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Good And Evil In Voltaire's 'Candide'

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Voltaire was well known for critiquing how the “common” person perceives the world and mocks the general thoughts of the people. Philosophers at the time were noted to be upset by these aspects of Candide. The church also was not fond of the book as it questioned some of the core philosophies of the church. At the beginning of the book Pangloss teaches Candide that “There cannot possibly be a cause without an effect and this best of all possible worlds.”. This was a still is a common philosophy that believes that since God is good but nothing can be as good as God there must be some evil in the world, but the evil is limited so that the least amount of suffering possible occurs. This statement could also refer to the newly developed Multiverse …show more content…

Pangloss gets beaten, becomes homeless with syphilis, gets put into slavery, and gets hung. However, at the end of the story Pangloss ends up in a place described as a spiritual paradise. So, even thou he may have suffered he ended up in a good place which is why he never lost faith in his ideals.

Throughout the story Candide chases after Cunégonde as she was his love. In his chase for her many lose their lives, Candide loses his innocence, and he loses faith in people. At the end Candide, finally does get Cunégonde but she is now uninteresting to him. Cunégonde represents scientific progress and how many lose their lives so that they can achieve their goals by trying to improve humanities lives. But when they reach their goal they are left disappointed and lose their faith in humanity according to Voltaire.

Voltaire also directly mocks the philosophy of the church because throughout the story the people of the church claim to be doing only good, yet at almost every turn the church is doing some corrupt action that would warrant death by any outsiders. In fact, in the bible Jesus is quoted as saying “Do as they say and not as they do” and if the catholic church were truly following this they would act as they talk. This is known as hypocrisy, and is committed every time someone appears in the

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