The best philosophical story of Voltaire - "Candide. History of foreign literature of the XVII-XVIII centuries

Philosophical stories. "Candide, or Optimism".

In 1746 Voltaire writes prose work titled "The World as It Is, or the Vision of the Babuk", with which he opens a series of novels and stories that entered the history of literature under the name of philosophical. In this genre, he continues to perform until 1775, that is, for almost thirty years.

It is remarkable that Voltaire himself did not attach any serious importance to these "trifles", as he called them. He wrote them unusually easily, "jokingly", mainly for the amusement of his high society friends. It cost a lot of work to persuade him to print these works - at first they were distributed in lists .. Today philosophical novels and Voltaire's stories are perhaps the most valuable part of his heritage. Let's stop at one of the best works Voltaire of this genre - his famous philosophical story "Candide, or Optimism". It was written in 1759 and became an important milestone not only in the development of the philosophical genre, originating from Montesquieu's Persian Letters, but also in the history of all educational thought.

At first glance, Voltaire's story is purely entertaining. It is built as a series of adventures experienced by its hero - a young man named Candide. By the will of fate, he ends up in different parts of the world, meets with many people, experiences all sorts of misfortunes and failures, loses and finds friends again, finds himself in the most unthinkable and incredible situations. There are in the story love motive. Living at first in the castle of the German baron Tunder den Tronk, Candide falls in love with him. beautiful daughter Kunigundu. But since Candide cannot count several generations of eminent ancestors in his family, Cunigunde's father, after the kiss that Cunigunde and Candide exchanged, expels him. In the future, the baron's castle is attacked by enemy troops. Kunigunde, like Candide, begins to wander around the world, and Candide tries to find her during his wanderings.

Thus, the story is built as a kind of adventure novel - a genre very popular among readers - Voltaire's contemporaries. At the same time, Voltaire's story, with all the seemingly inherent features of the adventure genre, is rather a parody of it. Voltaire leads his heroes through so many adventures, following each other at a dizzying pace, and the adventures of the heroes themselves are such that it is impossible to imagine the possibility of surviving them for a real person. Heroes are killed, but not completely, hanged, but by some miracle they remain alive; they end up at sea on a sinking ship and are saved, although all the other people who are there die, etc. The action of the story is transferred from Germany to Portugal, then to Spain, to America, then the heroes return to Europe, in the end they live somewhere in Turkey. This parody, inherent in the whole story as a whole, from the very beginning sets the reader in a special way. It allows him not to take the event side of the narrative quite seriously, but to focus his main attention on those thoughts that Voltaire considers necessary to express in the course of the events depicted, most often putting them into the mouths of his heroes. The story is about the meaning of human life, about freedom and necessity, about the world as it is, about what is more in it - good or evil. At this time, the political and social struggle intensifies in France, and Voltaire, as an educator, strives to be at the level of ideological disputes, the essence of which he conveys in his work in an extremely concentrated form. But "Candide, or Optimism" is a philosophical story not only in terms of the depth of the questions raised in it. The main interest in it is the clash of ideas, the carriers of which Voltaire makes two heroes - the philosophers Pangloss and Marten; they act in the story as teachers of Candide and express two points of view on the world. One of them (Pangloss) consists in an optimistic assessment of what is happening, the other (Marten) - on the contrary, comes down to pessimism and consists in recognizing the eternal imperfection of the world, in which evil rules.

These points of view on life in Voltaire's story, as it were, sum up the development of philosophical thought in the eighteenth century. In the statements of Pangloss, the philosophy of the German scientist Leibniz (1646 - 1716), which was very popular at that time, appears in a generalized form. In the statements of Marten, echoes of the skeptical moods of the entire eighteenth century are heard. Voltaire tests these philosophies on the fate of Candide, who, relying on his own experience, must decide which of his teachers is right. Thus, Voltaire affirms an empirical approach to the resolution of philosophical questions. Citing many facts in the story, one way or another connected with the life of the characters, he considers them as material for proving or refuting the theories put forward by them. The characters in the story are by no means full-blooded characters; their function is to serve the disclosure of ideas, and they themselves (primarily Pangloss-Marten) are carriers of philosophical theses. The central character of the story - the young man Candide, whose fate must reveal the truth, bears this name for a reason. In translation, it means "simpleton". In all life situations, Candide shows naivety and innocence. The name of the hero, his human appearance should emphasize the impartiality, sincerity of the conclusion to which he eventually comes.

Making the main character lead the idea, its fate, Voltaire subordinates the composition of the work to these tasks. He builds his story on a logical basis. The connecting link in it is not so much the plot as the development of thought. At the beginning of the story, Voltaire turns his main attention to the philosophy of Pangloss, which Candide adopts. Its essence is concentrated in the phrase repeated many times by Pangloss and Candide - "Everything is for the best in this best of worlds." Then Martin appears, and Candide gets acquainted with his views. Then, at the end of the story, he draws his conclusion. Thus, the story is built, as it were, on a change from one system of views to another and a conclusion that draws a line under the thoughts of the characters. Since the views of Marten and Pangloss are opposed to each other, this introduces an atmosphere of controversy into the story.

How does Voltaire resolve this philosophical dispute in his work? First of all, it must be said that Voltaire categorically disagrees with the philosophy of optimism. And if he treats the philosophy of Marten with a certain degree of sympathy as a philosophy that is more in line with the truth of life, then in the philosophy of Leibniz the writer sees a manifestation of not only short-sightedness, but also blindness, stupidity, which, in his opinion, is characteristic of the human race. In order to emphasize the complete contradiction of the philosophy of optimism to the truth of life, Voltaire exaggerates the sharp discrepancy between the positions that Pangloss falls into and his assessment of the current situation, which turns the image of Pangloss into a caricature. So, Pangloss utters his famous phrase “Everything is for the best in this best of all worlds” at the moment when the ship on which he and Candide are sinking, when the terrible Lisbon earthquake occurs, when he was almost burned at the stake, etc. This gives the story a satirical edge. Already the name Pangloss, which Voltaire endows the hero, means in translation from Greek "know-it-all" and speaks of the assessment that the author gives him. In addition, Voltaire draws the image with only one color - Pangloss is deaf to any reasonable arguments and behaves the same in all situations, he is always and in everything true to his philosophy, which Voltaire extremely primitive, reducing to the already mentioned phrase - "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

The same task - exposing the theory of optimism as untenable - is served in the story by the selection of facts introduced by Voltaire into the story and taken from life. These are facts predominantly of the same plan - they demonstrate the existence of evil in the world, in which Voltaire distinguishes mainly two varieties. The first is the evil contained in nature itself. Voltaire demonstrates it in the story on the example of the Lisbon earthquake, which actually took place and claimed thousands of human lives. The second kind of evil is the evil that comes from people, unjust social structure. It manifests itself in abuse and perversion. state power, in religious intolerance, in feudal oppression and wars, in class inequality, in colonial activity, etc., that is, Voltaire shows all the possible vices of the existing social system, what seemed to him the main obstacle on the way of human society to a rational device, to progress. So philosophical content Voltaire's story combines with a topical socio-political orientation, which manifests itself especially clearly in the ideal of the social structure that Voltaire draws in the story. Essentially, this is an illustration of a positive political program writer.

Exposing all sorts of forms of injustice, violence against a person, Voltaire opposes them with the idea of personal and civil freedom, the dream of such social order which, based on firm law, could guarantee the independence and rights of each of its citizens. Such an ideal state in "Candida" is the happy country of Eldorado, the country of reason and justice, where human needs are fully satisfied. Voltaire paints a utopian picture of universal prosperity. Eldorado is a state ruled by an enlightened king who greets Candide affably and without courtly affectation - he kisses him on both cheeks, which seemed to Candide's contemporaries, accustomed to the ceremonies of the French court, to be a kind of shock to the foundations of the existing regime. There is no clergy in El Dorado, and all the people are literate and profess deism - a philosophy that, according to Voltaire himself, gave the most correct idea of the world. Since Eldorado is an enlightened state, it does not need to use any kind of violence against a person, everyone consciously obeys reasonable laws. Court and prisons are not needed here, since there are no criminals in the country. In Eldorado, science, laws and free human activity are most respected. There is no general equality here, estates and property rights are preserved in the country, but property differences between its citizens are not as noticeable as in Europe.

The final conclusion that Voltaire makes in his work and to which he leads his hero Candide also has a certain political sense. After many wanderings, Candide, along with his friends, settles somewhere in Turkey, and one day there he meets a kind old man - a Turk. The Turk arouses his interest in that he feels happy. The old man tells Candide that in order to find happiness, one must work, since work drives, as he believes, "three great evils from us - boredom, vice and need" 7. "We must cultivate our own garden," 8 he says, and this phrase of the old man Candide repeats many times, summing up his reflections on the life and philosophical views of his teachers at the end of the story.

How to understand this phrase in the mouth of Candide? Of course, Voltaire puts into it a certain allegorical meaning, which can be understood in different ways. However, the most likely answer is the idea that all philosophical disputes have been exhausted, that fruitful labor and active human activity are necessary; we are also talking about intervention in life with the aim of transforming it, about focusing not only on criticizing the existing feudal regime, but also on solving important practical problems of our time. Thus, Voltaire, with all the moderation of his socio-political position, demonstrates in Candide a certain maturity of enlightenment thought, which it appears at an early stage of the French Enlightenment.

Philosophical stories. "Candide, or Optimism".

In 1746, Voltaire writes a prose work entitled "The World as It Is, or the Vision of the Grandmother", with which he opens a series of novels and stories that have entered the history of literature under the name of philosophical. In this genre, he continues to perform until 1775, that is, for almost thirty years.

It is remarkable that Voltaire himself did not attach any serious importance to these "trifles", as he called them. He wrote them unusually easily, "jokingly", mainly for the amusement of his high society friends. It cost a lot of work to persuade him to print these works - at first they were distributed in lists. Today, Voltaire's philosophical novels and stories are perhaps the most valuable part of his legacy. Let us dwell on one of the best works of Voltaire of this genre - his famous philosophical story "Candide, or Optimism". It was written in 1759 and became an important milestone not only in the development of the philosophical genre, originating from Montesquieu's Persian Letters, but also in the history of all educational thought.

At first glance, Voltaire's story is purely entertaining. It is built as a series of adventures experienced by its hero - a young man named Candide. By the will of fate, he ends up in different parts of the world, meets with many people, experiences all sorts of misfortunes and failures, loses and finds friends again, finds himself in the most unthinkable and incredible situations. There is also a love theme in the story. Living at first in the castle of the German baron Tunder den Tronk, Candide falls in love with his beautiful daughter Kunigunde. But since Candide cannot count several generations of eminent ancestors in his family, Cunigunde's father, after the kiss that Cunigunde and Candide exchanged, expels him. In the future, the baron's castle is attacked by enemy troops. Kunigunde, like Candide, begins to wander around the world, and Candide tries to find her during his wanderings.

How does Voltaire resolve this philosophical dispute in his work? First of all, it must be said that Voltaire categorically disagrees with the philosophy of optimism. And if he treats Marten's philosophy with a certain degree of sympathy as a philosophy that is more in line with the truth of life, then in Leibniz's philosophy the writer sees a manifestation not only of short-sightedness, but also of blindness, stupidity, which, in his opinion, is characteristic of the human race. In order to emphasize the complete contradiction of the philosophy of optimism to the truth of life, Voltaire exaggerates the sharp discrepancy between the positions that Pangloss falls into and his assessment of the current situation, which turns the image of Pangloss into a caricature. So, Pangloss utters his famous phrase “Everything is for the best in this best of all worlds” at the moment when the ship on which he and Candide are sinking, when the terrible Lisbon earthquake occurs, when he was almost burned at the stake, etc. This gives the story a satirical edge. Already the name Pangloss, which Voltaire endows the hero, means in translation from Greek "know-it-all" and speaks of the assessment that the author gives him. In addition, Voltaire draws the image with only one color - Pangloss is deaf to any reasonable arguments and behaves the same in all situations, he is always and in everything true to his philosophy, which Voltaire extremely primitive, reducing to the already mentioned phrase - "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

The same task - exposing the theory of optimism as untenable - is served in the story by the selection of facts introduced by Voltaire into the story and taken from life. These are facts predominantly of the same plan - they demonstrate the existence of evil in the world, in which Voltaire distinguishes mainly two varieties. The first is the evil contained in nature itself. Voltaire demonstrates it in the story on the example of the Lisbon earthquake, which actually took place and claimed thousands of human lives. The second kind of evil is the evil that comes from people, an unjust social order. It manifests itself in abuses and perversions of state power, in religious intolerance, in feudal oppression and wars, in class inequality, in colonial activity, etc., that is, Voltaire shows all the possible vices of the existing social system, what seemed to him the main obstacle on the way of human society to a reasonable device, to progress. So the philosophical content of the story is combined in Voltaire with the topical socio-political orientation, which is especially evident in the ideal of the social structure that Voltaire draws in the story. In essence, this is an illustration of the positive political program of the writer.

Exposing all sorts of forms of injustice and violence against the individual, Voltaire opposes them with the idea of personal and civil freedom, the dream of a social system that, based on firm law, could guarantee the independence and rights of each of its citizens. Such an ideal state in "Candida" is the happy country of Eldorado, the country of reason and justice, where human needs are fully satisfied. Voltaire paints a utopian picture of universal prosperity. Eldorado is a state ruled by an enlightened king who greets Candide affably and without courtly affectation - he kisses him on both cheeks, which seemed to Candide's contemporaries, accustomed to the ceremonies of the French court, to be a kind of shock to the foundations of the existing regime. There is no clergy in El Dorado, and all the people are literate and profess deism - a philosophy that, according to Voltaire himself, gave the most correct idea of the world. Since Eldorado is an enlightened state, it does not need to use any kind of violence against a person, everyone consciously obeys reasonable laws. Court and prisons are not needed here, since there are no criminals in the country. In Eldorado, science, laws and free human activity are most respected. There is no general equality here, estates and property rights are preserved in the country, but property differences between its citizens are not as noticeable as in Europe.

The final conclusion that Voltaire makes in his work and to which he leads his hero Candide also has a certain political meaning. After many wanderings, Candide, along with his friends, settles somewhere in Turkey, and one day there he meets a kind old man - a Turk. The Turk arouses his interest in that he feels happy. The old man tells Candide that in order to find happiness, one must work, since work drives, as he believes, "three great evils from us - boredom, vice and need" 7. "We must cultivate our own garden," 8 he says, and this phrase of the old man Candide repeats many times, summing up his reflections on the life and philosophical views of his teachers at the end of the story.

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Candide is a tragicomedy. Tragedy is in wars, evil, disease, oppression and arbitrariness, in intolerance and blind superstition, stupidity, robberies, disasters (like the Lisbon earthquake) that Candide and his teacher Pangloss face (an image that transparently alludes to Leibniz). comic effect lies in the explanations that Pangloss, and sometimes Candide, attempt to give to human misfortunes.

The pinnacle of the cycle and Voltaire's work as a whole was the story "Candide, or Optimism". The impetus for its creation was the famous Lisbon earthquake on November 1, 1755, when the flourishing city was destroyed and many people died. This event renewed the dispute around the position of the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz: "Everything is good." Voltaire used to share Leibniz's optimism himself, but in Candide an optimistic outlook on life becomes a sign of inexperience, social illiteracy.

Outwardly, the story is built as a biography of the protagonist, the history of all kinds of disasters and misfortunes that overtake Candide in his wanderings around the world. At the beginning of the story, Candide is expelled from the castle of Baron Tunder-ten-Tronk for daring to fall in love with the baron's daughter, the beautiful Kunigunde. He ends up as a mercenary in the Bulgarian army, where he is driven through the ranks thirty-six times and only succeeds in escaping during a battle in which thirty thousand souls were killed; then he experiences a storm, a shipwreck and an earthquake in Lisbon, where he falls into the hands of the Inquisition and almost dies in an auto-da-fé. In Lisbon, the hero meets the beautiful Cunigunde, who also suffered many misfortunes, and they go to South America, where Candide enters fantasy countries Orelion and in Eldorado; through Suriname, he returns to Europe, visits France, England and Italy, and his wanderings end in the vicinity of Constantinople, where he marries Kunigunde and all the characters of the story gather on his small farm. In addition to Pangloss, there is no happy heroes: everyone tells a chilling story of their suffering, and this abundance of grief makes the reader perceive violence, cruelty as a natural state of the world. People in it differ only in the degree of misfortune; any society is unfair, and the only happy country in the story is the non-existent El Dorado. By depicting the world as the realm of the absurd, Voltaire anticipates the literature of the twentieth century.

Candide (the name of the hero in French means "sincere"), as they say at the beginning of the story, "a young man whom nature endowed with the most pleasant disposition. His whole soul was reflected in his face. He judged things quite sensibly and kindly." Candide is a model of the "natural man" of the enlighteners, in the story he belongs to the role of a simpleton hero, he is a witness and a victim of all the vices of society. Candide trusts people, especially his mentors, and learns from his first teacher Pangloss that there is no effect without a cause and that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Pangloss is the embodiment of Leibniz's optimism; the failure, the stupidity of his position, is proved by every plot twist, but Pangloss is incorrigible. As befits a character in a philosophical story, he is devoid of a psychological dimension, it only tests the idea, and Voltaire's satire cracks down on Pangloss primarily as the bearer of a false and therefore dangerous idea of optimism.

Pangloss in the story is opposed by brother Marten, a pessimistic philosopher who does not believe in the existence of good in the world; he is just as unwaveringly committed to his beliefs as Pangloss is, just as incapable of learning from life. The only character to whom this is given is Candide, whose statements throughout the story demonstrate how little by little he gets rid of the illusions of optimism, but is also in no hurry to accept the extremes of pessimism. It is clear that in the genre of a philosophical story, we cannot talk about the evolution of the hero, as the depiction of moral changes in a person is usually understood; the characters of philosophical stories are deprived of the psychological aspect, so the reader cannot empathize with them, but can only detachedly follow how the characters sort through different ideas. Since the heroes of "Candide", deprived inner peace, cannot develop their own ideas in a natural way, in the process of internal evolution, the author has to take care to supply them with these ideas from the outside. Such a final idea for Candide is the example of a Turkish elder who declares that he does not know and never knew the names of muftis and viziers: “I believe that in general people who interfere in public affairs sometimes die in the most miserable way and that they deserve it. But I am not at all interested in what is happening in Constantinople; it is enough for me that I send there for sale the fruits from the garden that I cultivate. Voltaire puts the glorification of labor into the mouth of the same Eastern sage (after Robinson, a very frequent motif in the literature of the Enlightenment, expressed in the most capacious, philosophical form in Candide): "Work drives away three great evils from us: boredom, vice and need" .

The example of the happy old man suggests to Candide the final formulation of his own life position: "We must cultivate our garden." In these famous words, Voltaire expresses the result of the development of enlightenment thought: each person must clearly limit his field of activity, his "garden", and work on it steadily, constantly, cheerfully, without questioning the usefulness and meaning of his occupations, just like a gardener gardening every day. Then the work of the gardener pays off with fruits. In "Candida" it is said that a person's life is hard, but bearable, one should not indulge in despair - contemplation should be replaced by action. Goethe would later come to exactly the same conclusion in the finale of Faust.

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4 Common features philosophical tales of Voltaire

André Maurois in literary portraits called the story "Candide" the pinnacle of Voltaire's creativity.

This story was written in 1759 and became an important milestone not only in the development of the philosophical genre, originating from Montesquieu's Persian Letters, but also in the history of all educational thought.

The story tells about the misadventures of the young man Candide, a pupil of a Westphalian baron, in love with the daughter of his tutor Cunegonde, a student of Dr. Pangloss's home teacher, who develops Leibniz's idea that "everything is for the best in this best of worlds." The cruel trials that Candide, Cunegonda, Pangloss, the servant and friend of Candide Cacambo are subjected to, whom fate carries around the world from Bulgaria, Holland, Portugal (where the famous earthquake of 1755 occurs) to Argentina, the legendary and happy country of El Dorado, Suriname, and then Paris, London, Venice, Constantinople. At the end of the story, Candide, having married the now extremely ugly Cunegunde and accompanied by the sick Pangloss who has lost optimism, finds refuge on a small farm and finds in physical labor the answer to all philosophical questions: "You need to cultivate your garden."
Contemporaries perceived the story "Candide" not only as a satire on Leibniz's theodicy, but also as a radical denial of faith in "all-good providence", which undermined the foundations of any religion, including deistic. human world Voltaire portrayed a completely godless

nym: people act in it without any guidance and direction from above, and nowhere is there a supreme judge who would support virtue and punish vice. Voltaire believes that there is no good and evil

no supernatural causes, and their sources are rooted in the earthly world.

Voltaire traditionally divides evil into physical and moral,

Under the first he understands illness, injury, death. moral evil,

Voltaire, includes violence, cruelty, injustice,

oppression that people commit against each other malice or out of ignorance, of their own free will, or in accordance with inhuman laws. And behind all this, too, there is no deity. Voltaire does not agree with Leibniz that our world, as a result of divine dispensation, is the best possible.

However, it does not plunge the reader into hopeless despair, like Pascal. The ending and the general meaning of the philosophical story are not at all pessimistic. Candide breaks out of the circle of misfortunes that haunted him, he has his own shelter, where he lives with his beloved woman. The central hero, who until now has been chasing the ghost of well-being granted from outside, meets an industrious Turkish peasant. The Turk says: “Work drives away three great evils from us: boredom, vice and need” (4,

185). Candide comes to the conclusion that "one must cultivate one's own garden" (ibid., 186). Thus, as an alternative to Leibniz's optimism and Pascal's pessimism, Voltaire puts forward the principle vigorous activity person to improve their lives.

“Thus, Voltaire, on the one hand, rejects the traditional Christian view of man’s earthly destiny as a vale of suffering and weeping predetermined by God: evil reigning here, making human life unbearably painful, can and must be eliminated. On the other hand, Voltaire reveals the groundlessness of hopes that this

evil is somehow eliminated by divine providence, and a person has the right to expect that without his purposeful efforts, everything would seem to be by itself.

will arrange itself "for the better." According to Voltaire, only constant and intense worldly activity, illuminated by reasonable goals and knowledge of the means to achieve them, can lead to an improvement in the position of man on earth. Kuznetsov p.123

Let's get back to the structure of the story. The story is built as a kind of adventure novel. This genre was very popular among readers - Voltaire's contemporaries. The hero of the story, the young man Candide, goes through a series of adventures, finds himself in different parts of the world, finds himself in the most unthinkable situations. There is also a love theme in the story.

With obvious signs of the adventure genre, the story is rather a parody of it. Voltaire takes his heroes through so many adventures, following each other in a dizzying

pace that it is impossible for a real person to imagine the possibility of experiencing them. This parody, inherent in the entire narrative as a whole, from the very beginning does not allow the reader to take the event side of the narrative very seriously. Thus, it draws attention to those thoughts that Voltaire considers it necessary to express in the course of the events depicted. These thoughts, most often, the author puts into the mouth of his characters. The story is about the meaning of human

life, about freedom and necessity, about the world as it is, about what is more in it - good or evil.

In the story "Candide, or Optimism" the traditions of the baroque, or "Greek" novel are ironically played up, where the characters wander and live in poverty, but do not lose their physical charm and do not age. In Voltaire, on the contrary, Kunigunde is depicted in the finale as ugly and quarrelsome, which spoils Candide's enjoyment of the long-awaited marriage.

At the same time, plot motifs of the English educational novel are subjected to ironic stylization in the story. The teacher/student situation in this novel parodies the teacher-pupil relationship in old novels like The Adventures of Telemachus. Pangloss and Marten in Voltaire's story adhere to opposite philosophical systems, as do the mentors of Tom Jones (Square, revering human nature virtuous, and Twak, who considers it vicious). Voltaire's hero is given the opportunity to test the philosophical postulates of Pangloss and Marten, just as Tom tests the views on human nature of his teachers and the Mountain Hermit. The parody of the "teacher-student" situation lies in this case in that the student's experience does not confirm, but refutes the teacher's opinion that "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

In the center of the story, a clash of ideas is presented, the bearers of which Voltaire makes two heroes - the philosophers Pangloss and Marten. In the story, they are the teachers of Candide and express two points of view on the world. One of them (Pangloss) is an optimistic assessment of what is happening, the other (Marten) - on the contrary, comes down to pessimism and consists in recognizing the eternal imperfection of the world, in which evil rules.

Voltaire tests these philosophies on the fate of Candide, who, relying on his own experience, must decide which of his teachers is right. Thus, Voltaire asserts an empirical approach to

resolution of philosophical questions.

Concerning actors story, it should be noted that they are not full-blooded characters. They are only carriers of philosophical theses.

The central character of the story - the young man Candide bears a "speaking" name. In translation, it means "simpleton". In all life situations, Candide shows naivety and innocence. And this is done on purpose. The human appearance of the hero and his name should emphasize the impartiality, sincerity of the conclusion to which he eventually comes.

Voltaire focuses on the idea and its fate. Therefore, the composition of the story is based on a logical principle. The connecting link is the development of thought. . At the beginning of the story, Voltaire turns his main attention to the philosophy of Pangloss, which Candide adopts. Its essence is concentrated in the phrase, which is repeated many times by Pangloss and Candide - "Everything is for the best in this best of worlds." Then Martin appears, and Candide gets acquainted with his views. Then, at the end of the story, he draws his conclusion. Thus, the story is built, as it were, on a change from one system of views to another and a conclusion that draws a line under

thoughts of the characters. Since the views of Marten and Pangloss are opposed to each other, this introduces an atmosphere of controversy into the story.

Voltaire needs to resolve this dispute. How does he do it?

Emphasizing the complete contradiction between the philosophy of optimism and the truth of life,

Voltaire exaggerates the situations that Pangloss finds himself in, turns the image of Pangloss into a caricature. So, Pangloss utters his famous phrase “Everything is for the best in this best of worlds” at the moment when the ship on which he and Candide are sinking, when the terrible Lisbon earthquake occurs, when he was almost burned at the stake. This gives the story a satirical edge. Already the name Pangloss, which Voltaire endows the hero, means in translation from Greek "know-it-all" and speaks of the assessment that the author gives him.

Voltaire's theory of optimism is also exposed by a selection of facts.

There is little joy in the events described in the book. Voltaire, with his story, first of all demonstrates the abundance of evil in the world. Both the laws of nature and human laws are incredibly cruel. All the heroes of the book suffer crushing blows of fate, unexpected and ruthless, but this is told more with humor than with compassion. The troubles and torments of the characters are usually associated with the grotesque bodily bottom: they are flogged, raped, their bellies are torn open. These sufferings are deliberately reduced, and they are healed from these terrible wounds incredibly easily and quickly, so the story about them is often presented in the tone of a sad-jolly obscene anecdote. These troubles and misfortunes, of course, are too many for one story, and the concentration of evil and cruelty, their inevitability and unpredictability are intended to show not so much their excess as their commonness. As something everyday and familiar, Voltaire tells about the horrors of war, about the dungeons of the Inquisition, about the lack of rights of a person in a society in which religious fanaticism and despotism reign. But nature is also cruel and inhuman: stories about the bloody mud of war or judicial arbitrariness are replaced by pictures of terrifying natural disasters - earthquakes, sea storms, etc. Good and evil are no longer balanced, do not complement each other. Evil clearly prevails, and although it seems to the writer (and, let us add, to one of the characters in the book, the Manichaean philosopher Marten) to a large extent timeless, that is, eternal and irresistible, it has its own specific carriers. But Voltaire's view is not hopelessly pessimistic. The writer believes that by overcoming fanaticism and despotism, it is possible to build a just society. Voltaire's faith in him, however, is weakened by a certain amount of skepticism. In this sense, the utopian state of Eldorado, described in Candida, is indicative. In the story, this country of universal prosperity and justice opposes not only the Paraguayan dungeons of the Jesuits, but also many European states. But the happiness of the citizens of this blissful country is doubtful, because it is built on conscious isolationism: in ancient times, a law was passed here, according to which "not a single inhabitant had the right to leave the borders of his small country." Cut off from the world, not knowing anything about it, and not interested in it, the inhabitants of Eldorado lead a comfortable, happy, but, in general, primitive existence.

Such a life is alien to the hero of the story. Candide is everywhere an accidental and short-lived guest. He is tirelessly looking for Kunigunde, but he is looking for more than just her.

The meaning of his search is to determine his place in life.

The writer contrasts the two extreme positions - the irresponsible and conciliatory optimism of Pangloss and the passive pessimism of Marten - with the compromise conclusion of Candide, who saw a lot of evil in life, but also saw good in it and who found rest in modest creative work.

What did Voltaire want to say with the phrase put into the mouth of Candide "You must cultivate your garden"?

This phrase is like a summary of life central hero. Candide understands that he has lived all his life with illusions imposed from outside: about the beauty of Kunigunda, about the nobility of her family, about the wisdom of the incomparable philosopher Pangloss; understands how dangerous it is to serve false gods.

“We must cultivate our own garden” is an idea about the need for fruitful work, about intervening in life with the aim of transforming it, about the need to solve important practical problems of our time.

Conclusion

Having studied the story of Voltaire, the works of literary critics on the topic "Candide" by Voltaire as a philosophical novel "and following the tasks put forward in the introduction, we have come to the conclusions set out below.

Voltaire is one of the most important figures in understanding the entire French Enlightenment. Voltaire as a philosopher was interested in the fundamental questions of ontology and epistemology.

In his works, Voltaire showed the failure of religion as a system. Voltaire in Candide criticizes Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony, believing that people should intervene in life in order to change it and establish a more just order. Radically rejects the "theory of optimism" in Lezbnitz's version. Enters into controversy with the philosophical and religious anthropology of Pascal.

In ethics, Voltaire opposed both the innateness of moral norms and their conventionality. Voltaire decided to create a philosophy of history and wrote a number of works (“Philosophy of History”, “Pyrrhonism in History”, “Reflection on History”), which presented a program for studying the achievements of culture in all areas of civilization. Voltaire opposed the views of Rousseau, who called for a return to primitive nature. Voltaire understood freedom as free will. Here Voltaire had high hopes for enlightened monarchs who had mastered the philosophical conclusions about the laws of social development, the tasks of state power and freed themselves from prejudices.

The culture of the French Enlightenment is characterized by the phenomenon of the unity of philosophy and literature. A whole system of genres was created, which differed in their staging philosophical problems. In this regard, the corresponding poetics appears. characteristic features new poetics were: conventionality, fantastic images and situations, characters-reasoners, carrying certain philosophical ideas, paradoxes.

The fundamental difference between large (novel) and small (story) philosophical genres There is no 18th century in this respect. The space of the philosophical novel is not focused on lifelikeness, which is what distinguishes it from other forms of the 18th century novel. At the same time, the philosophical novel, especially Voltaire's, fundamentally gravitates toward anachronisms that emphasize the conventionality artistic world. For all their genre differences, the philosophical novels of the 18th century are united by a parable form of narration. In the center of the novel is a story told to illustrate and confirm or, on the contrary, expose a certain philosophical idea, and figurative system subordinated to the didactic setting.

Voltaire gave the genre of the philosophical story a classical form. main feature genre - the primacy of the idea. In a philosophical story, it is not people who live, interact, fight, but ideas, characters are only their mouthpieces, they are similar to each other both in actions and in language. Hence the exotic, and often fantastical plots, almost complete absence psychologism and historicism, the ease with which the heroes change their way of life, endure the blows of fate, accept the death of loved ones, die. Time flies with incredible speed, the scene changes so quickly and arbitrarily that the conventions of place and time become obvious to the reader. The plots are emphatically reminiscent of well-known literary models, therefore they are also conditional. Much more attention is paid to the author's speech than to dialogues.

In Voltaire's deepest and most significant story, Candide, the philosophical turning point that occurred in the mind of the writer clearly stands out.

One of the external impetuses to Voltaire's revision of his philosophical views and - indirectly - to the writing of "Candide" was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which claimed tens of thousands of lives and wiped out the once picturesque city from the face of the earth. Leibniz's optimistic idea of the "pre-established harmony of good and evil", of the causal relationship that reigns in this "best of possible worlds", is consistently refuted by the events of the life of the protagonist - a modest and virtuous young man Candide. There are many heroes in the story, and from the pages of "Candide" there is a discordance of opinions and assessments, while the author's position emerges gradually, emerges gradually from the clash of opposing opinions, sometimes deliberately controversial, sometimes ridiculous, almost always - with undisguised irony woven into the vortex of events.

The last words of Voltaire's book were: "But you must cultivate your garden," for our world is mad and cruel; This is the credo of both modern man and the wisdom of the builder - wisdom, still imperfect, but already bearing fruit.

Appeal to real life, to its sharp social spiritual conflicts pervades all the work of Voltaire and the story "Candide", in particular.

Description

The focus of this work is the philosophical story of Francois Marie Voltaire "Candide", its place among the philosophical works of Voltaire and in the context of the philosophical fiction of the Enlightenment.
The aim of the work is to get a more complete picture of Voltaire's "Candide" as a philosophical novel.

Voltaire's Candide is a philosophical satirical story that was created in the middle of the eighteenth century, but for some time was banned due to a considerable number of obscene scenes. In the work in question about optimism and pessimism, human vices and faith in best qualities person.

History of writing

Voltaire is a French writer of the Enlightenment. He created a number of philosophical works of art, not devoid of sharp accusatory satire. Voltaire extremely disliked the power of the church, about which he spoke more than once. He was an ardent fighter against idealism and religion and based his philosophical treatises exclusively on scientific achievements.

As for such an abstract concept as "happiness", then, in order to state our position on this difficult question, Voltaire wrote an adventure story about the optimist Candide, who, despite all the blows of fate, has not lost faith in goodness, sincerity and honesty. This work is based on real event earthquake in Lisbon. It is terrible a natural phenomenon occupies a central place in one of the most famous stories that Voltaire wrote.

“Candide, or Optimism” is a work that the author refused several times, claiming that it allegedly did not belong to him. Nevertheless, there is satire characteristic of Voltaire in the story. "Candide" is one of the best works of the French enlightener. What did Voltaire tell readers in this story? "Candide", the analysis of which will be presented below, is a story that at first glance may seem nothing more than fun and entertaining. And only upon detailed examination can one discover the deep philosophical thought that Voltaire sought to convey to his contemporaries.

"Candide": a summary

The protagonist of this story is a pure and unspoiled young man. He owes his optimistic outlook on life to a teacher who from childhood convinced him of the inevitability of happiness. Pangloss, and that was the name of this spiritual philosopher, was sure that he lived in the best of all possible worlds. There is no reason to grieve.

But one day Candide was expelled from his native castle. The reason for this was the beautiful Kunigunde, the daughter of the baron, to whom he was by no means indifferent. And the hero began to wander around the world, dreaming of only one thing - to reunite with his beloved and know true happiness. That it still exists, Candide did not doubt for a minute, despite all the misfortunes and hardships.

Voltaire gave the adventures of the hero a certain fabulousness. Candide, saving Cunigunde, kept killing someone. He did it quite naturally. As if killing is the most typical activity for an optimist. But the victims of Candide magically came to life.

Candide learned a lot. He knew a lot of grief. He managed to reunite with Cunigunde, however, only after the girl lost all her former attractiveness. Candide found a home and friends. But what happiness is, he still did not know. Until one day an unfamiliar sage revealed the truth to him. "Happiness is daily work," declared the wandering philosopher. Candide had no choice but to believe and start cultivating his small garden.

Composition

As already mentioned, Voltaire was inspired to write this story after the famous Lisbon earthquake. "Candide, or Optimism" is a work in which a historical event serves as a starting point. It occupies a central place in the composition. It is with the depiction of the earthquake that the events in the story reach their climax.

After the expulsion from the castle and before natural disaster Candide wanders the world aimlessly. An earthquake activates his powers. Candide Voltaire becomes a noble hero, ready to do anything in order to rescue the lady of the heart. Meanwhile, Kunigunde, possessing an unearthly feminine beauty, evokes far from the best thoughts in men. A Bulgarian Jew kidnaps her and makes her his concubine. The Grand Inquisitor also does not stand aside. But suddenly Candide appears and destroys both the first and the second. Subsequently, the hero gets rid of the brother of his beloved. The pompous baron is allegedly not satisfied with the origin of the liberator of the beautiful Cunigunde.

Candide Voltaire resembles the knight Cervantes with nobility, purity of thoughts. But the philosophical idea of the French writer's work has little in common with the position of the great Spaniard.

El Dorado

The book "Candide" is also not without political background. Voltaire sends his wanderer to roam the world. He becomes a witness to important historical events. Candide visits European cities, South America, the countries of the Middle East. He observes the military actions of the Spaniards against the Jesuits, cruel morals contemporaries of Voltaire. And he gradually begins to realize that the optimistic teacher did not teach him a single worthwhile lesson. All his rantings about the beauty of this world are not worth a penny ...

But still does not deprive his hero last resort Voltaire. Candide now and then hears stories about a beautiful land in which people do not know grief and sadness, have everything they need, do not get angry, do not envy, and even more so do not kill.

Candide Voltaire, by the way, has a symbolic name. It means "simple". Candide finds himself in a mythical state in which all the inhabitants are happy. They do not ask the Almighty for material wealth. They only thank him for what they already have. This fabulous land Voltaire in his philosophical story contrasts real world. The people that Candide meets throughout the story, regardless of their social position They don't know what happiness is. Life is hard and ordinary people, and notable people.

Once in a mythical country, Candide decides to return to his bleak world. After all, he must once again save Kunigundu.

Pessimism

The optimism of Candide is opposed by the pessimism of his companion. Marten only believes that people are mired in vices, and nothing can change them for the better. What philosophical idea is based on the work that Voltaire wrote? "Candide", the contents of which are outlined above only briefly, is able to convince that this world is actually ugly. Faith in goodness can only destroy a person. Candide, being a sincere person, trusts swindlers and rogues, as a result of which his situation becomes sadder every day. The merchant is deceiving him. noble deeds are not valued in society, and Candide is threatened with prison.

Venice

What was Voltaire trying to say in a philosophical story? "Candide" summary which is presented in this article is a story that can happen in modern society. The hero of Voltaire goes to Venice in the hope of finding his beloved there. But even in an independent republic, he becomes a witness to human cruelty. Here he meets a maid from the castle where he spent his childhood. The need forced the woman to take an extreme step: she earns a living by prostitution.

Cheerful Venetian

Candide helped the woman. But the money he gave her did not bring happiness. The hero still does not give up hope of finding happiness, or at least meeting the person who knew him. And therefore, fate brings him to the Venetian aristocrat, who, according to rumors, is always in a cheerful mood and does not know sadness. But here, too, Candida is in for a disappointment. The Venetian rejects beauty and finds happiness only in dissatisfaction with others.

Farm life

It is worth saying that Candide is gradually disillusioned with the philosophy of absolute optimism, but does not become a pessimist. The story presents two opposing points of view. One belongs to teacher Pangloss. The other is for Martin.

Candide managed to redeem Cunigunde from slavery, and with the remaining money to purchase a small farm. Here, at the end of their misadventures, they settled, but did not immediately achieve spiritual harmony. Idle talk and philosophical ranting became a constant occupation of the inhabitants of the farm. Until one day Candide was visited by a happy old man.

"We need to cultivate a garden"

Leibniz gave rise to the philosophical idea of universal harmony. The French writer was impressed by the worldview of the German thinker. However, after the earthquake, Voltaire published a poem in which he completely rejected the doctrine of the balance of good and evil. The educator succeeded in finally debunking Leibniz's theory in the story of the adventures of Candide.

“We need to cultivate the garden” - this is the idea expressed by one of the characters in last chapter Voltaire. “Candide, or Optimism”, a brief summary of which gives only a general idea of the author’s philosophical idea, is a work that should be read, if not in the original, then at least in full, from cover to cover. After all, the mental anguish of the Voltaireian hero is known and modern man. Happiness is a steady and constant work. Reflections and reasoning about the meaning of life can only lead to despair. Contemplation must be replaced by action.