Naïve Philosophy

Voltaire’s Candide narrates the most mocking story I have ever read and at the same time, it’s a story full of adventures (or misadventures). Candide, an innocent apprentice who dedicates his time to learning of “the best of all possible worlds”, lives a life full of misfortune, but still that doesn’t keep him from being an optimist. I say he is an optimist because up to the point where I have read he remains with his head up even after surviving a shipwreck, an earthquake and loosing relatives. Candide is optimist but that doesn’t hold him from questioning the best of all possible worlds. “’If this is the best of all possible worlds, what can the rest be like?’” asked Candide to himself after seeing that Pangloss, his optimistic mentor, was hanged. It’s funny and even absurd how Candide ingenuously thinks that Pangloss’s hanging and Cunégonde’s death (which actually was not true) could be part of the best of all worlds. All that is part of Voltaire’s satirical writing, which is done on purpose.

As I read Candide I doubted weather what I read was sarcasm, a joke or simply the story itself. For example, Pangloss thought that him having a sexually transmitted disease was essential for the best of all worlds because it went back to Christopher Columbus at the West Indies, which lead to new goods from the colonies. Someone with an STD would probably hate it because it would only bring bad to them, but this peculiar philosopher saw it as a composition of the best of all. This craziness is opposed with seriousness when Candide tried to cure Pangloss, but it is confusing because Candide is too innocent, naïve, and raw, but at the same time he seems to rationalize sometimes. More into Candide one begins to identify more and more satire (hyperbole, irony, absurdity, and target), which give the story a compelling burlesque and appealing tone and atmosphere.