Is This the Best of All Possible Worlds? Leibniz vs. Voltaire

Is this world the best possible world? Some would agree that it is because God, as a perfect being, created it. However, some have tried to refute this thesis, proving that the world is full of imperfection. The advocates of the first argument, however, claim that the world strives to be the best, and the advocates of the second do not directly refute this thesis but treat it satirically. To draw our conclusions, we will explore the conflict of opinion between two great philosophers: Leibniz and Voltaire.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born on July 1, 1646 in Leipzig. He showed incredible intelligence early on, so he was considered a child prodigy or wunderkind. He was interested in logic, poetics, philosophy (primarily scholastic), mathematics, etc. Already at seventeen, he began to study mathematics, but at the same time, he also listened to lectures in philosophy. Later, he studied law but refused to stay at the University as a professor. After completing his studies, Leibniz embarked on a journey to study various fields of knowledge to influence the world and his contemporaries with his education.

Leibniz wrote a lot but did not present his philosophical system in several systematic works like other rationalists (Descartes and Spinoza). He expressed his ideas mostly through articles in various magazines and correspondence with famous scientists. But he did publish several works. One large systematic work concerns optimism and theodicy and is called Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. He wrote another one called New Essays on Human Understanding, in which he opposed Locke’s ideas. However, due to Locke’s death, he did not want to publish it. The work was not published until fifty years after Leibniz’s death.

By the way, Leibniz coined the term theodicy from the Greek words theós, which means God, and díkē, which means justice. In a way, Leibniz’s goal of philosophy is to find peace in human consciousness. His understanding of God and the world was called Leibnizian optimism, and it will be criticized not only by Voltaire but also by Schopenhauer, for example.

To understand how Leibniz describes the possibility of the best of all worlds, we must understand his view of God. For Leibniz, God is the cause of all things, an absolutely perfect being. The philosopher describes him as a skilled architect who makes the best possible use of what is available to him for his creations. God is the first primary monad. He is the creator of all other monads. Each monad is an indestructible metaphysical point, a closed world that cannot be acted upon. Since God is a perfect being, everything he creates must be the best possible. Thus, of all the existing worlds, ours is the best because it is the ‘best option’ that God has chosen. Therefore, his choice is by no means accidental.

This is how the argument flows:

1. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent

2. God created the existing world

3. God could have created a different world or none at all (there are other possible worlds)

4. God knew which possible world was the best and was able to create it, and because he is omnibenevolent, he chose to create that world.

5. Therefore, the existing world is the best of all possible worlds.

Of course, as you can guess, the question arose: if this world is the best of all possible worlds, where does evil come from? Specifically, Leibniz’s answer to this question is known as the aforementioned Leibnizian optimism. Leibniz separates three types of evil. The first is metaphysical and involves the finitude of mortal beings. The second is moral, which arises from not fulfilling the goals given to man. And most importantly, the third is physical evil, which Leibniz says exists to allow goodness to be displayed. So evil is there, so we can see the good things more clearly.

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer (“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”)

-Voltaire

A brilliant figure and a leading thinker of the Enlightenment, Voltaire was also a great rebel. He was born under the name François-Marie Arouet but soon created a pseudonym for himself. Unlike Leibniz, he was born into a wealthy family in Paris in 1694 and was a pupil of the Jesuits from an early age. Also, something else that separates him from Leibniz is that, although his father intended for him to study law, he refused, wanting to devote himself to literature.

Not only did Voltaire not have his own philosophical system, but he also did not create his own original philosophy. But that does not make him an insignificant philosopher. He pushed boundaries with his ideas and criticized the ruling societies and beliefs with his literary creations. He was unique in his writing style, which was very ironic and witty. He helped spread Newton and Locke’s ideas throughout Europe since he spent some time in England. Voltaire criticized the church, especially the French Catholic Church, and advocated religious tolerance. Although he spoke negatively about Christianity, he was not an atheist. He advocated the idea of deism, which was opposed to the current flow of Spinozist tradition.

As far as the Enlightenment is concerned, Voltaire remained the most widely read and beloved philosopher and writer. Unlike many philosophers, he enjoyed wealth and fame during his life. Interestingly, his ideas and criticism of the social order influenced the French Revolution, which began in 1789.

Voltaire’s Candide has many facets. One of them is certainly philosophical. The philosophical novel is a special form that was nurtured in the Enlightenment. The fictional narrative functions as a kind of philosophical commentary and criticism. Certain philosophical positions are placed in a fictional context and checked within it. In this way, those views are either confirmed or ridiculous.A philosophical novel usually takes the form of a parody. We can see Candide as a parody of Leibniz’s philosophical assumptions and Leibniz’s theodicy in general, with the fact that we should keep in mind how Voltaire used Leibniz in Candide, which is decontextualization. Voltaire deliberately chose sound theses of Leibniz, took them out of context, and deprived them of the environment in which they have meaning.

Voltaire was bothered by the attempt to create a synthesis of philosophical science and theology like Spinoza and Leibniz. He instead adopted Newtonian theology, believing in deism, which implies that God created the world but left it to man to manage.

Candide, as a hero, is a supporter of Leibniz’s teaching at the beginning. He resides in a castle, which is in an ideal setting, the best of all castles. The protagonist is in the position of the ignorant. He is the one who provokes ironic situations in the best way and who, in the context of the collision with the world, is placed as a kind of absence of knowledge and opinion.However, he is kicked out of that castle and sets out to fight around the world, checking the thesis of the best of all possible worlds along the way.

In the 18th century, Portugal was a rich, powerful monarchy with a strong Catholic Church, the center of civilization. The earthquake that hits Lisbon introduces Candide to nature, natural calamities, and something beyond human control. It warns of an area affected by supernatural forces.

Candide, who started with bookish knowledge of the world through Pangloss, becomes exposed to that world and observes it, gaining empirical awareness. He goes through many adventures in search of happiness and the utopia from which he was thrown out. And when he questions life, he gets the answer:

“A hundred times, I was at the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics, for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one’s existence? In brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart?”

So, what is the message of this piece? At the end of his journey, Candide finds himself with his surviving friends in Turkey, with some kind of peasant who cultivates a garden. The quote at the end sums it all up:

“Let us cultivate our garden.”

The message is ambiguous. A garden can represent the human spirit, and cultivating a garden is working on the human spirit. It is also a metaphor for activism, working one’s lot in this world. Everyone is in charge of giving their contribution, to do what they can. And finally, let us state that the message can be that a person should deal with things of this world and not of the world beyond.