Introduction
Francois Voltaire’s narration is a rendition of comical theatrics that mocks human integrity. Ever heard of the Pope’s daughter? What about a philosopher who, despite his lofty thoughts, could not help contracting syphilis from a lowly prostitute? These things are very probable…but wait, only among ‘civilized’ men! In this story, Voltaire wanted his audience to question the church’s monopoly over moral issues in the face of her hypocrisy, critique the system of giving objects like jewels monetary value (from the economic concepts of scarcity, demand, and price), assess the usefulness of intellectual institutions to society and finally, to examine the human weakness to choose beauty over character.
Analysis
In Candide, human civilization is turned on its head, especially on matters about sexual morality, leadership, and intellectual institutions. In the novel, the baron has an illegitimate son, conceived in his extra-marital sexual escapades. The Pope has a daughter, fathered in circumstances that claim celibacy of a big joke. And the learned class, in this case, represented by the philosopher Pangloss, could not keep their minds off a whore’s thighs.
The protagonist, Candide, the German baron’s bastard son, is banished from home for kissing Cunegonde, the baron’s daughter. He wonders from continent to continent, and everywhere he goes he is confronted with the social and moral rot among men. However, when he and his band of fugitives get to a country called Eldorado, they are amazed to see heaps of jewels scattered along the streets. Satire is achieved by criticizing man’s craze and obsession for material things, which by themselves do not have any value at all. In this incident, Voltaire shows that sometimes men crave things which, if everybody else were to ignore them, they won’t have any value. In Eldorado, for instance, nobody cares for the jewel, and as a result, it litters in abundance along the streets. But because Candide and his men have been conditioned to value it, they see a goldmine, literally. So, what will happen if everybody adopted a very low opinion of banknotes? They will lose their value; they are paper, after all!
However, Voltaire’s satire goes beyond mocking man’s assignation of value to inanimate objects. He also points out that they go to war, enslave and kill for these very useless objects. In contemporary times, it happens when nations fight over natural resources. For instance, there were the ‘blood diamonds’ from Angola, where thousands of people were killed for the ‘precious stone.’
The learned class in society is meant to guide the rest of humanity in the right direction. However, in Candide, the learned men contract a venereal disease and then philosophize to blame it on Columbus. Pangloss says that “It was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease…” (Voltaire 9). Very succinctly, Voltaire captures the sorry state of a human society that claims to be led by intellectuals. Philosophy, as a subject that engages the mind’s most intelligent faculties, shares some elements of the creativity involved in the fine arts such as sculpting but is employed in promoting moral decadence. In Greek art, for example, the talent of artistic expression, as opposed to the argument in philosophy, is used to create objects that appeal to baser instincts, the depiction of nude human figures.
Greek art portrayed sexual scenes, which they usually painted on ceramics. Like the societies depicted in Candide, they lacked the concept of sexual immorality or pornography, and art reflected scenes from their daily life (Wrinkler 297). Even in places of worship, curved phallic images were used as charms. The religious and superstitious significance attached to the male phallic organ explains the prominence of art, which displayed sexual activity.
In literature, sexual immorality was portrayed as acceptable, since it was presented explicitly in letters (Wrinkler et al 296). This shows that it had been entrenched in the culture, similar to the trends seen in Candide, through the establishment of institutions that promoted sexual activities such as the nunnery.
In 1947, Theodor Adorno observed that “the fully enlightened world radiated disaster triumphant.” He lamented that the technology which characterized the era of the 18th-century enlightenment did not work by “the fortunate insight”, but refers to methods, exploitation of others’ work, and capital. What men seek to learn from nature is the enlightenment to “dominate it and other men: it has extinguished any trace of its self-consciousness” (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997, 4). The disasters of the 20th century such as WW1 and WW2 reflect what Voltaire portrays in Candide.
This satirical attack by Voltaire mocks the modern civilized world which is guided by rational thinking. The ironic twist of the story in mocking man’s rationality is in the philosopher’s use of reason to justify his undoing. At the end of the story, everybody is happy and committed to working instead of engaging in conflicting philosophical speculations. This is a direct attack on what is regarded as a higher realm of thinking. But then again, when you realize that, unlike physics, biology, or mathematics philosophy does not lead to any tangible profitability, Voltaire’s view makes a lot of sense. What gain is there in a subject whose main concern is thinking about thinking, whatever that means, and speculating about things for which there is no empirical evidence?
The illusion that religious leaders are inherently moral is shattered by Voltaire’s portrayal of the character of the Pope. According to church doctrine, they are supposed to be celibate, in fact impotent, strictly speaking. However, the Pope has a daughter, probably a product of one of his off-the-altar flings with a nun, a sister, or something in a skirt for that matter. But then, again, this is not a surprise, especially if one has read the New York Times or Washington Post on April 12 this year, both of which reported about the Vatican’s antics to safe face after the sex scandal that hit the Catholic Church recently, courtesy of her horny priests. It will never get any crazier.
On the issue of character, Candide is mesmerized by Cunegonde’s beauty, which blinds him not to see into her selfish character. This is portrayed when he follows her to Buenos Aires, where she rejects him to marry the governor. And when she eventually ages and her beauty fades, he is not as fervent as before to marry her. The emphasis on appearance rather than character is really common today, where people choose their partners depending on how handsome or beautiful they are. When John Keats said in his Ode to a Grecian Urn that Beauty is Truth, and it is all that you need to know, he was not entirely off the point.
Conclusion
The last blow that Voltaire dealt modern civilization is the fact that Candide and his bored companions found happiness and fulfillment in the simplest form of life that the human race initially evolved from simple farming. The return to what is widely thought as the savage stage of human civilization is a veiled mockery of the technological and intellectual enlightenment that began in the early 18th century. It seems then that the only way a man could find the right path towards a better civilization is by restraining from engaging in useless philosophical arguments, which, after all, is the trade of people to whom everything else makes little sense.
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor, Horkheimer, Morris. Dialectic of Enlightenment Volume 15. New York: Verso, 1997.
Voltaire Francois. Candide. New York: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Wrinkler, John J., Williams, Gordon W. Later Greek Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.