The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 devastated the Portuguese city, decimating it to ruins with a total death toll rumored to be around 30,000-60,000. Following the quake, tsunami waves crashed over the city. Fires broke out and spread throughout the city as well. The mass destruction disrupted common Enlightenment ideologies of the time. Popular philosophers of pre earthquake Europe such as Isaac Newton, Leibniz, and Alexander Pope, argued that we live in the best of possible worlds. Their “whatever is, is right” maxim represented the optimistic themes that were characteristic of early 18th century thought (Fleming). Prior to the earthquake, Lisbon was heavily catholic centralized. The devastating day fell on All Saints day when most of the population …show more content…
Leibniz was a critical philosopher in spreading this ideal throughout the Enlightenment. His work “Theodicee” discusses the concept of a good world, “indeed the best of possible worlds, chosen by an all-wise, all-good creator” (Brightman). His ideas on suffering and evil reinforce the initial popular response to the earthquake, that “God sends us unhappiness, as a result of original sin our vices surpass our virtues, and ‘a single Caligula, a Nero has done more [evil] than an earthquake.’” (Brightman). He believed that individual lives lost were for the good of the universe, that God did not see individual lives but the benefit of the whole universe, and therefore, there is more good in the universe. Pope carries this ideal on, developing the idea the “whatever is, is right” (Brightman). In his poem, Essay on Man, Pope reaffirms Leibnitz’s claim that nature’s evil, as well as the evil of man, “do not undercut the notion of a reasonable God,” (Dynes). Rousseau sums this optimistic philosophy up as the most critical optimistic philosopher of the enlightenment. His work, Discourse of the Science and Arts, veered away from the more popular of enlightenment ideals by denigrating science as “deletrious, since [it] took people farther away from their natural innocence and …show more content…
Voltaire was not widely received prior to the Lisbon earthquake. He often found himself butting heads with the Church, government, and intellectual establishments. This caused him to publish works anonymously and he was also denied authorship quite often (Dynes). Voltaire did, however, relish in this “intellectual combat” and “used wit to make his points” (Dynes). His established writing is what eventually carried him to fame following the Lisbon earthquake. Voltaire was writing against his time, too radical for the enlightenment. However, the public just needed a shock to reevaluate their ideology. The Lisbon Earthquake provided Voltaire the perfect platform to deliver his message to a newly receiving audience. They’re ideas were shattered and they were perfectuly vulnerable to be seduced by a witty and charasimatic writer such as Voltaire. Perfect
Earthquake: a series of vibrations induced in the earth’s crust by the abrupt rupture and rebound of rocks in which elastic strain has been slowly accumulating; something that is severely disruptive; upheaval (Shravan). Tsunami: an unusually large sea wave produced by a seaquake or undersea volcanic eruption (Shravan). Combine these two catastrophic natural disasters, and it will be a day that will forever live in infamy through terror; a day much like that of October 28, 1746 in Lima, Peru, in which an entire city was destroyed within mere minutes. Author Charles Walker guides his audience through the devastation and wreckage of this heartbroken town and into the economic, political, religious, and social fallout that followed. Walker argues that the aftermath of this tragedy transformed into a voting of the citizens’ various ideas perceived of the future of Lima, theological consequences, and the structure of the colonial rule (p. 12).
To prove his point, Voltaire uses pointed satire directed at various organizations and groups prevalent in his time period. In particular, Voltaire takes aim at organized religion, in particular Catholicism, as well as aristocratic arrogance and war. All of Voltaire’s comments are precisely chosen to convey his point that those in power were completely corrupt in all their thoughts and actions.
Many classic books of literature of the French Enlightenment era comes from the famous author Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as his pen name, Voltaire.The French author was born on November 21st, 1694 and died May 30th, 1778 in the city of Paris. He started school at the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand at the age of 10 and graduated in 1711 with a motive of being a writer. However, Voltaire’s father did not agree with his choice of study and wanted Voltaire to study law. He went back to school to study law for another two years after his graduation. Voltaire was sent to The Hague, Netherlands in order to act as a secretary to the French ambassador at the time. During his visit, he became infatuated with Catherine Olympe de Noyer. Due to his love affair, Voltaire was discharged from the Dutch country to France “disinherited, and threatened with exile to the New World.” (Stanley 67). A few years later, Voltaire was accused of writing two satiric poems against the French regime because of his reputation in writing and was imprisoned at the Bastille from 1717 to 1718. During the time spent inside the prison, Voltaire wrote the tragedy called the Oedipe. After being released, Voltaire adopted the new of De Voltaire due to the commonness of the original name. His father died in 1722 and was released from his control. Voltaire also met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher, the same year in Brussels, Belgium. From 1726 to 1728, Voltaire was sentenced to another term in the Bastille and exiled to England due to an encounter with “his growing squadron of enemies and spearheaded Chevalier de Rohan” (Stanley 67). He met the author by the name of Jonathan Swift during his exile. Voltaire was able to re-enter France in 1729, and p...
The tone of the work is one of optimism maintained despite frequent misfortune and continuous suffering. The optimism can exist because, in the context of the Enlightenment, the suffering represents the opportunity for human progress through the application of reason. If the miserable people of the middle ages lived for the promise of relief of suffering in the afterlife, the miserable people in the Enlightenment lived for promise of a better life through progress resulting from the application of reason to the human situation. Voltaire's message was this optimism (for that is the translation of the title of the work), but he made his point by satirically making fun of many of the elements of the Enlightenment, itself, including this philosophical optimism. He could do this, and laughingly get away with it, because the optimism he was poking fun at is the abuse of the Enlightenment as a popular movement.
...he Age of Enlightenment in his writing. He is initially trying to show that El Dorado is a successful village where the philosophy behind scientific breakthroughs from the scientific revolution were applied to politics and religion. Which means that science, religion, and philosophy coexist in the nation of El Dorado. This was something that most of Europe was trying to do at the time, yet many people fell to the Catholic Church and their rulers to persecution over their practices. Voltaire had witnessed these things in France and is what really drove him to begin writing about the journey made by Candide to find Miss Cunégonde. Through his writing, he is able to express his philosophy and beliefs of how he believed Europe should truly be.
There was a massive earthquake in San Francisco during the year of 1906. The country of United States went through great loss because of this massacre. Nearly 250,000 people had become homeless as the result of this great earthquake. Winchester pointed out the question: How unprepared was America when this disaster hit? He compared the San Francisco earthquake to the Katrina hurricane in 2005.
The Haiti earthquake that occurred on January 12, 2010 just fifteen miles south of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince was a severely large-scale earthquake, at a magnitude of 7.0. The initial shock was then followed by a series of aftershocks with magnitudes ranging up to 5.9. Over three hundred thousand people died due to this extreme chaos. Many buildings collapsed and disintegrated under the force of the quake; both the cathedral and National Palace in Port-au-Prince were heavily damaged. In the aftermath of this tragedy, efforts to aid the people of Haiti with medical assistance, water, and food were hampered by the loss of communication lines as well as by roads blocked by debris. Over one million people were left homeless due to this quake. Two days after the earthquake, journalist Leonard Pitts wrote “Sometimes the Earth is Cruel,” an article describing how the people of Haiti responded to the disaster. In “Sometimes the Earth is Cruel,” a major theme is that some things are inevitable.
Voltaire asks where God is throughout Candide. Whenever an awful thing happens, one must ask oneself why, if God is merciful and benevolent, this would happen, or why these religious people would allow this. Voltaire uses these “awful things” as evidence of corruption within the church. After an earthquake in Lisbon, Candide and Pangloss are subjected to flogging and hanging, respectively. The two are treated like so in order to appease
Overall Voltaire is successful in promoting his ideas and beliefs. It is clear he wants to see a drastic change in religion, politics and morals in the pre-modern period. Throughout his novel Candide he is able to criticise society with a light hearted mockery but also with a seriousness using extreme examples to address his points and concerns. It is arguable that his ambitions were far too high at a time of hope and debate in the 18th century.
In chapter 5 of Candide, the Enlightenment and the birth of tolerance were on full display. In Candide, the Enlightenment thinkers’ view of the optimum world is challenged through the shipwreck and the satiric explanations of the Lisbon Bay and Lisbon Earthquake. Voltaire continues to use ironically tragic events to test Pangloss’s optimistic philosophy, which attempts to explain evil. The use of grotesque and naive behavior between individuals in this chapter makes the reader question Pangloss’s irrational thinking with the cause and effects of the events.
"The Most Terrible Was Yet To Come": San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906." Map of Time A Trip Into the Past. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2014.
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire lived from 1694-1778. He was an author and a philosopher whose philosophy stressed rationality, democracy and scientific inquiry. These interests can all be seen in Candide, for example, which has a philosopher for a main character and which satirizes the philosophy of Leibnitz throughout the text. The novel Candide was written in response to the earthquake of 1759 which hit Lisbon and resulted in the instantaneous and indiscriminate deaths of thousands. Appalled by the horrible deaths of so many innocent people, Voltaire was at this time also incensed by Leibnitz who wrote that given the worlds God might have created, by choosing to endow mankind with free will, "the world we live in is the best of all possible worlds." To Voltaire, this response to the earthquake amounted to an abominable moral complacency and indifference by philosophers such as Leibnitz, who Voltaire felt seemed to accept all the other normal suffering and injustice in the world. Hence in Candide, Voltaire relentlessly satirizes Leibnitz's formulation by shifting the stress to "this is the best of all possible worlds" and bringing up the line every time a character encounters a horrible calamity or atrocity. However, it should be added that Voltaire's hatred of injustices perpetrated by the aristocracy, the church and the state--all of which he satirizes in Candide--also grew out of his personal experiences.
Voltaire uses the episode of “The storm, the shipwreck, the earthquake, and what became of Dr. Pangloss, of Candide, and of Jacques the Anabaptist” to speak about the idea of nature being good being false. Through the use of various characters and episodes, Voltaire criticizes and attacks religion, social class structure, and the idea that nature is good by creating situations in which he shows his opinion on the overall flaws of society.
Along Candide’s journey, each city that he visits gives Voltaire the opportunity to satirically critique the social aspects of that respective town. To exemplify the calamities and evilness of the world, Voltaire depicts the various problems that overwhelm the characters including war, carnage, execution, religious hypocrisy, disease, and rape. For example in France, Candide encounters the Bulgarian and the Abare armies during the Twelve Year War. The nature of the war and the tactics of the Bulgarian army depicts the absurdity of civilized warfare. Then, Candide visits Lisbon, where an earthquake hits, which allows Voltaire to demonstrate the uselessness of the philosophical inquiry since the people believe that the earthquake is a result of human sin.
The earthquake in Lisbon, a true event, illustrates yet more satire on the church. Auto-de-fe is the Catholic response to catastrophe, and Voltaire takes a shot at religion here. Innocents are superstitiously hanged to prevent earthquakes, so Voltaire pens another earthquake on the very day of this “act of faith.” Pangloss is hanged for his innocent speech, which the church has convoluted, and Candide is flogged simply for listening with "an air of approbation."