Question Everything

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Candide ties in quite nicely with Descartes and his questioning of everything. Candide gets kicked out of his kingdom, then goes to war against it, and then finds out his old kingdom along with everyone he once knew has been killed or destroyed in what seems like only a few days. This forces him to ask similar questions to Descartes.  You can tell that around this era people began to question things. We talked about this in class and how the enlightenment was more of a questioning of principles already in place instead of an understanding of new principles. Plenty of satire about this topic can be found when the church hangs Dr. Pangloss for speaking blasphemy. Especially so, considering his philosophical optimism and his devotion to god. All ideals he obtained from the church. After watching his mentor die, Candide says "If this is the best of all possible worlds what must the others be like?" In context this is a hopeless lament, but if taken more literally he is asking if he is living his best life. A question many thinkers of this era were wondering including Descartes.

Commented on Will Brady's Post.

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  1. Noah PalframanSeptember 25, 2017 at 11:06 PM

    You bring up Descartes (why him? lol), and the concept of questioning everything. If you were to begin questioning everything as a blank slate, you would end up as Descartes did: in an endless circle of "what is this truly?" I didn't like Descartes' approach because all I could think of was a kid that just keeps asking "Why?" and when you give an answer he asks "Why?" again and it gets annoying. All jokes aside, I believe the fact that Candide being optimistic philosophy makes it a different case. Instead of asking "why?" Candide is asking "for what purpose to bring the greatest good?" And he and Pangloss stress this, always explaining the worst of occurrences to eventually bring about the best outcome. Therefore, with myself being an exceptionally optimistic individual, I find Candide much more enjoyable in the question everything aspect.

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