Why Voltaire Breaks My Heart

I'm reading Candide right now. Opera Theater is doing it next fall, and, although I know nothing about how the opera relates to the book and didn't audition, it inspired me to reread the book.

Anyways, Cadide strikes an interesting chord for me. When I first read it I was a Sophomore in high school. Our AP European history class was reading it and we were all in a "we-must-be-elite-since-we're-reading-philosophy-and-are-the-only-sophomores-in-an-AP-class" stage. Yes, I was one of this kids. Thus, I forced myself to like it so I would be as cool and intellectual as my fellow elite AP classmates. That's pretty much the way Sophomore year worked.

Now that I'm reading it again I am taking everything with a grain of salt. Voltaire spends the entire story bashing religious institutions, war, and even philosophy itself. Voltaire? Bash philosophy? It's true - the character Pangloss begins the book with the optimistic view that we live in a world that is the best it can be, and that things are the way they are because they couldn't possibly be any other way.

From what I'm getting, Voltaire believed in God. He also makes it clear that he thinks man has created all evil in the world, that it is unnecessary, but that we must live with it as best as we can. These are all things that I agree with, but that is where Voltaire leaves it. His experience with the Church was as an institution, and that breaks my heart. I feel 18th century Europe had such a skewed picture of the Christian church, and Voltaire is right - man was the one who screwed that up. But what Voltaire never touches on is that yes, man has sinned and made this world the disgusting thing that it is; Yes, the church was not left uncorrupted; BUT, maybe there really is a hope for the world. What if there was a reason for why the world is the way it is, and a hope for life after this horrifying world of war and corruption? What if, by working towards that, we could, in the process, make the world a little bit better?

But he never seems to have gotten that far.

Just some thoughts.