In Voltaire’s Candide, the title character is a young, naïve man who knows little about the world, and who is thrust into dangerous situations that gradually undoes his perception of his world being “the best of all possible worlds,” taught to him by the philosopher and teacher Pangloss (Candide, p. 2) Candide starts out sheltered and then gains a greater understanding of the world around him, mostly because of an array of minor characters who teach him something along the way. One of these characters is Pangloss, who represents Voltaire's distaste for overly optimistic and abstract philosophers. Despite Pangloss' perspective, Candide learns the harsh realities of life and learns to be more practical. Candide shows the changing of a naïve, sheltered character into a stronger, more cynical person, in direct opposition to Pangloss' naivete brought upon by privilege - Voltaire uses Pangloss as a way to tear down unrealistic and abstract philosophers of the early 18th century.
Candide, at the beginning of the book, is instructed by Pangloss to believe that the world is kind and just, and that there is no real suffering in the world; When Candide is caught by the Baron fooling around with his love Cunegonde (inspired by his spying on Pangloss' intercourse with Paquette), he is kicked out and sent on a dizzying array of misadventures. These tales, from being forced into military service to nearly being ritualistically sacrificed, among other situations, change Candide, while Pangloss is eventually found to be a beggar, wracked with syphilis because of his dalliance with Paquette. Pangloss is shown to be completely ravaged by the same world he says is excellent and without fault, though his perspective does not really change that much throughout the book.
As a result of these experiences, Candide has less faith in the idea of the world being naturally beautiful, and instead believes that we must “cultivate our garden.” (p. 167) Candide realizes that the world will not be naturally great; people must make it as good as it can be. This reflects Voltaire's philosophy, which is dramatically opposed to other 18th century Enlightenment thinkers, including Leibniz, on which Pangloss can be said to be based. Philosophers like Liebniz, during this time, believed in the idea of a perfect universe, created by a perfect God, thus making the existence of an evil world completely impossible; believing otherwise, Voltaire created Pangloss as a foolish character, constantly with his head in the clouds and finding himself wracked with disease and punished for this optimism (Korsmeyer, p. 201).
In conclusion, Pangloss is Voltaire's way of deriding the overly generous and effortlessly naive Enlightenment philosophers of his time, including Liebniz - these people believed that, since God is perfect, the world is perfect, and therefore no evil could exist in the world. Through his experiences with that same evil that Pangloss denied, however, Candide becomes a more responsible person, demonstrating his ongoing optimism and selflessness in his actions. Candide’s journey shows a character whose virtue is changed, if not undone, by the terrible things the outside world has to offer. With Pangloss' (and by extension Liebniz and Enlightenment philosophers') incorrect assumptions about the nature of reality, Voltaire soundly rebukes this kind of ignorance of the real world, which was controversial during the Enlightenment.
Works Cited
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. "Is Pangloss Leibniz?" Philosophy and Literature 1.2 (1977): 201-208.
Voltaire. Candide. Dover Thrift Edition, 1991. Print.
