Candide is a picaresque comedy and social satire by the great man of French letters, Voltaire, proceeding with Job-like determination from one misadventure to another over the course of thirty bitingly humorous chapters. The namesake protagonist is really a nave young man whose innocence serves as a foil for the numerous horrific but equally comedic situations that occur.
His trials and tribulations in the world test his inherent optimism, and by the end of the short novel he appears to be much subdued, although it is not absolutely certain that Candide has turned his back on optimism, as is generally claimed by many a literary scholar.
Indeed, Professor Pangloss' belief that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" is not undermined by all the would-be evidence to the contrary that forms the book's plot, for such assertions are inherently outside the realm of evidence, akin to solipsism. Pangloss' philosophy isn't disproved, however arguably put in doubt, since claiming that everything happens for the best is inherently unprovable - as well as unassailable.
To say that all happens for the best is a statement that cannot be proved or disproved. Indeed, it all depends greatly on semantics (though, as semanticists would argue, everything is semantics), or what one means by such terms as "best" and "possible." It all even goes so far as to concern the very idea of free will and what it means to be a self.
At the end of the book, Candide seems tired of debates, and if there is any philosophy that he would espouse it would probably be the kind of "wise know-nothing practicality" of a Solomon, the Solomon of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Though a product of the Enlightenment, Voltaire's work appears to exhibit what would be recognized centuries later as an existential sentiment, even an existential melancholy if not pessimism.
His trials and tribulations in the world test his inherent optimism, and by the end of the short novel he appears to be much subdued, although it is not absolutely certain that Candide has turned his back on optimism, as is generally claimed by many a literary scholar.
Indeed, Professor Pangloss' belief that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" is not undermined by all the would-be evidence to the contrary that forms the book's plot, for such assertions are inherently outside the realm of evidence, akin to solipsism. Pangloss' philosophy isn't disproved, however arguably put in doubt, since claiming that everything happens for the best is inherently unprovable - as well as unassailable.
To say that all happens for the best is a statement that cannot be proved or disproved. Indeed, it all depends greatly on semantics (though, as semanticists would argue, everything is semantics), or what one means by such terms as "best" and "possible." It all even goes so far as to concern the very idea of free will and what it means to be a self.
At the end of the book, Candide seems tired of debates, and if there is any philosophy that he would espouse it would probably be the kind of "wise know-nothing practicality" of a Solomon, the Solomon of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Though a product of the Enlightenment, Voltaire's work appears to exhibit what would be recognized centuries later as an existential sentiment, even an existential melancholy if not pessimism.
