S Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion And Voltaire's Candide Analysis

In David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Voltaire’s Candide, both writers illustrate a world where humans are in a constant state of misery. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, three philosophers named Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo argue and debate on the existence and nature of God. During this argument, the question of evil and how it contradicts with God’s perfect benevolence is raised. Thus, Hume brings into discussion a much broader and deeper question than that of the existence and nature of a perfect, divine being. The existence of happiness on Earth thrown into the debate. Like Hume, Voltaire also brings into the discussion of happiness through his satirical text, Candide. This is shown through the philosophy of

He does this through a heated debate characters of Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo, who each have different perceptions. Demea argues that the nature of God is unknowable and incomprehensible to humans that it is sacrilege to assign God limited and corrupted attributes of human beings. Cleanthes, on the other hand, argues that the nature and existence of God can be determined through human experience, since “no question of fact can be proved otherwise (Hume 44).” Philo argues between Demea and Cleanthes by pinpointing paradoxes and inconsistencies for each line of Demea and Cleanthes’ debate. Therefore, he ultimately believes that nothing can be known with absolute certainty. When arguing of the cause and effect of God’s existence, it is Demea that presents the argument that all human have a sense of God’s existence from “a consciousness of his imbecility and misery” that leads him to “seek protection from that Being on whom he and all nature are dependent (Hume 58).” He continues to state

The evil of mankind outweigh the good, thus casting men into misery. While philosophers fight over the existence and nature of God, they can only hope for happiness in another realm. As seen in both texts, arguing over unanswerable questions does nothing to ease the pain of an existence in a world where perfect happiness does not exist and misery