Voltaire · Philosophy

Candide: The Best of All Possible Worlds?

Voltaire’s comic masterpiece as a demolition of Leibnizian optimism - the doctrine that this is ‘the best of all possible worlds’ - through the endless catastrophes of Candide and his tutor Pangloss, ending in the hard-won wisdom ‘we must cultivate our garden.’

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Candide satirizes Leibniz’s optimism (voiced by Pangloss as ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’), uses real horrors like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake to refute it, and closes with ‘we must cultivate our garden’ - a turn from theodicy to useful work. Exp…

Leads to Gottfried Leibniz.

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