is round, not flat, as the Catholic Church taught.

What happened when Western man stopped looking to the Church’s teachings about God as the source of ultimate truth? The first thing that happened was that man became more interested in himself; that is, in the minds of other men, and how different men have come to see the world. That’s why scholars say that the European Enlightenment "emphasized the powers of the mind and turned to the Roman past for models" (Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces).  The Greco-Roman civilization was the Western civilization that immediately preceded the rise of the Christian Church to philosophical and political power. The Roman Era was the last time in history that had been free of the dominance of the Church of Rome. In fact, the Christian Church was seated in Rome and called the Church of Rome partly in order to show that it had inherited Roman political power and cultural dominance over the whole geographic region. (Unfortunately, the Church of Rome did NOT inherit most of the basic VALUES of Roman society, such as openness to new cultures, new ideas, and new discoveries.)

The result of this break with the Church of Rome was a period of tremendous optimism about human potential. Human potential was thought to be unlimited, if only man would free himself from the prejudices of narrow cultural traditions and religious dogmas. Eighteenth century writers often showed man’s mind overcoming such restrictions as prejudices, passions, instincts, and emotions. They believed in the possibility of perfectly rational minds and perfectly rational societies, where highly educated, democratically chosen leaders could build something close to the "best of all possible worlds." In short, the typical Enlightenment thinker is an optimistic rationalistic idealist. That’s why Thomas Jefferson is an Enlightenment thinker, and why America is often called "The Nation of the Enlightenment." The assumptions that underpin the American Constitution are all Enlightenment philosophical and political assumptions.

Just as science rose to challenge the Church’s assumptions about nature, the middle class rose to challenge the Church’s assumptions about the origins and basis of political power. Formerly, European kings were believed to rule "by divine right," or in other words, by God’s will. That’s why the only real restrictions on their power were those that came from the Pope in Rome. (And that’s why some kings, notably Henry VIII of England, led his people in a revolt against the Church of Rome.) So the open revolts against European kings that culminated in the American and French Revolutions were more than just political revolts. They were made possible by a revolution in thinking. For the first time in European history, kings were seen as ordinary men who happened to be in power, partly just by chance. You weren’t going against the Will of God if you questioned their power.

According to the Norton Anthology, "Philosophers now turned their attention to defining the possibilities and limitations of the human position in the material universe." This led to the rise of Deism or Unitarianism, which was the religion of most of America’s founders (Jefferson in particular). Like Voltaire’s character Jacques the Anabaptist, the Deists believed in a rational God Who was far too intelligent and benevolent to be interested in religious warfare, or the predominance of one leader or sect over another. ("Anabaptist" means "opposed to baptism," which is the same thing as "opposed to membership in one narrow religious sect.") Deists see God as a Logical Planner, the divine architect of a potentially perfect world. They also believe that reasonable men are always moral men, and vice versa. The famous 18^th century English writer Samuel Johnson once said, "He that thinks reasonably must think morally."

Again according to the Norton Anthology, "Although the social, economic, and political organizations…[of] the thinkers of this period…[do not] resemble our own, the questions they raised about the human condition have plagued the Western mind ever since." One difference between the way we see these questions and the way people saw them in the Enlightenment has to do with our greater emphasis on individuality. (That greater emphasis on human individuality is a product of the Romantic movement, which comes later.)

Enlightenment thinkers believed that even though men were free to assume any social role they wished, what mattered about a man’s life was those social choices, not a man’s individual thoughts or feelings. What mattered was what you achieved in public life, not the private thoughts that might be found in your diary. This means that Enlightenment democrats had a very different idea of freedom from any definition we might recognize today. Your personal freedom was your freedom to be a productive member of your community in whatever way you saw fit—not your freedom to live exactly as you pleased in isolation, as a pure individual.

In other words, partly because the Enlightenment represented such a period of radical change and such a strong break with the past, the thinkers of this period had a great need to establish some links with man’s past in general. They looked to the Greco-Roman period for this connection. They looked to the Golden Ages of Greece and Rome to provide models for civilized democracy, what they hoped would be the new form of government. Later they would look to the Golden Ages of Greece and Rome to provide models for inquiry into man’s place in nature as these would be understood by new modern scientists (for example, Charles Darwin).

This represents an inhibition in the thinking of what was otherwise a very "free" age. You were not "free" to advocate unreasonable ideas with no precedent in human history. You were not "free" to indulge yourself or talk about yourself or claim to value yourself above other human beings. It would be left for the Romantics to come up with this new understanding of complete individuality, complete self-expression and (arguably) self-indulgence.

Enlightenment thinkers also understood something different by the word "nature" from what we understand today. Like the ancient Greeks, they saw man as a part of nature, whereas Romantics would later come to view man as a being apart from and outside of nature—and ultimately as a foe of nature, much as we think today. The Enlightenment view, like the Greek view, was that man represented the ultimate potential of nature. Man is the proof that nature is rational and intelligent, just like its most advanced creature. The existence of man, then, is the ultimate proof of the existence of a rational and benevolent Creator.

Voltaire and Jonathan Swift are two eighteenth century thinkers who represent the end of the Enlightenment period. So you shouldn’t be surprised to see them both as products of and as critics of Enlightenment thinking. They are both, and must be understood as both.

If we see the movie of GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, you’ll be treated to a fantasy voyage to distant imaginary "lands" that are actually just venues for critiques of different segments of 18^th century British society. For example, the Lilliputians (tiny dwarfs) are British kings and politicians, whereas the inhabitants of the theoretical "floating island" are scientists and scholars. The conclusion of Swift’s imaginary travelogue is a visit to a kingdom ruled by horses, where men are savage beasts and horses are enlightened philosophers. If we see the movie, you should understand this segment instantly as Swift’s satire of the rationalist optimism of the Enlightenment. Here Swift suggests that it’s foolish to believe men are ruled entirely by their minds, not at all by their feelings. More to the point, he suggests that we would not want ourselves to be ruled only by our minds. If we were ruled only by our minds, we would be unintentionally cruel, as the philosopher-horses are. In realizing that man can not and should not be a creature of pure intellect, Swift anticipates the post-Enlightenment thinking of the Romantic period, which begins near the close of the 18^th century.

Swift also explores the limits of rational thinking in his famous essay "A Modest Proposal." This essay is one of the most devastating political satires ever written, and one of the few pieces of political satire from this period that’s still widely read and discussed. At the time when this essay was written, Swift was a functionary of the Church of England who was living in Ireland, where he had been born. Ireland at that time was occupied British territory. The British treated the Irish as their colonial inferiors, and were not overly concerned with the desperate economic conditions of Irish farmers and peasants, many of whom were starving to death. Pretending to be a disinterested politician who has at last come up with a solution for the "Irish problem," Swift here extols the idea of "allowing" new Irish parents to sell the butchered corpses of their babies, affording the poor Irish parents a new cash crop and the British a new gourmet food. "If we depend on the rational mind alone to solve human problems," Swift suggests, "these are the kinds of political solutions we could end up with."

Voltaire is also both a product and a critic of Enlightenment thinking.  Again, according to the Norton Anthology, Voltaire "mocks…the artificial order (of the world) posited by philosophic optimists." True, he does. But at the same time, he’s very far from abandoning the idea that men can and ought to behave more sensibly than they do. The fact that Voltaire believes men do not behave sensibly, but could choose to do so if they wished, makes him both an optimist and a pessimist—that is, both a product of and a critic of the Enlightenment. Which you see as his primary emphasis is a matter of your personal vision of his work, which is why I have sometimes used that question as an essay topic.

In CANDIDE, who are the philosophical optimists who come in for a pasting from Voltaire? First and foremost, that would be the tutor Pangloss. Pangloss is a fool, but far from the worst character in the book. Secondly, of course, would be his tutees, Candide himself and Cunegonde. The real villains in Voltaire’s story are not these fools, but rather those who cynically exploit their foolishness, especially in the name of religion. Among these are a Grand Inquisitor, the fictitious pope Urban the Tenth, the Moroccan Princes who rape and butcher Christians while praying to Mohammad, a Franciscan monk who is also a jewel thief, and the Jesuits, whose missionary activities in the New World offer thin cover for their treasure-hunting exploits. 

Furthermore, there are philosophical optimists who are not fools, as well. The most commonly cited example is Jacques the Anabaptist. But there’s also the problem of Eldorado, a perfect kingdom apparently full of perfectly rational men. And most importantly, there’s the ending of the story, in which various characters settle down on an olive farm in the Middle East and find happiness by believing in as little as possible.

Finally, I’m not sure CANDIDE can be fully discussed without mention of at least three other characters, Cacambo, Martin, and the Lord Pococurante. The scholar Martin and the politician Pococurante are notable for the odd similarity between them.  At first reading, Voltaire seems to approve of Martin and disapprove of Pococurante; yet how can this be possible, when we can see that they’re so much alike? Cacambo, the native guide in the New World, is similarly a puzzle. Here we have the good man who is good without philosophical precepts—or faith in either God or man-- to bolster his morals. Since Cacambo is the least educated of all the characters in CANDIDE, could he represent a view that human nature is intrinsically good if it’s not miseducated? Or is something else going on here?

We can conclude that both Swift and Voltaire had ambivalent feelings about the values of the Enlightenment period. Now, if we could be sure that Swift believed in the heart MORE than the head, we could conclude that he actually was a romantic before his time. And if we could be sure that Voltaire believed human beings are innately good creatures who are only spoiled by an evil society, then we could conclude that he too was a romantic before his time. Neither conclusion is warranted, though. When we discuss Romanticism, you’ll quickly realize that many of the values of the Romantics would have been repugnant to both Swift and Voltaire. Like the thoughtful writers they were, Swift and Voltaire rebelled against some important Enlightenment assumptions. And in that respect, their thinking anticipates that of later writers in some ways. But they would not have been comfortable with the radical break Romanticism represents from neoclassical Enlightenment values.

ROMANTICISM:

The great mystery of the 18^th century can be seen in a curious paradox: Once the great political revolutions (the French and American Revolutions) take place, the values of the late 18^th century are the precise opposite of the values of the early 18^th century. BOOM! Down comes the curtain on the age of optimistic rationalistic idealists, and we are suddenly thrust into the era of pessimistic romantics. And, as you can see from the chart I gave you already, pessimistic romantics are the antithesis of optimistic rationalist idealists. Everything they believe is virtually the opposite. The world has suddenly stood on its head. Why?

First, if you read the introduction to the Romantics in the Norton Anthology of Literature, it may seem odd to you that I call them "pessimistic." The editors begin their discussion of Romanticism with a quote from the British romantic poet William Wordsworth. This quote suggests that it was bliss—no heaven—to be alive and young at the time of the French Revolution. (You may not agree after viewing our History Channel movie of the era.)  If Romantics are pessimistic, how come Wordsworth is so happy to be one, and at such a terrible time? Well, part of the key lies in the fact that the French Revolution was a terrible time, yet Wordsworth does not regard it as such. One of the first things you should know about Romantics is that they aren’t sad to be sad. They’re happy to be sad. They feel that human beings are most vital, alive, and aware in times of crisis, turmoil, and disaster (personal, political, or natural). If you were William Wordsworth today, you’d be vacationing in Gaza.

The Norton Anthology further explains, "The French Revolution derived from new ideas about the sacredness of the individual; it also helped to generate such ideas." The essay continues, "Both the American and French revolutions developed out of strong convictions about the innate rights of individual human beings…Those who developed revolutionary theory glimpsed new human possibility…The theory of revolution implied radical assault on virtually all social institutions."

Isn’t that what CANDIDE and GULLIVER'S TRAVELS are, though? An assault on virtually all social institutions? And wasn’t the Declaration of Independence such an assault, as well? Uh, no, no, no. I don’t think so. Look again. CANDIDE, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, and "The Declaration of Independence" are aimed narrowly at certain specific social institutions, like the British colonial government or the Roman Catholic Church. Once these archaic institutions have been overthrown in the name of human freedom, though, the wheel of events sometimes takes a new turn. All social institutions, new and old, come in for a pasting, and organized society itself can be seen as bad if it in any way hampers the right of an individual to freely express his wants or desires. This is not what Jefferson, Swift, or Voltaire had in mind. Voltaire in particular could only have been appalled at such a development, given his obvious reservations about human goodness.

The Norton Anthology continues, "Replacing the ideal of hierarchy...was the revolutionary notion of human brotherhood. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, the French proclaimed, leading to an emphasis at first on individual identity, and then on national character and identity." (Not "all men are brothers," but "all Frenchmen are brothers.")

We enter a brave new world of new ideas in which nothing is sacred; everything is thinkable and everything is on the table to dicker about. For example, beginning with Adam Smith’s publication of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS in 1776, we begin to get talk of a world run entirely by money, where buying and selling need not be regulated, and money can determine both social status and political power, as well as the fundamental worth of individuals. As the editors of your text write, "The world…was becoming…the world we ourselves assume, in which ‘mankind’ as an ideal wanes, nations define themselves in psychic as well as military opposition to one another, money constitutes immediate power, science serves manufacture, hence commerce. From the beginning of these crucial changes, certain thinkers and writers realized the destructive possibilities inherent in every form of ‘progress’."

These rebels against every form of "progress" were the Romantics. They were both products of the great revolutions and rebels against the complacent confidence in "progress" the revolutions brought. The political and social architects of new western societies thought that commerce, science, business, and technology would create brave new societies where all human needs are met and all men are free. But free to do what? Well, uh, earn money, for example. And make new inventions that make money by making people more comfortable and ending disease and increasing man’s ability to do things like get from place to place. And vote for political leaders who won’t interfere with the earning of money or the making of inventions. And well, uh. Gee. Is there anything else?

Yes, said the Romantics. The true individual is not a man "free" to pursue money or comfort or society’s most obvious rewards, like social status and power. That kind of freedom is just another kind of slavery. What matters most is the cultivation of human character. How do you judge a person’s character? By the depths and heights of his feelings. How do you measure a man’s capacity for feeling? By looking at his capacity to endure torment. There you have it. That’s why Wordsworth, were he alive today, would be a contestant on the "Survivors" show instead of a Microsoft executive.  Or he'd be a correspondent in Gaza.  (Then again, so is Joe the plumber.)

Toward the conclusion of their introduction on the Romantics, the editors of the Norton Anthology also explain how the Romantic movement was given added impetus by the real failures of the new democratic societies, once these became obvious: "As the nineteenth century wore on, hope for a new terrestrial Eden faded. The efflorescence of commerce and the innovations of science turned out to have negative as well as positive consequences. As the novels of Charles Dickens and William Thackeray insist, the new middle class frequently became the repository of moral mediocrity. The autocracy of money had effects more brutal than those of inherited privilege. Science, once the emblem of progress, began to generate theological confusion. Charles Darwin’s ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (1859) stated clearly humanity’s mean rather than transcendent origins…"  

In case you think we’ve worked out these conflicts today, let me remind you that it's currently illegal to teach Darwin’s evolutionary theory as scientific fact in at least two states, Kansas and Tennessee.