Commentary on Candide by Voltaire and Irrational Man by William Barrett

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Recommended: 16.1 world history Scientific Revolution

The first item I will be discussing is Candide which is a satire written by the philosopher François Marie Arouet who is known by his pseudonym Voltaire. Candide main characters adapt the idea that everything happens for the best, no matter how bad it is. It talks about a man who falls in love with a woman and after that he goes through a lot of hardships as he travels the world with his many companions. The novelattacks the church through irony and satire, it mentions how the church punishes people for having heretical ideas, which contradicts the aims of the Enlightenment as the latter supports explaining the world through science in a way that separates the ideas from those mentions in the Bible. The novel includes a character named “Pangloss“, who is a caricature of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. “Pangloss” supports the idea that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, that idea is destroyed in the novel. Candide is a novel that talks about the idea of theodicy The enlightenment sparked the beginning of the scientific revolution. It was in a time where everyone life’s were based on the church. The enlightenment was focused on observing things from a scientific point of view, the scientific revolution helped shape those thoughts and ideas. Over the course of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, Europe’s view of the world changed from one of a religious view to a strictly secular view. The advances in science were the mean reason behind the fact that Europe made such a change. Aristotle (348-322 B.C.) had many scientific ideas that had a huge influence on shaping the world as we know it. One of his ideas were that everything in motion had been moved by another object that itself was... ... middle of paper ... ...en in standard, have the ability to understand everything and the customary protection of the worth of reason comes up short. The existentialist evaluate of reason expects this Greek perfect of reason and the Hebraic idea of confidence is an essential antecedent of the existentialist accentuation on movement. Assume, for instance, that there were a street and we were let we know should walk it; according to our inquiry "Why?", we could be advised that we should do so since the strolling itself might be charming or helpful (handy for our health); however in the event that we were told that there was an inestimable fortune at the finish of the way, then the basic to walk might convey overpowering weight with us. It is this fortune at the closure of the street that has vanished from the modem skyline, for the basic reason that the close of the way has itself vanished.

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