He Splatters the Girl in the Yellow Frock with My Sentences
I
am always punching people up!
Not today. Today I need
time to recover. Hit by heavy
blows I sit on the ropes, to consider my ideas, as my opponent jabs and jabs
away, and jabs again, at my arguments.
It is a powerful piecei with a nasty uppercut that sends me to the canvas… Michael Wood is good,
light on his feet with a quick right hand he bloodies my theories and knocks a
few of my paragraphs out cold.
Naturally, I disagree with him.
The argument is ingenious: the novel is saved from pessimism
by Candide’s eternal pluckiness – he is always bouncing back from his
misfortunes. The book, it seems, is
optimistic after all! To achieve
this conclusion, which requires using the full expanse of the word’s
definition, while annexing some adjoining territory too, Michael Wood, as he
himself notes, has to stretch the original meaning to fit his post modern purposes. A tight t-shirt is being pulled over a
large beer belly…
Voltaire, famously ridiculing
the doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, is
more subtly attacking (at least) three other, more insidious assumptions: that
we can totally transcend our selfishness or provincialism; that a final
accounting of the balance of good and evil in the world is achievable; that
human philosophies bear some sort of direct relevance to human behaviour. Optimism is involved in all of these
enterprises, and although our modern sense is anachronistic, and Candide’s bitter definition is a mirror of his
despair, these different meanings are not unrelated, as the mutilated slave
might say; and it is their relation to each other and to the word’s older,
official meaning that matters to us.
Indeed we scarcely see optimism in Candide except in the form of broad
and damning travesties of it, and it takes an effort of the imagination to see
that the doctrine isn’t, or doesn’t have to be, sheer parochial folly. (Michael Wood’s introduction to Candide. My emphasis)
There is much here I agree with; especially the argument
that optimism is not necessarily a foolish man’s philosophy; after all, without
some sort of faith in the future it is difficult believe in even the
possibility of one’s own work (let alone in any kind of progressive
politics). At the very least I
must have faith that I can finish these sentences. However, the way I arrive at this conclusion is strikingly
different from Professor Wood’s, and involves a quite different evaluation of
particularly Candide’s character; which in turn suggests an interpretation of
the book that at times is almost the opposite to his. This despite our agreement over fundamentals: I too don’t
think we can save Optimism from Candide’s
ferocious satire, although I do agree that we can protect optimism from its
present day sceptics; providing we define it correctly.
When reading this book we must make a careful distinction
between the doctrine of Pangloss and the
character of Candide. The first represents an idea the second
experience; the conflict between them reflecting Voltaire’s own campaign on
behalf of British empiricism against various forms of Cartesian
rationalism. We must be wary of
conflating what are two very different qualities, and so risk confusing
knowledge with reality; the one conjecture (however certain) and the other
experienced fact (of which there is no doubt).ii A striking aspect of Candide is that it embodies this very common mistake. Indeed, it goes much further, and shows
how knowledge can replace reality; Candide trying to fit his experiences into a
pre-conceived theory that he believes is the absolute truth; Pangloss’ ideas
given a certainty and permanence it is not possible for them to possess. To conflate doctrine and character is to gloss over the distinctions between them; and risks misreading
the book, which is a satirical attack on a particular cluster of ideas that
were fashionable when it was written.
Ideas that were complacent, incautious, and opaque to the recalcitrant
ugliness of contemporary reality, and which had evolved within a general
atmosphere of comfort and optimism – the future, it was believed, would sort
all the bad things out. iii
Professor Wood wants to rescue optimism from the ferocity of
Voltaire’s attack, and uses some clever arguments to do so. They are good enough to raise doubts
about my own interpretations; although ultimately I think they too are
susceptible to sharp criticism.
Bleeding at the nose and with a cut above the left eye my piece still
stands, protecting its face behind the gloves, waiting for a drop in
concentration, an opening…
Before we start round five: a warning. Candide, as I have previously argued, should be treated as an exception in Voltaire’s oeuvre. To use quotations from his other works may therefore not
prove very much about this particular book; indeed they could easily lead as
astray. When writing about
Pangloss, Pococurante and the rest we thus must be extra careful when we
quote. Voltaire in this case his
own worst witness.
Keeping this danger sign always in view let us now travel
around Michael Wood’s arguments.
His begins by outlining three different kinds of
optimism. The first variety is
defined as, “that all is as it has to be.” Voltaire, the professor writes, had
no argument with this kind of optimism, he “merely regarded it as
tautological.” This may be
correct. However, this definition
actually misses a vital change in the meaning of this phrase, which occurs
during the course of the narrative.
In the first chapter Pangloss is making a quite specific empirical
claim: that the Baron’s estate is the best place in the world; an assertion
that appears to be supported by the facts. It is the best of all
possible worlds for its present inhabitants. By the last chapter this meaning has undergone a significant
diminution; mirroring the decline in Candide’s fortunes it is reduced to a mere
platitude: “that all is as it has to be.” The value of the phrase has collapsed! The doctrine has been emptied of all
content; and Pangloss is reduced to uttering tautologies, a sign that his
influence has waned.
Michael Wood argues that if we accept this (attenuated)
definition of optimism there is nothing much wrong with it; it is simply
unexceptional. Considered as a
general statement outside of Candide’s
narrative context I agree. But
consider the change in the concept’s meaning during the progress of the novel
and we begin to doubt his assertion. Part of Voltaire’s critique of Leibniz’s dictum is to
subject it to semantic decay.
Its failure precisely this easy fall into empty platitude. Once it meant something. It was making an evaluative judgement
of the Baron’s estate and gave Candide a worldview to believe in. When the book ends it means nothing at
all, a superfluous phrase that simply states the obvious, and is rejected by
the erstwhile pupil as irrelevant to his needs, now that both his circumstances
and his philosophy have changed.
That is, it is not the definition we need to consider but the trajectory
of its transformation. The slide
into platitudinous nonsense, the dictum’s gradual loss of sense as it
accompanies Candide on his journeys, tells us exactly what Voltaire thinks of
it: experience makes it worthless.
“That all is as it has to be” is a definition that represents defeat:
Pangloss’s metaphysics has been brought down from the elevated heights of
wisdom, a catchall explanation for the universe, to the farmyard of
commonplaces, where it no longer has the power to instruct or to inspire. It is simply ignored:
‘That is well said, replied
Candide, ‘but we must cultivate our garden.’ iv
In this edition a note is attached to this famous
conclusion. It quotes Flaubert,
who captures, to my mind at least, its message perfectly:
The end of Candide
is for me incontrovertible proof of genius of the first order; the stamp of the
master is in that laconic conclusion, as stupid as life itself.
“As stupid as life itself.” Exactly! Yet
how few commentators notice this; failing to consider the full implications of
Candide’s conversion to practical living – what does it actually mean to give
up philosophy for root vegetables?
Professor Wood’s second argument in favour of a more nuanced
kind of optimistic philosophy is that it can elucidate the differences between
a general trend and a narrow solipsism.
…that all is well implies a perspective – well for whom? –
and may supply a useful corrective to limitations of vision. The world doesn’t have to be a bad
place because things are going badly for me. Voltaire himself was drawn to this view earlier in his
career.
He then writes that while Voltaire was initially attracted
to this idea he later rejected it because of its…
heartlessness and a belief that the claim, even if true,
couldn’t be tested, and worse, couldn’t be articulated without incurring some
sort of complicity with the unacceptable, too eager an embrace of the idea that
certain horrors are not only unavoidable but necessary.
This seems right.
Michael Wood’s wider argument in support of this kind optimism
doubtfully supported by a book which goes out of its way to cast doubt on all
generalisations; it’s almost as if Voltaire was wary of their inbuilt tendency
to expand into a generalised vacuity.
Again, we must be cognisant of the specificity of Candide, which is sceptical to its core about all
philosophical thinking when applied to daily life; an exercise it shows to be
both delusional and woefully inadequate – our lives cannot be reduced to a
simple theorem. Although fully
aware of Voltaire’s views Professor Wood nevertheless believes he can clinch
his argument for optimism, and quotes the Enlightenment scholar Peter Gay, who
argues that pessimism is Voltaire’s real enemy because it negates his practical
philosophy, to support his own position.
Peter Gay, in Voltaire’s
Politics, goes so far as to say that
‘Voltaire’s objection to “whatever is, is right” was not to its complacent
optimism but to its half-complacent, half-despairing pessimism… Voltaire’s attack on “optimism” was an
attack on pessimism in the name of a philosophy of activity’. In other words, Voltaire saw pessimism
as just too easy. The word
pessimism, I should add, was not used until 1794, and appears to have been
coined by Coleridge, although the frame of mind clearly existed long before,
and Voltaire knew he didn’t like it.
As
I have previously argued, it is a treacherous business quoting Professor
Gay on Candide; his general arguments
shipwrecked on the reefs of the novel’s particular details; the individual
scenes often contradicting, too often sinking, the abstract ideas he often
projects, too often floats, onto them.
Pace Peter Gay: Candide doesn’t debunk pessimism.
On the contrary, it has dark and highly cynical thoughts about thinking, especially of the kind carried out by intellectuals like Pangloss, who can comprehend the world only through the filter of their own ideas. This deficiency, hidden when reality and theory appear to correspond, becomes readily apparent when facts and doctrine radically diverge after the story leaves the Baron’s idyllic estate.v The strain eventually becomes unbearable, and the climax is Candide’s loss of faith when meets a new master, the Turkish farmer. Although this repudiation takes nearly the whole length of the book Pangloss’ problem is obvious almost from the beginning. Trapped inside a doctrine he cannot escape, and devoid of emotional sympathy,vi he is unable to properly engage with the changing realities he constantly encounters; his preconceived theory first a means of avoiding these discomforting facts, later a sign of his complete intellectual failure as his obsessive adherence to his ideas eventually abolishes all rational thought until he can state only banal commonplaces; dressed up, of course, in the fanciest of arguments. Candide is an attack both on a quite specific doctrine and on a particular type of thinking which reduces a plausible theory to a stupid dogma because its advocate won’t properly engage with the facts that contradict it; more interested in defending his ideas than learning about the world; the book a satire on the worthlessness of the abstract intellect in practical affairs (on this point Michael Wood and myself agree) in large part because of this tendency. To mix all this up with the character of Candide, with its youthful propensity to bounce back from any adversity, is, in my view, to misread the book; and belies its true pessimism; at least for those who believe in the life and value of an independent mind. Of course Candide survives relatively unscathed at the end. But just look at what kind of person he has become: an unreflective farmer more interested in swedes than Sir Isaac Newton. Flaubert was right: the conclusion, Candide’s new wisdom, is “as stupid as life itself.” Exactly!
On the contrary, it has dark and highly cynical thoughts about thinking, especially of the kind carried out by intellectuals like Pangloss, who can comprehend the world only through the filter of their own ideas. This deficiency, hidden when reality and theory appear to correspond, becomes readily apparent when facts and doctrine radically diverge after the story leaves the Baron’s idyllic estate.v The strain eventually becomes unbearable, and the climax is Candide’s loss of faith when meets a new master, the Turkish farmer. Although this repudiation takes nearly the whole length of the book Pangloss’ problem is obvious almost from the beginning. Trapped inside a doctrine he cannot escape, and devoid of emotional sympathy,vi he is unable to properly engage with the changing realities he constantly encounters; his preconceived theory first a means of avoiding these discomforting facts, later a sign of his complete intellectual failure as his obsessive adherence to his ideas eventually abolishes all rational thought until he can state only banal commonplaces; dressed up, of course, in the fanciest of arguments. Candide is an attack both on a quite specific doctrine and on a particular type of thinking which reduces a plausible theory to a stupid dogma because its advocate won’t properly engage with the facts that contradict it; more interested in defending his ideas than learning about the world; the book a satire on the worthlessness of the abstract intellect in practical affairs (on this point Michael Wood and myself agree) in large part because of this tendency. To mix all this up with the character of Candide, with its youthful propensity to bounce back from any adversity, is, in my view, to misread the book; and belies its true pessimism; at least for those who believe in the life and value of an independent mind. Of course Candide survives relatively unscathed at the end. But just look at what kind of person he has become: an unreflective farmer more interested in swedes than Sir Isaac Newton. Flaubert was right: the conclusion, Candide’s new wisdom, is “as stupid as life itself.” Exactly!
Professor Wood emphasises a point I have only cursorily
regarded:
Pangloss insists on his system not because he believes in
it but because it is his system.
It would not do for him to recant, he says, and in this statement
Voltaire is offering us a sly definition of philosophy: never having to say you
are wrong. ‘I hold firmly to my
original views,’ Pangloss says in the last pages (chapter 28). ‘After all I am a philosopher.’ And Voltaire, in an
uncharacteristically informative moment, tell [sic] us that Pangloss maintains
his position ‘while believing nothing of the kind’ (chapter 30).
I think this assessment is correct, although it needs
qualification. To see why we must
quote Pangloss in full:
‘I am a philosopher after
all: it would not do for me to recant, given that Leibniz is incapable of
error, and that pre-established harmony is moreover the finest thing in the
world – not to speak of the plenum
and the material subtilis.’
Pangloss, as
John Butt noted, is a disciple not an original thinker. It is the reason why he cannot give up
his theory: he is dependent on a worldview that is not is own and which he
cannot afford to pull apart as he lacks the talent to reconstruct it,
incapable, as he is, of creative thought.
Pangloss is not simply being dogmatic here. He can’t give up his views unless he gives up Leibniz, who
by definition must be right. His
ideas are a faith, and to deny them could result in a potential mental
collapse; akin to a Marxist or Freudian recanting their beliefs and the masters
that go with them. Pangloss is
being honest, and thus inadvertently reveals his intellectual impotence – he
believes in a theory he doesn’t really understand; a fairly typical
scenario.
It is useful to apply Michael Wood’s second definition
of optimism to this passage. What
now appears to Pangloss as implausible could still be true if looked at from a
wider perspective; his current views limited by his own narrow intellect (a
deficiency he himself may recognise).
Being a genius Leibniz would inevitably understand the universe in all
its ramifications and would see further and deeper than his disciple whose
natural disposition is to take his master’s theories on trust – the greatest
thinkers have an intuitive grasp of reality that is usually absent in their
followers, who tend to be overly rational and academic, and who generally
accept the assumptions on which their guru’s grand theory is based. Their task often limited to filling in
the details, and refining it.vii Pangloss may no longer believe in his
theory. However, it is the only
one that he has got; that is why he must stick with it, even if his ideas have
become detached from his actual experiences. Another characteristic common amongst intellectuals; many of
whom don’t live out their ideas, preferring to separate their abstractions from
the rest of their lives; thus the not unusual phenomenon of the middle class
Marxist who writes about Lenin on Friday and shops in Selfridges on
Saturday. Pangloss represents this
familiar type of thinker, although he’s been put under an uncommon amount of
strain: most of his confederates can live with the contradiction between their
ideas and their actions because they suffer very little pressure to integrate
them into a single harmonious whole.viii Pangloss is not so lucky. It is the reason he sounds crazy in the
end. He is forced to emphatically
deny reality. Although if we read
him carefully we notice that while keeping to the outer forms of his arguments
he has subtly changed their content: he now justifies events rather than
explaining and defining them. So
clever! And typical of an
intellectual, who is able to use reason to justify itself. Facts don’t matter if theories have to
be defended!
Pangloss’ confession also suggests that these ideas are
too compelling and too intellectually beautiful to give up. This is a truth with which any serious
thinker would concur; although being serious they are more likely to sacrifice
such beauty if the evidence proves their theories erroneous.
Chapter 30 puts me in great difficulty.
Pangloss conceded that
he had suffered horribly, all his life, but having once maintained that
everything was going splendidly he would continue to do so, while believing
nothing of the kind.
Pumph! Pumph!
Pow! One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight…
Numbers like punches, the referee’s too insistent metronome, as slowly and
unsteadily I drag myself off the canvas…
The bell goes!
Relief! I return to my
corner and my trainer quotes from the earlier Penguin edition.
Pangloss allowed that
his sufferings had been uniformly horrible: but as he had once maintained that
everything would turn out right in some marvellous way, he still maintained
it would, however little he believed it.
The meanings of these two translations are quite
different. In the latter (vestiges
of which can be seen in the former, although obscured by the change in tense)
Pangloss is making the reasonable point that although the facts appear to be
against him it is still possible that the doctrine may be true;ix and I think we can speculate further and say that he needs to believe in the
truth of his doctrine; an intuition Michael Wood confirms when writing about
Eldorado.
They say this is
‘probably the land where all is well, for clearly such a place has to exist’
(chapter 17). Has to exist? The place doesn’t have to exist in
material reality, and as far we know it never has. But it does, it seems, have to exist as an expression of
need and longing, because we cannot do without the dream of perfection it embodies. Voltaire includes it in his book for
just this reason.
Pangloss’ position is similar to that of Vidal’s in My Night with Maud.
Playing around with Pascal’s Wager Vidal argues that even if there was
only a 20% chance of history being on his (Marxist) side he would still believe
in it. His life needs this
hope! A theory has been reduced to
a religious faith through its inability to adapt sufficiently to historical
change. This nuance is far more
interesting than a simple reference to an unwieldy dogma; because it indicates
what happens to these kinds of metaphysical theories over time: they start off
as a compelling explanation of reality but gradually become a religion; belief
replacing rational argument as the evidence mounts up against them. In the 20th century the most
obvious example of such a trajectory is socialism, and its ossification into
state worship by the late 1970s.
Today we are watching something similar happen to Neo-liberalism. It is a process that is as old as the oldest
society.x
This intransigence in the face of reality may explain a
crux that Michael Wood notes in the book: Cunégonde is the only character that
ages in the novel. Here is the
reason he gives.
She is clearly the
victim of more than ordinary aging; the victim of her author, we might
say. Not only has she not aged
well, she has become an anti-beauty.
The fairy tale has
turned sour, but the sourness has its reasons. The tale was deluded to begin with, a distracting dream or
retarded fantasy. Cunégonde is the withered goal of Candide’s longing, indeed
she is what happens to all longing that pursues only an idea of a person or a
passion. She has to change not in
order to disappoint Candide or to allow him to do the right thing after all,
but order to remind us that the objects of our desire have histories of their
own, and histories we may not like.
She is the incarnation of the book’s most cruel ‘but’.xi Candide finds his great love again, but
she is ugliness personified, and has become nasty into the bargain. The unfortunate Cunégonde loses her
looks, it turns out, for precisely the same reasons as the unfortunate Paquette
retains hers: appearances alter or don’t alter, but they are never more than
appearances, a place to start but not to end.”
This explanation seems possible, but feels a little
contrived (and a little confusing – I’m not altogether clear about that last
sentence). The solution to the
problem is surely in Wood’s insightful word “anti-beauty”. An ideal becomes its opposite if
pursued fanatically – a communist utopia becomes a communist hell when it is
actually built. And there is also
something else…
Cunégonde is a metaphor for Candide’s state of mind
when he eventually finds her: self-hate at his own folly. He gave up Eldorado for an image of her
when she was innocent and beautiful.
He gave up paradise at precisely the moment that past no longer
existed. He undertakes a world
tour full of cruelty to be with a woman… who is prematurely old and ugly
(exactly what we would expect after all those rapes and tortures; only his
fanaticism would blind him to that reality). Waking up from his illusions a reaction is inevitable; and
we would expect him exaggerate her ugliness and her horrible character. The prize is not worth the effort. This “anti-beauty” represents love
turned sour. It is also the
realisation that he went wrong, almost from the start – from the day he was
kicked out of the Baron’s castle.
A young life wasted on a dream!
This is what happens to an idea that is pursued to its ultimate limit,
and then rejected when its absurdity becomes obvious – in this case when it is
achieved. The best of all possible
girls turns out to be an old hag; as the best of all possible worlds turns out to be a poor farm on the outskirts of civilisation. Voltaire’s irony is very cruel. While Professor Wood has made a characteristic but crucial
error:
The tale was deluded to
begin with, a distracting dream or retarded fantasy.
Not so!
Cunégonde was beautiful once. This is no delusion or fantasy. She was lovely on her father’s estate! She then loses her beauty and her sweet
demeanour because of her experiences (a nod at British empiricism, with its
assumption of our essentially plastic nature). However, Candide continues to see her in his mind’s eye as
the young and lovely girl he first knew.
He is turning her into a fantasy because his image is fixed on a past
that has been transformed out of all recognition. She has been turned into a dream because Candide will not
adjust his ideas to the changing realities. He then wakes up when they meet in Turkey. Naturally he exaggerates what he sees –
it is the shock of disenchantment.
The Theo Cuffe translation is very emphatic, and
suggests that Pangloss is an out and out cynic, which seems hardly creditable,
especially as he extols his theory a few paragraphs later; first to the
greatest philosopher in Turkey, then to justify their new existence on the
farm. Are we witnessing a single
revelatory moment of truth, when the mask slips and the blotched and pinched
and penurious face slithers out from behind the otherworldly visage? This seems unlikely. Maybe Pangloss is himself confused; or
perhaps he doesn’t express himself very well, so that intending to talk like
Professor Butt he ends up speaking like Theo Cuffe. Here is a conflict in interpretation I am not competent to
judge. Although it is clear that
such blatant cynicism doesn’t fit easily with Pangloss’ character, which is all
of a piece, and is consistent throughout the book. He simply doesn’t change very much (he is quite different from
Candide); his mental life impervious to the world’s influence, so that his
theories are still intact, albeit severely damaged, when he quotes them in the
final paragraph.
Pangloss is too little affected by experience for his views to be radically altered by it. Particular kinds of personality are attracted to particular types of theory (extremists tend to believe in extreme theories), so that those who are indifferent to reality may well believe in ideas that bare little relationship to it. At the very least they may find it psychologically easier to uphold beliefs that are massively contradicted by the facts. The result? The fundamental nature of their faith is not affected by their experiences, is indeed defended against all threats to it; Pangloss’ last speech a perfect demonstration of this strategy. Once characters like these have acquired a thought-system, where its acquisition is experienced as a revelation and not as an analytical process, it cannot be allowed to change in its core principles – thus a Marxist will always believe in the class struggle. No wonder Candide’s teacher is so reluctant to divorce Leibniz! The key moment for such characters is when they first acquire the theory… Could Pangloss really accept a set of ideas that is consistently contradicted by the facts of his own experiences, and from the very beginning of his life, and before he believed in them? This too seems unlikely. Has the translation gone too far? Did Pangloss really suffer terribly “all his life” (Theo Cuffe) or was it that his “sufferings had been uniformly horrible” (John Butt)? If they were so terrible and long lasting why didn’t he take up pessimism as his first intellectual position? We understand and can accept that because his terrible afflictions came after he discovered Leibniz’s ideas it was too late for him to ditch them. However, for Pangloss to believe in the best of all possible worlds when he was already suffering great hardship seems perverse in the extreme. It also grossly contradicts his statements in the first chapter.
Pangloss is too little affected by experience for his views to be radically altered by it. Particular kinds of personality are attracted to particular types of theory (extremists tend to believe in extreme theories), so that those who are indifferent to reality may well believe in ideas that bare little relationship to it. At the very least they may find it psychologically easier to uphold beliefs that are massively contradicted by the facts. The result? The fundamental nature of their faith is not affected by their experiences, is indeed defended against all threats to it; Pangloss’ last speech a perfect demonstration of this strategy. Once characters like these have acquired a thought-system, where its acquisition is experienced as a revelation and not as an analytical process, it cannot be allowed to change in its core principles – thus a Marxist will always believe in the class struggle. No wonder Candide’s teacher is so reluctant to divorce Leibniz! The key moment for such characters is when they first acquire the theory… Could Pangloss really accept a set of ideas that is consistently contradicted by the facts of his own experiences, and from the very beginning of his life, and before he believed in them? This too seems unlikely. Has the translation gone too far? Did Pangloss really suffer terribly “all his life” (Theo Cuffe) or was it that his “sufferings had been uniformly horrible” (John Butt)? If they were so terrible and long lasting why didn’t he take up pessimism as his first intellectual position? We understand and can accept that because his terrible afflictions came after he discovered Leibniz’s ideas it was too late for him to ditch them. However, for Pangloss to believe in the best of all possible worlds when he was already suffering great hardship seems perverse in the extreme. It also grossly contradicts his statements in the first chapter.
He could prove to
wonderful effect that there was no effect without a cause, and that, in this
best of all possible worlds, His Lordship the Baron’s castle was the finest of
castles and Her Ladyship the best of all possible baronesses. (Theo Cuffe translation)
We can only assume, if he suffered “all this life”,
that Pangloss is here lying to his pupil.
Is this possible? If this
is indeed the case we need an essay on his psychopathology. We need to resurrect J.G. Ballard to
write a novel about it… John
Butt’s translation, which explicitly relates Pangloss’ words to his
experiences since he left the Baron’s estate, feels more credible.
When he returns his attention to Candide Michael Wood is
keen to argue that he represents the essential optimism of vigorous life.
Candide is not
complacent, and can’t remain ignorant, but he does find it hard to believe the
world is a bad place if his own affairs are going well. Voltaire remorselessly returns to this
point, as strict with his likeable hero as he is with everyone else, but also
interested in the energy of
self-concern, as long as it is combined with curiosity and compassion…. [H]appiness and misery are contingent,
local and material; philosophical optimism and conventional melancholy are
postures. There is certainly a
selfishness in Candide’s repeated resorting to Pangloss’s system; but there is
also an ultimate moral health in his inability to be unhappy for long, even if
his own intelligence says he should be.
This is the strong argument for optimism based on the character
of the hero. I don’t necessarily disagree with this passage, but question
how far it reflects the main theme of the book.
It is only in the last chapter that Candide escapes
from Pangloss’ influence. Until
then the hero still sees the world through his teacher’s philosophical
sunglasses. He is a youth and
immature. Although it his particular
character, with its curiosity and energy (although I’m not so sure about
compassion – too often Candide looks like an unlucky tourist), that gives him the
means to eventually escape his master's intellectual spell and change his views. But what views! I agree absolutely that there is a
difference between engaging with the world through experience and seeing it
only through abstraction; and that taking a purely philosophical line to daily
life can become a posture.xii However… while the ending does laud the local and material, it also
represents a terrible defeat. Mind
has died! Body rules! It is hard work in one’s own garden not
abstract thought that will save our hero.
This is a non-intellectual solution that is first broached by “the greatest
philosopher in Turkey” when he responds to Pangloss’ question about the meaning
of life.
‘Master,’ said
[Pangloss], ‘we have come to ask a favour. Will you kindly tell us why such a strange animal as man was
ever made?’
‘What has that got to do
with you?’ said the dervish. ‘ Is
it your business?’
‘But surely, reverend
father,’ said Candide, ‘there is a great deal of evil in the world.’
‘And what if there
is?’ said the dervish. ‘When His Highness sends a ship to
Egypt, do you suppose he worries whether the ship’s mice are comfortable or
not?’
‘What ought to be done,
then?’ said Pangloss.
‘Keep your mouth shut!’
said the dervish.
Candide’s decision to cultivate his own garden is only
a slight emendation of this advice – he will ignore all worldly philosophising
and concentrate on his own petty concerns, which may prove materially
fruitful. This decision in line
with the general thrust of the Dervish’s fatalistic remarks: he will keep his mouth shut! No “big talk” on this farm, please.
Professor Wood like most (all?) commentators assumes
the ending is a happy one, as the natural buoyancy of Candide’s character
triumphs in the end – “he cannot be unhappy for long.”xiii This may be so. However, if we separate out the
personality of Candide from the theories of Pangloss we may reach a very
different conclusion: the local and the contingent has triumphed leaving a
simple man working on his own farm; and that is all that is left to him. No
grand theory of human progress, no Enlightenment Paris, no movement for social
reform. All the ideals have been
vanquished. And if we accept Professor’s Wood’s account we should celebrate this intellectual decay,
for Pangloss’ ideas are only “postures”, he argues.
But is life so simple? It
is easy to ridicule romantic poets and show that a person’s principles are
often elaborate camouflage for laziness or indifference. Although, if we are not careful, we can
risk mistaking knowledge for reality, and conflating the person with the ideas
they germinate. Ideas have a
validity of their own, irrespective of their owner’s character. They tend to have a depth and range
that is bigger than our ordinary experiences, imbuing them with a wealth
otherwise denied us. We need the
buzz of abstract thought! We also
need ideals and grand theories.
They give us the energy and focus to change our local environment;
although we must always make a distinction between what is utopian and what is practical politics.xiv Pangloss’s failure to see this
distinction his biggest mistake; Candide then drawing the wrong conclusions
from his master’s failure…
There is something sad in the famous Leibniz being
chucked over for the wisdom of a Turkish farmer who has no interest outside his
own livelihood; the universe narrowed down to the market value of his carrots
and red onions. This is the irony
in Voltaire’s ending that the commentators are refusing to see. They should listen to Gustave Flaubert:
“stupid as life itself.” He knew a
bourgeois when he saw one.xv
[ii] “I realised that all the inferences used both in
common sense and in science are of a different sort from those used in
deductive logic, and are such that, when the premises are true and the
reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.” (Bertrand Russell, My
Philosophical Development)
This
is not a sceptical position – Russell by the end of his life believed in the
reality of empirical experience and the possibility of science as real
knowledge.
[iii] For details see my Too
Rich for the Rags this Shopkeeper Sells? For much
of the reasoning behind this essay see all my previous posts on Candide. For a
good account of the change in the intellectual climate, and the rise in a
general sense of benevolence, read The
Eighteenth Century Background by
Basil Willey.
Of
course Professor Wood knows this.
We disagree on where he places his emphasis – on the character of
Candide or the doctrine of Pangloss.
[iv] I prefer the John Butt translation: ‘True
enough.’ It is far more laconic.
[v] For Michael Wood the Baron’s estate represents,
“…optimism
in its crassest and most comfortable form: a combination of ignorance and
complacency, which asserts that all is well everywhere because I’m doing pretty
well in the tiny corner of a world I happen to know.”
True.
Yet such interpretations are too quick to run past this short-sighted
selfishness. It is almost as if
they are embarrassed by it. These
views may be stupid and they may be egoistical, but they also represent the
truth for Pangloss and his pupils.
However wrong they are in the wider world they are true for these
characters. This is what we have
to recognise and accept.
[vi] Based on the assumption that feeling is thinking; an
idea influenced by both Hume’s and Locke’s theories that new knowledge can only
be acquired through the senses.
[vii] The genius on the other hand questions the
conventional assumptions; his new theories arising from his doubts.
For
discussion on different types of intellect see my Russian
Climate.
See
also a brilliant discussion by Bernard Williams, where he argues that unlike
classical Greece it is the nature of modern society not to be harmoniously
integrated into a single whole, and thus it is not possible to apply classical
ethical philosophy to the present day (Ethics
and the Limits of Philosophy). Modern day efforts to keep life and
thought separate are helped by this fragmentation, which in turn protects our
theories from serious attack. It
is one reason for the growth of modern irrationalism.
[ix] It has a family resemblance to Michael Wood’s second
argument for optimism.
[x] For a related discussion, see Alasdair MacIntyre’s After
Virtue, where he argues that
taboos in Polynesian societies lost meaning through historical change – by the
time of Captain Cook no one could give a reason why they existed, as the social
structure that gave rise to them had disappeared.
[xi] Michael Wood discusses the different uses of this
word.
[xii] This wording is deliberate. They can
become not are “postures”.
To argue that Pangloss is simply playing at ideas is to miss the
compelling truth of his doctrine in Chapter one. When the
book begins his theories seem right.
It is why they have such a hold over Candide.
Martin
too seems to be correct in this opinions: his pessimism does seem to explain
life outside the Baron’s castle.
The
problem of both these men is that they don’t adapt their ideas to changing
circumstances. They see the world
within their own narrow perspective, develop a theory that explains it, but
then are unable to adapt it to take into account both the wider world and
changes to their own fortunes. It
is the lack of sufficient movement in their thought that is their most serious
weakness – ever changing life inevitably falsifies it.
[xiii] Summarising the ideas of Jean Sareil he writes:
“Candide
is a satire, not a confession. Voltaire is not giving us his opinion
about the universe; he is looking at persistent problems whose solutions,
including the ones he has himself proposed, do not satisfy him.”
This
seems right. However, Professor
Wood then goes on to write,
“Voltaire’s
gaiety is a matter of style rather than philosophy, the happy ending is at once
ironic and an invitation not to overdo our sense of misery.”
Although
full of qualifications and nuances the conclusion is reasonably clear: the
ending is a (moderately?) happy one. Can we really be so sure?
[xiv] Noam Chomsky has an interesting discussion about the
difference between ideals and goals in his Power
and Prospects. Ideals are not meant to be realised, he
argues, because they are impossible.
[xv] Roland Barthes made a similar point:
“[Voltaire]
ceaselessly dissociated intelligence and intellectuality, asserting that the
world is an order if we do not try too much to order it, that it is a system
only if we renounce systematizing it: this conduct of mind has had a great
career subsequently: today we call it anti-intellectualism.” (Quoted in Michael Wood’s introduction.)
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