Philosophical+Dictionary+Activity

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**The following quotations came from Voltaire's philosophical dictionary which was published in 1764. It was started** ** as early as 1752 though. The philosophical dictionary is also sometimes considered a companion volume to Candide. ** =====

Instructions: Step 1: Choose and read one of the following quotes Step 2: Discuss with a partner how the quotation can be applied to aspects of Candide. Did you learn anything knew about Voltaire from these quotes? Step 3: In the discussions section of the wiki post a response for your pair and be ready to summarize your findings to the rest of the class.

1 and 2 are from the section "All is Good"

1. “Leibniz, who was certainly a better geometer than he (Plato), and a more profound metaphysician, did mankind the service of explaining that we ought to be entirely satisfied, and that god could do no more for us, than he had necessarily chosen, among all the possibilities, what was undeniably the best one. ‘What will become of original sin?’ they shouted at him. ‘It will become what it can,’ said Leibniz and his friends; but in public he wrote that original sin was necessarily part of the best of worlds. What! To be chased from a place of delights, where we would have lived for ever if an apple had not been eaten! What! Produce in wretchedness wretched children who will suffer everything, who will make others suffer everything! What! To undergo every illness, feel every sorrow, die in pain, and for the refreshment be burned in the eternity of centuries! Is this really the best lot that was available? This is not too // good // for us; and how can it be good for god?”

2. This system of // All is good // represents the author of nature only as a powerful and maleficent king, who does not care, so long as he carries out his plan, that it costs four or five hundred thousand men their lives, and that the others drag out their days in want and in tears. So far from the notion of the best of possible worlds being consoling, it drives to despair the philosophers who embrace it. The problem of good and evil remains an inexplicable chaos for those who seek in good faith. It is an intellectual exercise for those who argue: they are convicts who play with their chains. As for the unthinking mass, it rather resembles fish who have been moved from a river to a reservoir. They do not suspect that they are there to be eaten in lent: nor do we know anything by our own resources about the causes of our destiny.

3 and 4 are from the section "Chain of Events"

3. It is said that the present gives birth to the future. Events are linked to each other by an invisible fate: destiny, which in Homer is superior to Jupiter himself. This master of gods and men declared plainly that he could not prevent his son Sarpedon from dying at the appointed time> Sarpedon was born at the moment at which he had to be born, and could not have been born at any other. He could not die anywhere but before Troy. He could not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia. At the appointed time his body had to produce vegetables which had to be changed into the substance of some Lycians. His heirs had to establish a new order in his states. This new order had to influence neighboring kingdoms. From this resulted a new disposition of war and peace with the neighbors of the neighbors of Lycia. Thus by degrees the destiny of the hwole world depended on the death of Sarpedon, which depended on another event, which was bound up with other back to the origin of all things. If a single one of these facts had been arranged differently a different universe would have resulted; it was not possible for the actual universe to exist and not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save his son’s life, for all he was Jupiter.

4. But it seems to me that the truth of this principle is sadly misused. People conclude from it that there is no atom so small that its movement has not influenced the present arrangement of the entire world; that there is no phenomenon to small, whether among men or among animals, to be an essential link in the great chain of destiny. Let us be clear about this. Every effect obviously has its cause, which can be retraced from cause to cause into the abyss of eternity; but every cause does not have its effect to the end of time. I admit that all events are produced by another. If the past gives birth to the present, the present gives birth to the future. All things have fathers, but not all things have children. This is exactly like a genealogical tree: we know that every house goes back to Adam, but plenty of people in the family died without posterity.

5 and 6 are from the section "Fate"

5. " Philosophers never needed either Homer or the Pharisees to convince themselves that all events are governed by the immutable laws, that all is arranged, that all is a necessary effect. Either the world subsists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a supreme being formed it in accordance with his supreme laws. In either case these laws are immutable. In either case all is necessary. Heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth, incapable of tending to rest in the air. Pear trees can never bear pinapples. The instinct of a spaniel cannot be the instinct of an ostrich. All is arranged, geared and limited. Man can have only a certain quantity of teeth, hair and ideas. A time comes when he necessarily loses his teeth, his hair and his ideas. It is a contradiction to say that what was yesterday was not, that what is today is not. It is also a contradiction to say that what must be does not have to be. If you could alter the fate of a fly there would be nothing to prevent you from creating the fate of all the other flies, all the other animals, all men, all nature. When all is said and done, you would find yourself more powerful than god."

6. Your doctor saved your aunt; but he certainly did not gainsay the order of nature to do so: he obeyed it. It is obvious that your aunt could not prevent herself from being born in a given town, that she could not prevent herself from having a certain illness at a given time, that the doctor could not be elsewhere than in the town in which he was; that your aunt had to send for him; that he had to prescribe the drugs that cured her. A peasant thinks that hail fell my chance on his field; but the philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that the world being constituted as it is, it was impossible for the hail not to faill that day on that spot. There are people who, afraid of the truth, grant half of it, like debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask to be let off the rest. There are, they say, necessary events, and other that are not necessary. It would be laughable for one part of this world to be arranged, and not the other, if one part of what happens had to happen, and another part of what happens did not have to happen. When one examines this closely it is seen that the doctrine opposed to fate is absurd.