Candide Life Is Worth Living Voltaire Earned

Candide LIFE IS WORTH LIVING Voltaire earned much fame and criticism at the same time for his powerful crusade against injustice and bigotry, expressed in brilliant literature. He went up against the government and the Catholic hierarchy, particularly because of the Grand Inquisition. His character, Candide, was very much patterned after his own personality and experience, but his character begins by believing in goodness as prevailing in the world and ends the same way, despite his (Voltaire's) deadly cynicism.

His famous phrase, "the best of possible worlds," has been his landmark, and the question that follows is, "what then are the others?" He was the satirist par excellence of his time and considered the embodiment of the Enlightenment Period in the 18th century. A mix of success and suffering characterized his whole life, from poor health, to the disapproval of authorities, imprisonments and exiles, but more significantly, his achieving much fame for his biting writing style that won him enemies as well.

He rejected, as did the Enlightenment Movement, that divine intervention guided history. Likewise, he believed that the art of government consisted only in taking in as much money s possible from one class and given to another. He refused to believe that the solution to problems was metaphysical, and although he was religious, he was anti-clerical. Nonetheless, as a genuine justice crusader, Voltaire was in search of what was just and good, except that he could be looking for the answer in another angle and through another method.

He perhaps did not think that goodness and happiness could be found in this present world, but he pursued the same end and sought a life that was worth living. The Enlightenment Movement - This Movement placed reason and rational thought over the spirit. It flourished in the fields of philosophy, science and medicine, which peaked into the French Revolution. It rebelled against superstition, fear and prejudice.

Its advocates went up in arms against the aristocracy and the church, as Voltaire sharply personified, for its greed for power and the arrogance of the nobility. It likewise criticized the optimism, especially of the time, that rational thought could correct the evils committed by human beings (SparkNotes 2003). His immortal work, Candide, became the representative literature of the Movement, which lambastes the philosophies of the Movement itself, proving that it was a united one.

Later in his life, Voltaire was hailed by the population as a hero in his enduring campaign against social and political justice. Even after his death, he was both loved and hated: those who loved him buried his remains in consecrated ground and later moved beside Rene Descartes and other great French thinkers. But religious fundamentalists who hated him exhumed his remains them into a pit as someone they hated. The Story - Voltaire was expressive of his spite towards noble and ruling social class.

He did not believe that the "enlightened" monarch could or would use his power to ensure the protection and welfare of his subjects and their rights. Voltaire only thought that the idea of enlightenment would only legitimize a monarch's despotism (SparkNotes). Candide is every inch an outcry against social and political as well as clerical injustices. The experiences of every character in the play illustrate this outcry.

Voltaire's condemnation of the vileness of the Grand Inquisitor (and the Grand Inquisition), the torments endured by Cunegonde, Pangloss, and Cacambo all demonstrate the injustices Voltaire raged against all his life. His message is particularly expressed by the lines made by the old woman, the illegitimate daughter of a Pope (Chapter 12) and Martin (Chapter 30). But from the beginning to the end, the optimism of his tutor Pangloss -- that this is still the best of possible worlds - rings high.

The lines spoken by Martin in Chapter 30 go up directly against any kind of optimism in this present world: "Man was bound to live in convulsions of misery." Martin personifies the dreariest and saddest aspect of Voltaire, as Pangloss, his brightest and highest. The helplessness and hopelessness of human life are stingingly contained in the old woman's words: "a hundred times, I wanted to kill myself, but I always loved life more. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instinct." (Chapter 12).

Instead of spotting the innate love of life as a self-preserving and self-saving instinct, Voltaire calls it one of man's worst instincts. As if the sufferings of Candide, Cunegond, Pangloss, the old woman and Cacambo were not enough to try their spirit, they confronted an even deadlier foe when their miseries were over and their open enemies defeated. This greater enemy is boredom. Martin's earlier line is completed with "Man was bound to live.. In the lethargy of boredom." (Chapter 30).

And the old woman says it for herself: I should like to know which is the worse: flogged, raped, dissected, or just setting here and doing nothing?" Voltaire could not have searched for the meaningful life and still fought it. Leibniz suggested that the sufferings of this life are only due to the.