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Transcript: The Partially Examined Life

Episode #62: Voltaire’s Novel “Candide” This transcription covers our episode on Candide: or, Optimism, the novel by Voltaire (1759). Is life good? Popular

Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz argued that it’s good by definition. God is perfectly good and all-powerful, so whatever he

created must have been as good as it can be; we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire loads this satirical adventure story up with horrific violence to demonstrate that Leibniz’s position is just silly. Life is

filled with suffering, and human nature is such that even in peace and prosperity, we’re basically miserable. Yet we still love

life despite this. Voltaire’s solution is to “tend your garden,” which means something like engaging in meaningful work,

whether personal or political.

This is a very special episode for us, as it’s our first with all of us (Mark Linsenmayer, Wes Alwan, Seth Paskin and Dylan

Casey) recording in the same room, as part of a weekend of fun and frolic in Madison, WI. Read more about the topic and get

links to the book at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Transcribed by Transcribe Me! 

MARK 00:01

Before we launch into this very special episode of Partially Examined Life, I've got a couple of announcements. We are now offering transcriptions both on the previous episode on Nietzsche and this one on Voltaire. A substantial portion of each of these can be read at Partiallyexaminedlife. com for free and we encourage you to purchase the full transcription. Whether we make more of these will depend entirely on how many people buy them. On the evening of September 23 we are going to have our first Partially Examined Life audience participation discussion section. A selected dozen of you will join a couple of the podcasters to discuss the topic of the previous podcast Nietzsche's "Truth and Lie". Please take a look at partiallyexaminedlife.com for details. Finally, I want to remind you that the Partially Examined Life is listener supported. Please consider a donation of a dollar or more at partiallyexaminedlife.com/donate.

MARK 00:57

You are listening to Partially Examined Life, a philosophy podcast by some guys who at one point set on life at doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 62 is something like "Is life good?". We read "Candide or Optimism" the philosophical novel by Voltare from 1759. You can join the discussion. Get the text, read loads of supplemental material at partiallyexaminedlife.com. This is Mark Linsenmayer.

SETH 1:23

You normally say broadcasting from Madison, Wisconsin.

WES 1:27

We can all just say our names and then we can ...

SETH 1:29

What, what if we all say from in Madison?

WES 1:32

Yes.

MARK 1:33

This is Mark Linsenmayer speaking to you from Madison, Wisconsin.

SETH 1:37

And this is Seth Paskin from... Madison, Wisconsin.

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WES 1:42

This is Wes Alwan visiting Madison, Wisconsin.

DYLAN 1:45

This is Dylan Casey in Madison, Wisconsin.

MARK 1:49

So why the hub-bub? Why the strange locale?

SETH 1:51

Well, the hub-bub is about the fact that after 3 1/2 years of doing this podcast this will be the first time that we are all simultaneously present in the same room at the same time. Dylan and I are meeting each other for the first time in person and Wes and Mark and I are seeing each other, I'm seeing them for the first time in I believe fifteen years in person.

WES 2:16

And this is my first time meeting Dylan as well.

DYLAN 2:218

And therefore it's my first time meeting Wes and Seth. [laughter]

MARK 2:22

Our first time that we can make gestures at each other that you the listeners cannot hear. We can, say "Open up a Ho ho." People can say "What the hell are you doing opening a Ho ho?"

WES 2:34

This is the first time I've actually done the podcast with clothing on. [laughter] And sober. [laughter]

SETH 2:43

Certainly at least one of those things is ditto for me. [laughter]

MARK 2:47

I'm suppressing my, the joke that I would wanna make that is too obscene for this crowd. [laughter]

WES 2:52

We can edit it out. Let's hear it.

MARK 2:56

That normally the energy in the show comes from being able to climax at a certain point but yet [laughter]

WES 3:05

I'm eating a Ho ho. [laughter]

SETH 3:10

I might have a joke to follow that up but I don't think it would be very flattering or appropriate either so let's move on.

MARK 3:17

So Candide. Is this even a work of philosophy? Why are we bothering to do this?

WES 3:22

Yeah how did we end up doing this?

SETH 3:24

Yeah who suggested this?

DYLAN 3:25

Yeah whose idea was it?

MARK 3:26

I believe we're looking for something that we could prepare quickly. That was the idea and I put forth a few suggestions and Wes was very excited about this one, soe had to do this. It was fun.

WES 3:39

Yeah I was excited to do a work of fiction, but how did you end up suggesting it?

MARK 3:41

It was something you know I think it was in a philosophy class rather than like a grade books class but I had read this a long time ago and just didn't remember that much about it. I know a few people recommended we cover Voltaire and so

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it got in my mind. It seems especially I proposed because we just did MacIntyre in his contra Enlightenment thing do actually read somebody. Who represents theEnlightenment. Nobody represents the Enlightenment like Voltaire. He was skating the trends. He was the man. Descartes, and Newton, and those guys might have actually produced the substance but Voltaire, he was the style.

DYLAN 4:13

Oh, yeah. And he got a certain kind of not merely embracing relationship with Enlightenment, right? If Descartes a member of the Enlightenment he certainly no friend of DescartesDescartes, in that respect.

MARK 4:22

Yes.

WES 4:24

Right, he defended the new Newtonian mechanics against the old Cartesian and to some extent Leibnizian mechanics, although those are very different things.

MARK 4:31

And I didn't really ever understand what the substance of that debate was. Do we even wanna try to address it in a couple sentences?

WES 4:40

I think some of it has to do with the idea of gravity being action at a distance. I think, for early mechanics, I think Descartes and others embrace the intuitive idea that for bodies to act on each other they had to be touching, and so if you couldn't see them actually touching each other, imposing force in each other that way, it works through the ether through some sort of hydraulics or fluid mechanics, let's say. I'm not really sure of the details.

DYLAN 5:06

Vortex, vortices.

WES 5:08

Okay, vortices. So, Newton just said - no, it's actually the distance that we don't need these hypotheses about these intermediate causal factors of mechanisms like vortices.

DYLAN 5:18

Newton explicitly says - I saw this problems but I'm not gonna really worry about what the fundamental metaphysics of it is. So part of the reason for the insistence on things touching for some, and for someone like Descartes, was a kind of metaphysical predisposition to have causes accounted for,ifferently, than Leibniz would do it, but nonetheless explicitly requiring the cause. Whereas Newton that says - well, they act in the distance. It acts in this way. I can show it rationally and mathematically. There's more to be said about it but I'm not really gonna worry about it. There... I should have brought my Principia.

MARK 5:51

No! You should not have brought your Principia.

DYLAN 5:53

There's a very famous quote about this. In Newton...

WES 5:57

Something like I offer no hypotheses.

DYLAN 5:59

That was exactly what it is:. I offer no hypothesis.

WES 6:00

Yeah.

DYLAN 6:02

And so that's either scandalous or brilliant, depending on what you think. At the... in some ways it pragmatic and in some ways it's the beginning of the worse part of science and sort of not being worried about efficient things

WES 6:11

Right.

DYLAN Or only being worried about efficient things and also the sort of very pragmatic

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6:12 part of science which says I'm gonna try to solve this problem and... if I have to sort it out later, I'll sort it out later.

WES 6:22

Well so, it's a movement away from worrying about mechanisms specifically, right?

DYLAN 6:26

Metaphysical mechanisms.

WES 6:27

Yeah. So you have these bodily movements that are correlated and you can write equations for that and that's your science and you... if you can't really do anything empirically to establish the mechanism then you have to forget about that. Leibniz is actually a whole different can of worms because he invented the calculus simultaneously with Newton and he made great contributions to science including kinetic energy. But, Leibniz still wanted to talk about the metaphysical bases say of kinetic energy, which he called Vis Viva. So, Leibniz was still wedded to this early rationalist speculation that was part of science then and with Newton you're getting away from that and I think that's what Voltaire embraces, this sort of hard-line empiricist approach.

MARK 7:11

Alright, well to celebrate getting rid of action at a distance and because my wife is down here taking pictures which you can see on the website, I must come over to you and strike you. [laughter]

WES 7:24

What am I supposed to do in response to that?

MARK 7:27

You're supposed to say ouch. You're supposed to say...

DYLAN 7:29

Yeah, let’s get a picture of the four of us.

MARK 7:31

okay, here's the picture.

WES 7:32

Ow.

SETH 7:33

I'm just wondering if anybody has ever uttered the phrase before "I should have brought my Principia with me. [laughter]

WES 7:40

Come to Saint John's. [laughter]

MARK 7:42

Alright, but the thing that we came to talk about today was the Candide. Was his ethical philosophy, his view on life, his view on philosophy for one thing.

SETH 7:53

Or one particular philosopher at least.

MARK 7:55

Yes, his objection to Descartes and Leibniz, Leibniz in particular... right. His rationalism how that extended to the problem of evil, which I believe Wes read all about. You want to fill us in, or... as a high level, before we go into that detail, Candide is just about a guy running around and a lot of crappy stuff happens to him... And his teacher at the beginning of the story was a Leibniz disciple who insisted that this is the best of all possible worlds... and showing by example that that is an unsupportable thesis. So there's a hugely over simplistic way of reacting to the philosophical content of the book. [laughter]

WES 8:32

So say what the problem with evil is... The problem is that there's a lot of evil in the world. And if God is all knowing and all powerful you would think He would be capable of creating a world without evil or without so much evil. And so it looks like an argument against the existence of God; although at that time it was more an argument about God's nature... Whether God was benevolent and

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all powerful and so on and so forth. So you can take it either as well there must not be a God because God is by definition all powerful and all knowing. Or you could take an alternative route and say well God must have certain limitations because of the existence of evil.

DYLAN 9:10

That's also probably worth noting that this subtitle optimism... That optimism is kind of a popular culture thing. This notion of optimism at the time and this philosophy of Leibniz's is... a kind of phenomenon in the 1750's something like that. As an answer to the question of evil which is sort of occupying some part of the public consciousness, that the response would be by one of the eminent thinkers... well this is the best of all possible worlds and therefore there's gotta be compensating factors for whatever evil you have, there's something good to be seen in it and then therefore you have optimism.

WES 9:46

Well Leibniz’s solution is kind of a version a lot earlier scholastic thinkers, St.Augustine for instance where you... Yeah I mean you can go a number of routes. You can say well on the whole the world Is really, really good. As if you look at the specific parts of the world, you can say, OK, this specific thing that happened is even when someone and so forth. But if you look at the big picture, you would see that it is good and actually is the best, because God would be required to take the best of all possible worlds. So, that's basically Leibniz’s route; it’s a little more complicated than that.

DYLAN 10:19

It makes a lot of sense to me that Leibniz would want to think about it this way because of its universalism and as an inventor of differential calculus and integral calculus. An inventor if Vis Viva and the notion of energy. He wants to take the whole and say the whole is some kind of extreme. And the way in which the individual components of it are behaving that you have individual evils and individual discrepancies doesn't matter to the fact that the whole both is one thing that has to have some kind of characteristic. And, two, that it is an extremum of some sort. That it's the best.

WES 10:55

Just like taking a summation in calculus. You get a must different result than just the individual infinitessimals.

DYLAN 11:01

That's right, that's right. You could have an infinite number of numbers that you add and subtract from one another, and you get one. That infinite series will converge to that. And he is one of the people who does a lot of work on these kind of infinite series. Each off those individual parts don't detract from the fact that there's one extremum that is utterly perfect. And there’s that kind of universalist thinking going on? It also reminded me a little bit of things like Kant’s question of the philanthopic right to lie. Where he argues that you shouldn't do that. Really, on the basis we are kind of universally good. That lying just contributes to the lack of goodness in the world. So there's no justification for doing it. It's the same kind of thing that you understand each individual, each action, each happening is being radically part of a whole. Not individual in its own right.

SETH 11:54

Yeah, I don't want to jump too much in the book to try to address what Wes just brought up about scholastic history, but at least Voltaire is pretty clearly calling out Leibniz rationalism and his getting to this conclusion of the best of all possible worlds a priori, he's not thinking that it's Leibniz saying well, this part might be bad, and this part might be bad, but on the whole it's good. In fact, there's no emperical content whatsoever to Leibniz's assertion, and that's precisely what the book is kind of, so in that sense, it's not coming from that same tradition or that same line of thinking, anyway that you mentioned.

WES 12:26

And actually Leibniz’s argument is actually a little bit different from this line of thinking, this is just a simpler Leibniz to put it, Leibniz actually has a more sophisticated variation of this: the whole, using more than the sum of its evil

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parts. But, it's interesting the way Voltaire goes at Leibniz and Candide. One of Leibniz’s doctrines involves the plenum, which is to say that in the best of all possible worlds, every possibility is actualized. He thinks of possibilities as these things striving to sort of come into being, and actually because of his theory of monads they're not inconsistent with each other so they can all be realized. Even though, there's a simplicity of scientific laws, you get this maximal variety in the world which is a good thing. Including, so for instance, all the variations and forms of species and sub-species. And, what's interesting about Candide you can get sense of a plenum, of all this stuff happening, except most of it is bad. It's like he's teasing Leibniz, every possibility is actualized but most possibilities suck [laughing]

SETH 13:30

Yeah, and listeners who aren't aware, we do have a previous episode on Leibniz and it might be your time to go back and listen to, because a lot of stuff that Leibniz says sounds really crazy until you spend a little time with it, and then you understand that it’s...

WES 13:45

Totally, awesome...

SETH 13:46

It's totally, awesome, yes... WES 13: 48 You can smoke a joint, and really sit down and appreciate it.

MARK 13:50

I think it's a significant rhetorical move that Voltaire is not attempting to parse Leibniz's argument, that it's much like my dismissal of slavery, in the recent Aristotle episode, it was, it was such a obviously bullshit thing that I'm not gonna take your word, your argument and parse it apart, because it is bullshit and it doesn't... not worth my time and that goes into Voltaire’s overall eschewal, is there a word eschew, Eschewal? Rejection of...

WES 14:17

I never heard anyone use it.

MARK 14:18

A rejection of metaphysics as being more or less a waste of time, there is even something… he wrote thisphilosophical dictionary that has just these a lot of little bits and pieces… little tiny essays and a lot of different.

DYLAN 14:30

Like testicles.

MARK 14:31

Yes we are reading something before we started, that he has an entry on testicles.

SETH 14:34

In his “philosophical” dictionary.

WES 14:38

It’s more like a funny-sophical dictionary.

MARK 14:40

One of the things that I was reading about that is one of the places I forget what metaphysical topic he is talking about, but he pretty much stops and says, happily, none of this really matters for our action. Which view you have in the metaphysics here is not going to affect your morality either way, and so that’s what he was ultimately concerned about.He was, you know, his big objections to Decartes and Leibniz and this… it was to these intellectual climate that they were creating in France at that time, he didn't like that, he liked politically he was anti authoritarianism, he was liberal of some sort. The French revolution—who knows whether he would have approved of that or not—but they consider Voltaire as their main influences. So he, if you think this is the best of all possible of the worlds, that if not a good motivational to go politically to do something and improve things, to get new people in power etcetera, that was the main problem, he like Cartesian doubt for instance, but thought that the

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Decartes cheated and didn't really even have an argument for god, he kinda the same thing, with Decartes on god in philosophical dictionary that he does to Leibniz of here, he doesn't actually go in and of course he must have read the meditation it not long, it was a major thing. But he doesn't feel the need to dive in and parse it up at least that I am aware of, the probably folks these thing are more familiar with, actually from what I understand, pretty much that nobody, is unless you’re like a story in that period was deeply familiar with the philosophical work of Voltaire that he's just not one of those guys that's on their radar, but in any case, from what I, yeah

WES 16:02

Well most of what he wrote was plays and poems and other things

MARK 16:05

Yes, yes, and when he did do philosophy, I mean most of what he did what he wrote

DYLAN 16:08

He wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of stuff

MARK 16:10

Right

DYLAN 16:10

Thousands of pages

MARK 16:11

And he wrote Candide in what two weeks or something I heard

DYLAN 16:13

Yeah when he was sixty five years old

MARK 16:14

Yeah, it was a very dashed off.

WES 16:16

And he wrote more than twenty thousand letters and extremely prolific

MARK 16:17

He was basically a blogger

WES 16:19

And yeah that’s what I was… yeah basically a blogger of his day. Then you were mentioning the printing press, you know it's a new technology the way the internet is new to us. So...

MARK 16:29

Right, so you know it's not that he took Descartes’s arguments for instance and parsed them out and “I'm participating in the philosophical academy and this is my objection to my predecessor.” It's like he wasn't playing that game. He was taking it from a populist angle and saying, this is pretty obviously bullshit. You know I approve of the overall skeptical tone. So actually as a sort of a philosopher as a whole like he comes down in, we had a Montaigne episode in the skeptical tradition. And much like Montaigne you know one of his big complaints is about people's over estimation of the intellect and really what metaphysicians could, can you really come up with anything? Like it's not that it's, there's something attractive about the enterprise doing philosophy, it's rich intellectual work, but what you come up with is not necessarily something that's, it's not going to save the world. You don't need to go to the depths that metaphysicians do to, to tend your garden, as the book concludes.

SETH 17:25

Did you just spoil that?

MARK 17:26

I spoiled it.

SETH Did you just throw a spoiler out there? [chuckles]

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17:26

WES 17:29

So skepticism was very influential at this time, they had sort of a revival of at some point the work by Sextus Empiricus, an ancient skeptic had been published and it's very influential, and Descartes and Montaigne and I think via Descartes and Montagne on Voltaire. I don't think he was digging deep into the classics necess... Well no actually Voltaire had a strong classic education in Latin and yeah...

DYLAN 17:50

Yeah, he was a really rich guy. Grew up rich.

WES 17:52

But the point is that for Descartes skepticism was really methodological. He was trying to get beyond skepticism by using that as a starting point to flesh out these solid foundations that we're really gonna where you gonna wreck some structure which was beyond skepticism. And for Montaigne, and I think for Voltaire, skepticism is really to some extent an end point that really informs a way you live life.

DYLAN 18:17

Yeah, I think in Candide is both funny in acerbic as it is. There's a real background preoccupation with: what does this mean to the way you live your life and even the things he's making fun or satirically in the extreme kind of behaviors of the army and the events that happened. To me, point back to him just saying, you know, that is not a very enjoyable way to live. Just be preoccupied was sort of living decently. Not even the idea living well, but just not getting hundred down. [Laughter] That'd be a good start. And what Mark saidabout authority and the authority of someone like Leibniz and Descartes. I have no idea how this factors in with the general period of time but it's clear that the level of political authority both with the church and with politics in general is so high. You know, people get you know, kings and princess and bishops get personally offended by something that Voltaire writes, and he feels the need to flee the country. So the way in which authority works at that time is rightly scary I think and very to be fought against, and Voltaire works very hard on that, but he also gets burned a lot.

SETH 19:28

Hmm. I don't know if this is related to that, Dylan, but one thing I made a note of as I reading through it, there are numbers of points where characters in the book or Voltaire as the narrator raised the issue of the law of something. So the law of war dictates that it's okay to do this or that are the law of whatever and there's a point to be made about the rational faculty versus other things too but you know, he’s sort of contra-positioning or contra-posing these “laws,” but all of the laws are the man made laws right the law of war, the law of kings, the law of this, the law of authority, the law of the Portuguese that decide to have an auto-da-fé to prevent in the earthquake, right,these are all reasons that are made up by human beings and in that sense I think like you say Voltaire's explicitly making a loud and conscious reaction to something that is in a structure that human beings create, and somehow that ties in to this the metaphysical law, but I am not quite exactly sure how.

WES 20:30

Maybe he's reacting against this sort of inherent authoritarianism of those metaphysical theories, right, the hierarchies and the foundationalism of Decartes, and arguably you can see those sort of things as an inherently authoritarian, right, just trying to establish these absolute fundamental truths and derive the rest, another propositions from that, and so on.

MARK 20:50

Is being used that way, whether they inherently have it or not, it's one of the weapons of power.

WES 29:57

Because it’s a priori, I mean,is it?Your a priori derivations are sort of reminiscent of let's say the blood lines of Kings, again, that sort of justification

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for kingly authority, whereas the kind of Newtonian arguably inherently populist, it's based on evidence, and if the evidence runs against the prevailing authority of some kind or another, then that authority must be dethroned.

SETH 21:20

It seems to me that one of the things that he's doing rhetorically when he says the law of war dictates something which seems to be against Leibniz's law, right, the best of all possible worlds. He’s using this empirical law or this man made law or something like that, but at the same time he is also making a point about that law itself. Right? About how horrible it is and obviously through the nature of characters and so forth. So there's kind of like this double move where he's using it as a critical element and then also simultaneously criticizing it that I think is what's especially clever, I mean this is our short for people haven't read it this is one of the ones it's worth going out to read. Sometimes we talk about things that I don't think it's worth you reading; that's why we do what we do. But this one's worth reading cause it's short and it's fast and it's nonstop it's...

WES 22:08

Very funny.

SETH 22:08

... just one hit, one hit after another.

DYLAN 22:09

You could read it instead of watching a movie. You could do it in a couple of hours.

SETH 22:12

Yeah.

WES 22:13

Should we give a little plot summary?

DYLAN 22:15

Yeah, we should. It starts out with the sex scene. [laughter]

WES 22:17

So, I mean, I mean the plot summary is very simple, right? As the book takes two hours. It's Candide who lives in this castle, he's not the son of the baron of that castle,.Is the implication that he's the bastard son of the baron?

MARK 22:29

He's the bastard son of the baron's sister.

WES 22:31

Okay.

MARK 22:32

Probably.

WES 22:33

He grows up in this very cushy little world and he has this philosophy tutor Pangloss, who fills him with all sorts of pie-in-the-sky ideas about the world including this optimism, this best of all possible worlds idea.

MARK 22:46

And with that the principle sufficient reason that Voltaire makes a joke several time in this story of on the battlefield, you know, it was... the Bayonet's were sufficient reason for a thousand heads to be pierced that day, or you know.

SETH 23:00

Yeah.

WES 23:01

So, he falls in love with the daughter of the baron Cunégonde and their [xxx] around so he get's kicked out of the castle. And then all sorts of horrible things happen to him basically that's really...

DYLAN 23:13

He goes to war first.

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WES 23:16

Yep. So he has lots of traveling, lots of adventures, you know, chapter after chapter with change of scene. And through a lot of it, he's really just trying to find Cunégonde who he's still in love with and eventually, he does. As the book goes on and he suffers all these hardships he becomes arguably more realistic let's say. And then by the end of the book we get him and Cunégonde and Pangloss and some other compatriots he's picked up along the way living together in Turkey, right?

SETH 23:47

Outside of Constantinople.

WES 23:50

Yeah, outside of Constantinople...

DYLAN 23:52

Istanbul.

SETH 23:54

Constantinople.

WES 23:54

... the final lesson, they, you know he goes and asks a dervish... What does he asks the dervish it's not me [xxx]

SETH 24:01

Is this the best of all possible worlds and doesn't he say something like it doesn't matter. [laughter] WES And the dervish shuts the door in his face in kind of discuss and in conclusion you got this idea that this not gonna last maybe we should read some of this because it's been a such a great...

DYLAN 24:17

While your looking that up I would say that to say that he goes on to some adventures and endures some hardships is kind of an understatement of the...

WES 24:24

Yeah we'll get to some of the details of the [laughter]

SETH 24:27

It's substantially worse than that...

DYLAN 24:29

It's not like he has a little bit of credit card debt.

SETH 24:30

It's not like the tempest where he gets shipwrecked and has to wander around and gets fleas bite his ankles or anything like that it's a little worse than that. [laughter]

WES 24:28

So int he end Candide says I know Candide that we must cultivate our garden and then the whole little group entered into this laudable scheme each one began to exercise his talents. A little [xxx] would find props and so on and so forth. You get this idea that these people who are kind of crazy and unrealistic can finally develop some sort of realism and the compasity to enjoy their lives. Even though what happens through out the book is not really in their control. I notice these terrible things of course that's not the real world either that's one of the interesting things about the book is this Candide is this innocent who's cast out into the world but it's not realistic the number of bad things the number of bad things that happen to him and all those sorts of reversals you know people die but then their not really dead and that happens more than once for more than one character. [chuckle] So in a way you can take that just as an allegory of people who are suffering from a lack of a realistic approach to life including this optimism. In the end I don't think that book counts as pessimism.

MARK 25:43

Well I remember being... when I read this in high school or whenever it was incredibly disappointing philosophical ending that really you just gotta keep at it. And actually I read it as a private thing like the social is too big and scary and there is nothing you can do about it so you have to tend to your garden deal with your own stuff and from some of the things I was listening to and reading to

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prepare for this probably we'd want to interpret more in a broadly political manner that tending to your garden is merely equivalent translation from the French is something like work the fields. It's keep at it but it's keep trying remedy these various injustices and...

SETH 26:24

It sounds like he's suggesting withdrawing from the world to some extent right? They've been through all these adventures and traveling and here they are as sort of exiles near Constantinople with their own little commune let's call it and it's sounds like yeah, yeah retreat to the farm to your commune and live a simple life. On first blush. I'm not saying that's what it's really saying.

DYLAN 26:45

I think they're something about that just before where you read Candide is talking to the turk and he says "You must have a vast and magnificent estate." and the turk replies "I own twenty acres of land which my children and I cultivate. Our work keeps us free from three great evils, boredom, vice and poverty." And as I'm reflecting upon these things as they walk back that Candide decides well you know there's all these kings they don't seem to be happy in any way and then this is where two more times this stame of cultivating their garden comes up. So some of it is clearly a little bit of taking care of tending your own things and maybe a little bit of retreat but also it has something to do with the notion of work. Of occupying yourself in a positive way not in an alienating work way but a...

MARK 27:36

Tangi cubicle. [laughter]

DYLAN 27:38

Yeah you're not gonna be building pins for a living but rather... it's so thin there about what exactly the virtue of work would be but it's clear that you're occupying yourself.

MARK 27:48

Is it anti philosophical? It almost sounds...

SETH 27:50

There's just a little further on. Let's work without theorizing.

DYLAN 27:55

There you go. It's anti philosophical. [laughter]

SETH 27:56

t's the only way to make life bearable. In other words, this is the anti partially examined live text.

DYLAN 28:04

If you think too long then your wrong.

MARK 28:06

or maybe it's the partially part, that he agrees with us.

SETH 28:10

He says without theorizing. Not always there.

DYLAN 28:12

well that is the conclusion that Candide comes too. So those are separate questions

SETH 28:17

Its the conclusion that martin comes too, martins a particular character that will get to later. DYLAN He's the pessimists which is definitely not in there in position. [Laughter]

SETH 28:30

He's clearly opposite of pane glass.

WES 28:33

Marvin the martian, and the Douglas Adams.

SETH 28:35

hes the stow ark not the pessimist he's the stow ark.

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WES 28:38

not marvin the martian, but marvin the redbox. [xxx]

DYLAN 28:44

The world is a great battle between good and evil, and you have no role in it whatsoever.

SETH 28:49

It's not that you have no role, you should not be surprised when bad things happen because...

WES 28:54

Well, the force of evil is sort of on par with God and the force of good, and those two things battle, and it's not like God is ascendant and dominant.

DYLAN 29:02

It's Star Wars. The Dark side of the force.

MARK 29:08

It's Prometheus. [xxx] [laughing]

SETH 29:14

I don't know if we're going to go through the plot but...

WES 29:16

Take us through the plot.

SETH 29:20

Just to kinda get into it a little bit... so that we have some... notion

MARK 29:23

Well can we see more toward the attitude on philosophy. There's a 3 page story that I will link people to that a little more directly says what he thinks about this, which is called "Story of a Good Braman." There's two characters that are introduced, an old braman, a very wiseman of marked intellect and great learning, and he's miserable. He says, "I wish I had never been born. I have been studying for 40 years and that's 40 years wasted. I teach others and myself ignorant of everything, it fills my soul with so much humiliation and the disgust in my life is intolerable and he goes on and on about this. Pretty much, the whole philosophical questions... that he brings up. He... it just is despair that there's more and more things that he can't know. And so this makes him miserable. And yet there's this pull that philosphy has upon us. And you can contrast that with the old woman who lived near this guy. Who I asked her if she'd ever been troubled by the thought that she was ignorant of the nature of her soul. She did not even understand my question. Never in all her life had she reflected on one single point of those which tormented the Bramen. So she has traditional religious beliefs and she's happy. She's ignorant and happy. But then the kicker... page three of this is... I put the matter before some philosophers. And they were of my opinion. Nevertheless, I've told myself a hundred times that I should be happy if I were as brainless as my neighbor. Yet I do not desire such happiness. So he says... he goes and he asks a lot of people that even though we, we recognize that philosophy is an evil snare basically it's not something that we would choose to give up. Blissful ignorance, this is actually an argument used against Utilitarianism. The ignorant person might be really happy and have all these pleasures and not be haunted by these other things. But still that's not what the person who understands both options would actually choose. So it's not just happiness that makes for a fulfilling life or something like that. So to... just to tie that back to this. Then he can rag about excessive theorizing and we should just get to work. But really he's kind of fooling himself. I mean he... clearly by his own life and the amount of time he spent writing about this crap [laughter] he was into it.

MARK 31:30

But he was into it in a less rigorous way say then of Leibinz's.

SETH There's always so much analysis that he's going to do. And I guess I, I'm

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31:34 thinking of that in a pretty precise way. He loses patience with cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. And there comes a point where he just feels like you've cut it apart. So it's no longer anything that's recognizable in any way. And it's completely pointless to go there and that 's coupled with not feeling despair about that. There's a kind of despair that someone like, pan- well maybe not Pangloss, but Martin may reflects and this notion that you keep going... going and going and going in this metaphysical way to some kind of beginning, you're struck with well... I have no idea where to go, I have this kind of either abyss or this wall or this "I can't know this", and Voltaire thinks that kind of obsession and frustration is pointless, I think.

MARK 32:28

Yeah I mean and I think we've all experienced it, I mean it's probably one of the [laughter] reasons I left grad school. I love philosophy but when I got into the second literature and into the endless fine distinctions, it began to seem trivial and pointless, you know, it wasn't beautiful, it wasn't what I had gotten into philosophy for and I thought, "What's the point, why am I wasting my time on this?" In philosophy you're not making money, or producing things that are of obvious benefit and you wonder about how worthwhile it is. And then you're into the argument that it's going to help you live a better life. Which is supposedly what it's supposed to help you do, is just another question, it's questionable.

DYLAN 33:09

Philosophy self help.

SETH 33:10

Maybe it would make sense to talk a little bit about how philosophy is employed in the novel. Like what people who have the philosophy are using it for and doing. Because if you dial it back to the beginning and this is in the first couple pages of the book, so I'm not giving anything away if you haven't read it. The main character is Candide and as we mentioned he's this bastard son of the sister of this Baron in West Falia, I think is the it's a German, and Pangloss is the court philosopher but he's the teacher, the instructor of the baron's kids and Pangloss is live nets as far as this story is concerned. So this is a guy who's getting paid by some rich guy to hang around and teach these kids and apparently as a side benefit he gets to fuck the maid. [Laughter] And... I mean that pretty much is the best of all possible war. [laughter] if you get right down to it this guy has reason for believing...

DYLAN 34:09

Yeah, in other world. [laughter]

SETH 34:10

Exactly. He had no reason for thinking otherwise that it was the best of all possible worlds. The danger is that Candide believes, in other words, it's not Pangloss so much initially who, its' the people that believe what he says. Everybody in the court thinks, well he's telling the absolute truth because life is so good here. This goes back to the issue about authority and about the practical nature of it, not so much is the activity good or bad but how is it being employed to benefit the individual?

MARK 34:40

I also like the fact that seems like the best times in the novel are that Candide spends some time philosophizing with Martin, or spends some time philosophizing with Pangloss and then Pangloss and Martin and Candide are all philosophizing the other. Those are the good times, that they're... When they get to chat things up.

SETH 34:55

They're not the good times. You know what they are? They're the time wasting times. [laughter] It's always on the long see faring... The sea... The sea... Of the 15 days, they had to cross the Atlantic and go from Portugal to Buenos Aires, and all they do is talk and it's like sort of a side note like for the next 14 days they disputed about something.

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DYLAN 35:13

And then you have these great moments where something of urgency is happening, Pangloss is still trying to philosophize. So for instance after the earthquake in Lisbon and Candide is injured. This earthquake is nothing novel Pangloss replied. The City of Lima in South America underwent much of the same sort of Trimmer said. [laughter] He's theorizing about the earthquake. Nothing's more probable said Candide but for God's sake a little oil and wine for his injuries. What do you mean probable, replied the philosopher. I regard the case as proved, ignoring this guy plays around. So, I love the comic elements there where Pangloss simply doesn't function in the world and continues to theorize when you know, when he should be doing something.

MARK 35:56

Right. And... some of the other good jokes in here are when he's trying to give the best possible worlds explanations or the coherent world for all these horrible things are happened. So there was a good character that had helped Candide out the anti baptist that gets drowned and Pangloss says its the bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the [xxx] to be drowned. [laughter] Or he's talking about his own the fact that he has VD and he's saying and how this was brought over from the world. If Columbus had not in an island of America, caught this disease which contaminates the source of life frequently even hinders generation and which is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor cokell. [laughter] [xxx] is like some kind of insect, I'm not sure I understand but...

DYLAN 36:42

It's a grind up shell of a beetle from South America

MARK 36:46

Alright. So we would not have... Like that outways the...

WES 36:49

Right.

DYLAN 36:50

Boy, I mean clearly there he's making fun of the hyper rationalist theory of optimism there, the kind of tortured rationalizations you would make in support of that.

SETH 37:01

That and the way in which over theorizing prevents you from action.

DYLAN 37:05

Yeah.

SETH 37:07

And you're right. You can't conceive of characters actually acting in this way but that's not really the point.

DYLAN 37:12

There's a similar kind of way that Voltaire writes the section talking about violence int he wars as well. He's describing they're suffering but it's all very, very matter of fact. This is one thing happens after another and horrible things happen, you know one point, one of the characters, talks about how they had to get when their butt cheeks cut off in order for something. And there's all these torture that happens very matter of fact, it's not described in Grizzly details, it's just sort of spoken of and the raping and pillagings of the cities and then there's a rationalization for this. This is just the way that war is conducted, and it's not this optimist through but it's against, it's satirizing just the way you would talk about war that well of course, you know if you're going to have a war then that means you're going to have raping and pillaging and killing of children and stringing them up and all kinds of horrible things. I don't know enough about the history of the wars in the time, but my impression was that, that was a live conversation that you're going around people are saying, well you know. Yeah it's pretty horrible, have a war and the way they're behaving is despicable but in fact, you know actually, that's just the way war is and you imagine that people

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say, well I'm going to go off to war, and I'm going to do horrible things, and then I'm going to come back and that's just the way it is.

SETH 38:28

Yeah. There's a, the point that ties into that, I think takes a more from the straight descriptive to kind of more the satirical that will make your point. The first thing that happens to Candide when he leaves the Baron's Castle is he gets conscripted...

DYLAN 38:41

That's right.

SETH 38:42

Into an army by heroes. So these great heroes and what Kandyd's really talking about is they're just soldiers. And the first thing they do is whip him, and teach him how to march and because he made fewer mistakes day on day, he became suddenly an exemplar and was given command of a regimen or something I think at one point, but either the way he uses the term heroes to describe guys who abduct wondering people and conscript them into service and then whip them and then basically force them to fight and do all these things, you just described.

WES 39:15

And then he tries to goes for a walk or something and said he's basically being beaten to death. Right? Regimen for trying to go for a walk, that's the punishment, btu he ends up escaping and the satirical descriptions of the war, you know he witnesses the results of wars between the Bogars and the... What is it? The Barrahs. Anyway so you get descriptions like Den Valleys of Musket removed from the best of worlds about nine or ten thousand rascals who are cluttering up at surface. [laughter] Right. Candide hit himself as best as he could while this heroic butchery was going on. So again you know, you get more satirical use of this word heroic. And then he describes these horrible scene so of what the armies have done the villages... Dismembering and disemboweling man, woman and child basically and then Candide fleas to another the abar, it's the abar but fleas to another village and... Candide himself is sort of oblivious. You get the sense that he himself is oblivious to all the sufferings. So you get climbing of the ruins and stumbling over twitching torsos. Candide finally made his way out of the war area. You don't get a lot of Candide stopping to empathize with the victims of war. He's just sort of got the blinders on and he's going... Because for him remember it still is the best of all possible worlds and he's still making that rationalization.

MARK 40:40

I'm just not sure that I can draw the distinction between the character there and just the narrator and the fact that things are glossed over. There's certain points later like where he's decrying slavery and like you know where Candide is being sympathetic...

WES 40:54

Well does Candide decry salvery?

MARK 40:56

Yes. He sees a slave, he sees a guy that has what both of his feet are cut off and his hands, something like that. And he says "Oh what a horrible thing is slavery." and he has a few things like this. Like he, like you're saying it's more...

WES 41:09

That's the point of development though for him I mean...

MARK 41:10

During the book that he gets this but it is more just somebody one of the things I was listening, the other podcast I was listening to, comparing the voice of the narrator as being similar to the voice of this indifferent god that is letting all this suffering take place. That all of this stuff is just described you know with this lighthearted manner but it's just the most horrific stuff that he could come up with.

DYLAN The way the Candide character functions is he does change a bit in the story...

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41:31 he changes a bit but he's also kind of a witness along the way right? I don't know if it's exactly Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or something like that where you have a character that things are just happening to over and over and over again and he once in a while contributes to the action, has a kind of a reaction that matters in the plot of the story but by and large it's just. Kinda drag along through things that happened.

MARK 42:02

I think that's right for the first half of the book, right, you got, I looked at this, because I thought of exactly this point. I wanted to see, well, does he become a more active character? Well, you've got him it's just one thing after another happening to him, and he's reacting... he's trying to survive, he's trying to basically survive for the first half of the book. Then, you've got El Dorado and his first real decision in the book, the first time he's an active protagonist who's not simply reacting is to leave El Dorado. Then, the second half of the book, you actually got a lot of real decisions by Candide... there's a real difference in the way he is.

SETH 42:38

That's a great point. There's two things I want to say in response to that, I'm so glad you brought it up. First is, it's Candides desire to find Cunégonde that motivates all the actions, so he's not reactive in the sense that it's his desire is ultimately is the thing that keeps pulling him from place to place. But, there is no inner life from a narrative perspective, it's all the external narrative, except in this one place, at least that I remember. It's in chapter 9, and it says, it's after Candide kills the inquisitor and the Jew, and it says, "At this moment, the following is what passed in the soul of Candide, and how he reasoned, emphasis on that, if this Holy man called an assistance, he will surely have me burnt, and Cunégonde will probably be served in the same manner. He was the cause of my being cruelly whipped, he is my rival, and as I have now begun to kill, I will kill away. For there is no time to hesitate, this reasoning is clear and instantaneous so that without giving time to the inquisitor to recover from his surprise, he pierced him through and through and cast him beside the Jew. So, what we have is the first and as far as I know, the only inner narrative that you get, is when he basically breaks from this tie to the best of all possible worlds naiveté that line of thinking, which is... once I have killed for the purposes of protecting myself, it makes perfect sense for me to go and continue to kill to preserve myself and those I love, which I theorize is the rational that underlies what Candide is criticizing in the laws of war, you know and it's like 'well, it's OK to kill, you know for all of these other reasons'.

MARK 44:06

But that's a good point, I think, he does take charge earlier than El Dorado, that's his first moment when he really takes charge of things and backs, instead of simply reacting.

SETH 44:17

But, you're right in the sense that even reacting, he's a victim, he's a constant victim throughout the book. A victim of circumstance, a victim of fraud, a victim of oppression - all these sorts of things. And it's not until the second half of the book that he actually takes action to prevent himself from being a victim, but it starts here. Yeah, cause at first, I mean, he really is just trying to survive. It's one thing after another that's, you know, from getting conscripted and then escaping and then not having any money and basically being beholden to this anabaptist, who takes him in and in the end the anabaptist dies... and then there's the getting beaten by the inquisitor and Pangloss is hanged and.. it's just really... [laughter] amazing how much [chuckle] hardship you can cram into the..., into just a few pages with him...

MARK 45:02

Yeah, but I like your point Seth about his passivity that even his choosing to leave this, so we haven't talked about... he gets to this paradise El Dorado, which they have some... Oh, maybe this is the best of all possible worlds... there is riches and everybody is happy and the fact that he leaves that on

17

purpose, but he does that becauseu he is driven by this desire and that is the same thing I was talking about in the philosophy is bad for us. But we cannot help it, were fucked up. there is another quote here this old woman that comes in later whose the one who loses the buttock, who tells this whole story that she is the daughter of the pope and went through all these horrible things.

WES 45:41

And loses the buttocks so that people can eat it.

MARK 45:50

She says in chapter 12 near the end, "hundred times I was at the point of killing myself, but I still loved life. This ridiculous [xxx] perhaps it's one of our most fail characteristics. Was there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continuously a burden that one can always throw down to detest existence and yet to cling to ones existence in brief to caress to serpert in which it devours us till it eaten our very heart"...so again... yes

WES 46:14

Amen

MARK 46:18

These weird fill with contradiction that Freud would have really like this, maybe

SETH 46:22

Yeah, I think this is all... well, we're get to that later. No I mean... I mean coming back to the questions about El Dorado I mean I think that's important like for me the two most important questions for this book are... Why does he leave El Dorado and then what is the cultivating garden mean? I mean I think those two things are related. Because even though arguably he's obsess with Cunégonde so then he's in love with her and he's willing to give up which is basically what his paradise to peruse her. I think there are other elements at work there, which is that El Dorado is not such an exciting place and we have a tradition of this in the literature you know Sir Milton depiction of heaven and Don'te depiction of heaven... they are basically boring places and one of the thing you can't really do in heaven were in a place you know all of your satisfaction are there for you. Can you really cultivate a garden or can you really, is there a place for ambition and self improvement and striving to accomplish something. This sort of hence that El Dorado that really is not the place for that and he would rather struggle and then make something of himself than be stuck in a place, which is basically a retirement.

DYLAN 47:31

Boredom

WES 47:32

Boredom and that's where you get to the relationship to the end where you know the solution to boredom is it the dervish who said this? Yeah, three evils boredom, poverty, and

DYLAN 47:42

Vice and poverty... boredom, vice and poverty

WES 47:44

Yeah, so the solution is to work or to cultivate

DYLAN 47:47

He calls this is three great evil, boredom, vice, poverty. Except from vice in here is not being the victim of vice but doing vice aspect and poverty here is being... that would be of the three poverty that the only one that was sort of an evil that can be encounter himself that's in that 3.

WES 48:11

Well, unless he is bored in El Dorado, but mainly he is vice I mean is he encountering vice number is on vice.

DYLAN 48:16

It looks like we we're just get some thrown out in the first place and just like...

MARK They even casts it is Cunégonde instigates yeah making out with him...

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48:22

SETH 48:28

Well actually what's interesting I wanted to say is when Seth was talking about Panglass the side benefits that have made because actually Candide observes that. So it's interesting that this sort of you know the moment before the fall he observes his tutor this woman and then he ends up doing the same thing basically and then gets kicks out because of it. So, Pangloss is example you know do as I say not as I do, example led to all of this ruined, you know for Candide.

WES 48:56

My point about the three girl evils was that all his terrible things was happened to Candide but in the three great evils according to Turk which I think there's a kind of implicit agreement like Candide at the end. About those great evils it doesn't include torture and being conscripted and stuff like that.

MARK 49:18

Actually I need the correct you so it's one day Cunégonde while walking near the castle and a little woods they called the park saw between the bushes, Dr. Pamgloss in a experiential natural philosophy when Mother change the way [laughter]

WES 49:31

Okay. So yes it's her it's not Candide at all. Yeah she instigate it. MARK 49: 35 So he's passed even...

SETH 49:36

She's a great corrupter.

DYLAN 49:39

It's Adam and Eve right and then.

SETH 49:40

It's not much advice from Candide during the book Ryan. He's not really. He's in love with Cunégonde he's willing to marry her even though she's become ugly at the end and he's...

MARK 49:51

Well that's say how they spent the time on the long both philosophizing I think are engaging envigorous masturbation [laughter] so there's that... really. No they done. [laughter].

SETH 50:06

Hey I would've noticed that somehow I think. My Kindle set to automatically tag [laughter]...

MARK 50:13

However the board I am saying, so it was chapter 25 about the Hoko Quran Day, who is Novel Venetian. That they visit and it's so... just basically that you might think there a lot of the hardship in depression in the Novelist close by all this actual bad things that are going. My house is knocked down by the earthquake and my family members have been torn apart and raped and stuff like that. But even the rich comfortable people are jaded and decadent and bored until you goes to this list of you know they talked of this guy about these books and he rips on Milton and he rips on it. And some of this might be actually Voltaire being irreverent about those figures that he's talking about. So it's actually kind of Voltaire talking this way, but still like there's... it reminded me of at least my corrupt college version of Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of needs where we do need to have our physical needs met. But then I think in his version you get this self actualization, he's like once you get all the basic emotional and physical stuff taking care of you still want have this self actualization. Well, in my view before I'd even heard a Maslow, I was noticed there's always more. We're just always gonna be miserable cos there's just some more craft that you feel like you need to accomplish or that you need to be or some of way that you're gonna make yourself miserable.

SETH 51:29

What's the important I mean I guess at the importance of work, right? I mean it really comes back down to... talking about self actualization, people can't find the deeper satisfaction without actually working.

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DYLAN 51:41

One of the things about works, specially about Tanya Garden. Is it does have an end. In this individual task. Right? Garden you have, things you have to do as part of that activity you plant to seeds, you've tended you water it and then you harvest it and then that is accomplish... you've come to a conclusion with it. You've finished it. You've accomplished something. And you might started it over again. That's what I interpret work to me in this respect. It's not, like when I was making fun of earlier, this kind of post industrial revolution of sitting out on the... on the line, making pins and you have an infinite string of wire on this side, and you have an infinite sized basket over here, and you never actually do anything. It's something like involves... Ending tasks. You've fix something. You've produce something. You've added something. It's added value. It's Mark.

MARK 52:36

Added value.

SETH 52:37

I thought that was the [xxx] new coming out again.

DYLAN 52:40

Oh, yeah? Explain.

SETH 52:42

Yeah, you know, Telus having an end and...

MARK 52:45

And being at work.

SETH 52:46

Being at work.

MARK 52:46

You know, and I thought of that, for I thought of being at work... being... Candide... it's like a... I had this idea that, again, going back to Mark's point about actualization, is that this sort of active working role is... is necessary to the flourishing and fulfillment. In other words, there's a lot of pain in this book but the avoidance of pain is not the solution.

SETH 53:07

And... it might not even be that it's not about the avoidance of pain. There... there is no avoidance of pain. That character that you're talking that I can't remember which one it was... that.. wasn't wealthy and...

MARK 53:15

Pococurante. Which means indifferent. I just looked it up.

WES 53:18

It means small, literally small, if you cares.

MARK 53:22

Caring a little, yes.

SETH 53:23

So, you know, this is... In a certain way, he's kind of like the counter example, so we've gone through, and folks, if you're... again, if you're not gonna read it, you should. But they now will takes you from Germany, to Portugal, to South America, back to France and Paris, and to Venice and then to Constantinople.

MARK 53:41

And then he throws down some other characters that tell backstories that takes them away to other places. To throw those. Northern Africa.

SETH 53:48

Yes, exactly. And there's a point in which the character - the old woman - who was the Pope's daughter says, look around the ship. You know, kind of go there. Somebody is complaining about theirs dating life and she says you think you have a story to tell. It resonated with me because I'm Jewish it's like your pain let me tell me about my pain. [laughter] Right? And you know she tells which is like three times as horrible. And then she says ask anybody on the ship

20

and they're going to tell you a horror story. And he says they went around and for the fifteen days on the boat they went and just, everybody had a horrible story to tell right? And it's just bad things happening over and over again. Then you have the counter example which is your Poco Currante. Here's somebody to whom nothing has bad has happened. He's all of his wealth in tact he's got none of these cares... And you think oh this would be somebody who wouldn't have any of these concerns. Who'd... But you know what he's not happy either right? He's not satisfied with anything, it's not good enough... He can't enjoy it. So having pleasure, being free from suffering isn't a guarantee of enjoyment either. And you're just sort of like so... You know all of this is kind of leading towards the end of the book where it's not so much about avoiding suffering or gaining wealth or somehow being in some position where you're going to be happy and satisfied. It goes back to being productive, being in a community there is definitely a communal aspect of it because the durst talks about his family. And it's important that there's commerce in some weird you know like I take my stuff to town and then I hope... [chuckle] that kind of thing, this is all important elements of it. So, and a life of rich idleness is not it you know being a victim of these wars and all this stuff is not, not it.

DYLAN 55:19

Yeah and it doesn't... In pointing out that the life of the wealthy rich guy isn't great... He's also sort of fetishizing suffering or something like that. And saying oh it's much better to suffer because somehow I feel like I'm really living when I'm suffering. It's not... he's not going that route either right? Work is not... well it's not suffering in the same way.

SETH 55:38

No, absolutely not.

WES 55:40

You know between living in a sort of El Dorado sort of state where you're... you're free of pain I think that's the implication and being in a really ridiculously horrible world [laughter] but having the chance to cultivate ones garden in that world you think you'd take the latter choice. I think that's part of the So, you ask the question. Well, what are the two most important questions is why did they leave Eldorado? So, a version of that question is that even if he feels compelled to leave by his love of Cunégonde, let's grant that on face value for second. Is there a sense of regret about leaving or a sense of relief about leaving? So, how much of it is an compulsion?

SETH 56:20

You know, it's interesting he never expresses regret, right, about leaving. He never says I should have stayed in Eldorado.

MARK 56:27

Even thou, I'll spoil the one more thing that when he finally finds his love she is ugly and bitter. Yeah, and he marries her. Ugly inside and out. And he doesn't even, at that point, want to marry her but he does out of a sense of honor.

SETH 56:42

But she makes good pastries, right.

DYLAN 56:47

Yeah, that what she learns. They all learn something. Once they all figure out they should stop theorizing and just start working. They all cultivate one skill or another. I want to go back to Eldorado for a just a second. Let's say this is Volutar's imperist rebuttal or critism of Leibniz's a priorit theory. There's another pretty devastating critique in here that's kind of embedded in the El Dorado story. It's when Candide's with, is it with Martin at that point. He has a couple of, That's another thing, he always has a helper, or ad visor, a side kick. He always has a side kick. The ultimate optimist to Martin. They're in Eldorado, which is a mini utopia novel embedded in this thing, there is a lot going on. There's a lot going on. This is like the youth of [Laughter]. They're questioning this wise old man in Eldorado. And, they say what's the religion? And, the man gets angry and says can there be two religions? There can just be one. We worship God

21

night and morning. And he says, but do you worship one God or many? And the guy says, surely two or three or four, the world's a strange place you come from it, you ask these questions. Well, Candid says, well how do you pray to him? And the old man says, we don't pray to him, we have nothing to ask of him, he has given us all that we need, and we return him thanks without ceasing. To me, that's actually like a very interesting, and if in fact we lived in the best of all possible worlds and this was because God was so good, right, then there wouldn't be no point in asking him to give you anything, you would just essentially be grateful all the time that you lived in the best of all possible worlds. I think that's actually a pretty strong criticism, but probably a poke a Leibniz's like, what's the point of religion if you lived in the best of all possible worlds, decreed by God. All you could do is thank him for putting you in that position, there'd be no reason to pray for anything.

MARK 58:49

Would there not be Sport?

DYLAN 58:52

All those pro basketball players, we'd all have to be like them, first of all I want to thank Jesus. [laughter] all the athletes would do that. But, I thought that was a really nice little subtlety that was kinda stuck in there. Anyway, just wanna throw that out.

MARK 59:09

It was such a good point that I will come over there and express my affection. [laughter]

SETH 59:20

Mark has probably a whole list of pre-determined... now that we're all in the same place, I can, he's got little bits... he's ready to run.

MARK 59:32

I'll come over there and tickle your fancy.

SETH 59:34

Spontaneous outbursts of affection. Don't think I don't appreciate it. Alright.

WES 59:40

He doesn't regret leaving El Dorado, so is leaving because of Cunégonde a thin excuse, or is it actually driving him? I wonder about this through the whole novel, the descent which he was genuinely driven by Cunégonde

SETH 59:56

I think it's both, because I think in a way, rather than simply being an argument against optimism, it's an argument against living in a fantasy world where you've idealized things. It's against idealization. And at that point he's operating on this idealized version of Cunégonde. Who is she but a childhood love who he knows is very beautiful. It's superficial. So, in a sense that's what he's still perusing but at the end where he's willing to continue this relationship and commit to it, lets say, despite the fact that she's no longer fits the ideal in certain ways, is no longer the beautiful young girl. That's the authentic relationship to another human being which isn't simply all good, isn't simply the best of all possible worlds, but is a mixture of good and bad. And that's, I think what you get at the end. It's a rejection of idealization. And in a way, I mean the, I think the argument is that when you live in that... with that sort of propensity to idealization, you're set up for the world seeming as terrible as it is in this book, right? I mean, even if you aren't being beaten and hanged and all of, all these other things, the world might up seeming that bad by comparison to your ridiculous expectations. So, in the end I think it's basic maturing, where you... to mature is to give up these idealizations basically.

WES 61:20

So, this is my whole... this is the way I've always felt about nihilism. Is, I've always felt like it was a hyper reaction to excessive methaphysics. I wouldn't have said it that way, but that's the way I've always felt like. That, if the extent to which you would actually succumb to nihilism is a result of a over excited expectation about what you ought to get.

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SETH 61:40

You're still fundamentally an optimist, it's just, you're that disappointed optimist. [laughter]

WES 61:46

A nihilist is really just a disappointed metaphysician, a prior metaphysician. They really except it to all be the case and then they're utterly disappointed and inconsolable. And then they can't help themselves from just banging their head against the wall more over and over over again.

SETH 62:03

So there's a pragmatist kind of strain in this right?

WES 62:08

Oh yeah. Yeah. Anything good I find it to be pragmatist. [laughter]

SETH 62:10

And when we say pragmatist strain it means going back to our pragmatism episode and William James part of the ideas that you give up the idea of getting to the thing in itself. That's the version of the idea, or that's the optimist's objective at the metaphysical level is communion with the thing in itself, and thats the thin you have to give up as let's say a mature pragmatist which doesn't mean that you give up to the notion of truth, you just... You have a more revised that limited notion of truth. It's a muddy notion because the human mind, the constructive activity the human mind is always implicate, and the objects now instead of getting this perfect mind and even an object. So that's the parallel that I see.

DYLAN 62:54

There's a lot of social criticism in this book and I'm wondering to what extent you guys feel like.... I keep on saying Candide, Voltaire [laughter] is tying the criticism to that metaphysical notion that we started off the discussion with and how much he's using esoterical or ironic way of using that term. There's a lot of places in the book where he says for example, the small group of rich people have the money and the poor people have nothing because that's perfect justice, right? And perfect this and there's a really kind of passage, after Candide leaves El Dorado with Kakambo. They come across a slave lying in the road and the slave is missing a leg and a hand and they asked him, how did you come to the state and he says, this is the price in which you eat sugar and you're up. And he tells his story of being sold in the slavery right? And all of these things seem to indicate a kind of criticism of the social order of the economic order, of the political order that's kind of underwritten by this idealism that you mentioned and getting back to the idea that is he just simply being a satirical critic or is he advocating for some sort of reform. I don't know if he is I don't know if he isn't but I wondered if you think that his criticism is fundamentally tied to believing that there's a rationalist structure that informs all these institutions and has made this practice the case or if he's just using it rhetorically you get what I'm asking? Wes is nodding his head which is the first time that's happened [laughter] the first time I can ever say that on this podcast.

WES 64:31

See my head... yeah you're asking if the social criticism of these institutions parallels the criticism of rationalist metaphysics let's say because one supports the other

MARK 64:48

I don't remember the quote but I mean they... when Pamgloss and Martin and their contrasting their views and it's is it the best of all possible worlds or are is human nature fundamentally corrupt? But that's the that's the problem is that human nature is basically fucked up and there's nothing that sounds like rationalism about that to me.

WES 65:08

Okay I mean I guess the way I was thinking was if you take this best of all possible worlds and this Apriori Rationalist Metaphysics that he's you know dressing Leibniz's up as and saying this is the kind of thinking that underwrites monarchy. This is the kind of thinking that underwrites imperialism. This is the

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kind of thinking that underwrites the violence that people perpetrate on each other.

DYLAN 65:32

That gets back to the idea that his big target is a kind of authoritarianism and the authoritarianism involved in the kind of intellectual enterprise. Now you're asking you're asking a harder question which is. Is there a deeper relationship between the kind of authoritarianism and imperialism or monarchy and the kind of metaphysics that Leibniz's is going after or idealism.

SETH 65:58

I think you could easily make the case that there is the authority, the monarch through the divine right of kings. You know, the authority, the church, the goodness of this, the authority of the European powers to have over. There's a way of telling that story where I think you can make that case.

DYLAN 66:17

That's an a priori kind of authority that rest in blood lines. You don't... The analogies evidence there is elections and the test of public conferral of authority. That's simply there before anyone gets to say anything about them. So yeah, you could argue that I think that their parallels between a priori reasoning let's say and then authoritarianism in this political structures.

MARK 66:36

For what I understand, I wouldn't... Voltaire was not a big fan actually of democracy either.

DYLAN 66:41

No, I know. He was a fan of the English constitutional monarchy at the time, what he's not a fan of this what's going on in France right, which is that level way to the French revolution which is extreme abuses of authority which that French monarchs get themselves in big trouble with. You know England, he was sort of exile or exiled himself to England for a while. As we mentioned before this type of things happening all the time because he was offending people by what he was writing but it was there that he you know, he got to know Shakespeare and Lock and Newton and all these influences which end up being subversive and they brought back with him to France.

SETH 67:20

I doesn't seem like he's a populist or a democratic populist or something like that but, I feel like we should be able to say more clearly what it is about authority or abused authority, maybe it's just as simple as abused authority that he so despises. There's kind of inconsistency and hypocrisy that he finds incredibly offensive. He also could like pointing it out another people institution.

DYLAN 67:48

And obviously the whole idea of the... You know, this is the best of all possible world is like the rationalization to which Mark subjects. This is the way thing... bizarre and this is the way they're meant to be. You know, we're in this class and whether you justify it by divine right, or blood line, or this is the way society must be structured, it's a kind of necessity... You can even give it a scientific justification, right, and just say 'this is the way the world is organized and there's nothing you can do about it'.

SETH 68:16

There's a way to think about this Dylan, since that... what the authorities structure does in the book, and this is kind of the behavior that you talk about... those who benefit from the status quo, seek to perpetuate it. And so, authority is just the movement, it's power, exercised by those who want to ...maintain the status quo, because it benefits them in a certain way. And sometimes you do it passively, sometimes you do it actively.

DYLAN 68:43

So, take for example with our... our system. Look at the way people glorify capitalism. It's not enough to say 'Yeah, it's OK, it has its drawbacks and we need a safety net and we, sort of have to take this complex nuance view, where we acknowledge the good and the bad. You have this sort of hyper-reactive, almost religious approach to capitalism, where capitalism is sort of the American religion. That's the sort of idealizing capitalism and failing to saying, you know, this is the best of all possible world and failing to look at the real

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negative consequences. In other words, this 'best-of-all possible world' argument is a very dangerous one that... It's not like this is just a little artefact of Voltaire's time. I think you see it historically in any society, like you know, yourself mentioned... it's one of the ways of maintaining the status quo, it's one of the ways that people in power can keep themselves in power, you... idealize a certain system and try and get people to ignore the bad. And there's a cultive optimism, I think, in various elements of our own society, you know...

MARK 69:42

Yeah, I get what you're saying, in terms of the complacency that we so feel like we have at least the outlines of the best system of government, for instance, figured out, that we will not admit problems that we can't think of a solution for readily. So the one that I always bring up just, why do so many people have shitty meaningless jobs that they hate? Somehow, no that's just, that's the best...

DYLAN 70:06

That's the american dream

MARK 70:07

Right, it's built into the system. Or you know, why is there the percentage of unemployed there is? Or you know something like that. That that's going to be a by-product of this best possible system. That there's no way that we can possibly deal with these underlying, with these flaws.

SETH 70:22

That line of argument happens frequently in lots of context

DYLAN 70:26

The position of the loyal opposition is very difficult in any situation that, where people have authority. It's very very hard and it requires all parties for that to be successful, it's requires a basically cooperative disposition by all the members in the conversation in order for that to work. There have been times, in I think, in American history that our political climate has supported something like loyal opposition. It's hard right now at least at the highest levels.

SETH 71:00

I want to say one thing in favor of Candide, he's really a not particularly envious character throughout most of the, Voltaire kinda challenges you to sympathize with him because of all of the things that are visited upon him, but he's not a terribly sympathetic character because of his passivity because of his naivety. And it's occurs to me that his, there's the moment where he says he renounces the optimism. Do you guys remember when he says, oh Pangloss I finally renounce your optimism.

WES 71:27

That's with the slave, Elton actually part yeah... Chapter nineteen

SETH 71:31

Yep, so it's after he hears the story of the slave that's he meets with the no leg and no hand and the guy tells him about how his parents sold him into slavery to give themselves a better life without regard to him having a good life and basically just how terrible his life was right. That's when Candide says, I could never have guessed at this abomination in the end I must at last renounce thy optimism.

WES 71:56

Does this read to Cacaombo's response? A love that

SETH 72:00

What is this optimism?

WES 72:02

In my translation its just whats optimism.

SETH 72:05

Whats optimism? Whats this thing you call optimism?

MARK Apparently it's not quite as weird that, the point even though that is a common

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72:09 word for us now, it was a piece of technical jargon at the time. Like in 20 years before the book was written.

WES 72:21

Yeah that what I meant by being kind of part of the public discourse, it was like a new thing.

SETH 72:26

But the irony there is real obviously the implications Cacambos better off for never having heard of optimism and..

WES 72:33

What is also interesting about this is, Candide's moment of awareness where he finally sends, oh my god this whole I believed for so long is wrong. Doesn't come at his hands of his own suffering but when he feels compassion for another. That speaks to his favor, to his credit as a character, you might say well he's stupid and whatever for suffering the slings and arrows of misfortune. Here he truly shows compassion and he learns something, there is a change in him based on that experiences. The book closes, for those who are not taking the time to read it. Spoiler. We talk about him marrying Cunégonde even though she is ugly inside and out. Even after all those things that happen. Her brother thinks that, Candide is not good enough because hes not born of the social cast and doesn't... after they lost everything, their barry exist no more... people are murder... there is no relevance anymore to the birth status, it doesn't exists. but yet the brother...

SETH 73:33

But also he, I mean he misses it by one, what do they call it he, has only 71 quarterings a she has 72. 71 quarterings means basically that, 13 logical divisions and then, 71 is enormous. It means you're royal blood goes back thousands of years... so hers goes back a few years more.

WES 73:57

Thousands of years of the world life, and therefor he's not good enough. He's not good enough for.

SETH 74:01

And Candide basically just says they put them on boat, they basically selling back in the slavery. It's like...

WES 71:10

Well the first time he killed them. So...

SETH 74:13

The first time he's... The first time he killed them. And this time is a little worse, but the point is he's just like instead of being oh well it was me and submitting to this, he takes action against it. There's something to be said in favor of him as a character even now.

WES 74:24

It's a little harsh to put the brother back in to slavery essential, you know?

SETH 74:28

That's true.

WES 74:29

They're rolling in the [xxx].

SETH 74:32

Or maybe that's something about him between the perpetrator as opposed to the victim. Now better either.

WES 74:38

Well the brother didn't have to be taken care of or...

SETH 74:39

It certainly perhaps an inappropriate response to that [laughter] Objection. Maybe a little heavy handed.

WES 74:44

Well the way things are going by run in to him at some point in the future. [laughter].

SETH 74:47

That's right. And the sequel.

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WES 74:50

Yeah. And actually there was a sequel.

DYLAN 75:53

There were many sequels there, but he didn't write them. And I guess it was public and anonymously in the first place and he would like to write about it as if it was somebody else's work, so that when he denied having written a sequel... That again.

WES 75:10

So its' time for Candide number three. So you have to...

MARK 75:13

There are once written [xxx] send a link to folks, there's the New York public library put on to locally about this that you can hear online as a podcast and they talk a little bit about the various sequels and some set in modern times and going in the Rwanda or some other horrible parts of the world that's part of the action that this stuff is still, and one thing I keep kicking around in my mind is I've been going through this is how well this relates to modern day issues and whether I even care. [laughter] You know if the main call to social action is we shouldn't have to totalitarian states and things like that. Well, okay, that's still going on in parts of the world but if not alive philosophical issue, in a way it was in his time or absolute monarchy the norm maybe I don't know. So, someone could be a successful social commentary but not really have much in a way of philosophical content, that is live issues that makes you think whether, you know, slavery really is bad. You know at the time, this was a big deal. He was one of the first people that actually came out against slavery as part of, I guess, it was 20 years after that that England outlawed the slave trade and that was like the first big blow against it as a force in Europe. But again, at the same time, I hear what you guys are saying and obviously these people that are writing the modern days sequals, they can draw play parallels to the fact that there's still evil the world and life is still suffering more often than not in the way all the Buddhist would complain about etc. So I'm just not... I don't feel like personally I am taking a lot away from this but it feels kinda nice to fill in the history and it's a fun story and if you wanna know going back to issue raised on our humor episode how to have a successful rape joke is to put it next to a dissembling joke and some other horrible murder jokes and then the whole thing is kinda jokey. It's not specifically a rape joke but, you know, there's a kidding joke. So there you go.

SETH 77:10

Well, I'm not sure if I follow that. So if I hear what you're saying Mark, you're saying that in this book he's criticizing institutions and activities that at the time were not taken for being bad.

MARK 77:22

Obviously bad. Obviously, yes.

SETH 77:24

Obviously. And then now, if we just say, "You know what? A war is obviously bad, monarchy is obviously bad, imperialism and the slave trait are obviously bad." So he's criticisms of them don't carry as much weight. My initial reaction to that is, "Well, and yet the behaviors continue." Right. And so maybe the fact that we rationally acknowledge, we've now gone away from the "a priorie" best of all possible worlds and now we rationally haven't... Well, obviously, we have human human rights. It's obviously wrong to Conscript children in Rwanda and make them fight at thirteen and hack people's limbs off, he might say "there's reason," again doing nothing, being completely ineffectual and creating this idealized, you know, creating people who are distanced from the actual suffering, the actual activity and taking no action and watching as people drown and watching as the ship... so I think there's still something to that [mhmm] criticism if you take it that way.

WES It's unclear to me whether he's... he's advocating, you know, become a fighter

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78:23 for justice even though he that's really what he was in his life, right? He was very, Voltaire was basically an activist and he was concerned about things like free speech and abuses of authority and so on and so forth, but it's unclear to me that you get that out of this, out of Kandeed, because it looks almost like he's advocating this sort of withdrawal in the end. I think what's clear is that it is more than being against optimism again, it's a what he's targeting is this tendency to idealize to have these very unrealistic expectations of the world, and you had mentioned Freud and how Freud would like this and I think you're... you're right you can give this a psychoanalytic reading you can treat it as a parable of, say, human psychological development, so for instance the theory of primitive mental states is that they're a sort of alternation between idealization of the object, the love object, usually the mother early on and catastrophizing it and being paranoid and feeling persecuted, so you get this very schizophrenic, psychotic alternation between this pure ideal that you must have, you know the Candide's naivety, juxtaposed with the horrible, horrible things that are actually going on, and the reality is actually quite different that despite the fact that there are wars and horrible things going on in the world that's not really the reality and again the amount of misfortune that Candide's experiences isn't really realistic, but the reality is actually the [xxx] Of those two things. The early stage is with the psychologist might call splitting into pure good and pure bad and then they mature stage is the synthesis of good and bad which is accomplished through empathy and you'd mentioned empathy. So by empathizing you get to see other human being as having their own subjectivity and being mixtures of good and bad and that's what I think we get in the very end. This synthesis of this radical split between good and bad that you see throughout the book and cultivating one's garden I think has to do with this realistic acknowledgment that this mature relationship to the world isn't this purely ecstatic best of all possible worlds state and it's not simply this horrible I'm having [xxx] state, it's something in between that can be satisfying but involves one's work.

DYLAN 80:55

I came away with a lot of very similar point of views and the part that I spent my most of the time thinking about was the just the end about what's his end relationship of work was for Candide? I don't have anything really more to say than what Wes said about it.

MARK 81:12

Next time we are going to continue on this fiction kick with Cormac Mc Carthy's 2005 novel, No Country For Old Men and maybe as part of our discussion there we'll actually talk about how effective fiction is as a vehicle for conveying philosophy. Although it's much less clear in the case of Mc Carthy that that's actually what he's trying to do as apposed to him just being a fucking weirdo. [laughter] Where as Voltaire was rogue philosophy on the side as far as I know Mc Carthy does not have a pocket philosophical dictionary that he can...

WES 81:43

I'm glad we're having Eric on as guest mark because you've been very skeptical about this kind of thing, literature being a vehicle for philosophical reflection. Even if it's not a philosopher.

MARK 81:58

Tell us about the guest.

WES 82:00

Eric, he will be our guest hes a professor at James Madison college at Michigan state university. I know him from when I was an undergrad. I had him for class when it was his very first year being a professor there. He was working on his dissertation on Aristotle Nichomacian Ethics at the time.

MARK 82:18

So he had a... he presented on this, which is why we are exactly why we are covering it...

WES Yes, yes, in particular yes, he has been teaching writing among other things.

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82:23 His background if in political philosophy but been teaching writing, James Madison and he has been using this novel among others. And he has been thinking a lot about it in terms of Nitche, and Kant, thinking about philosophy and he gave a couple lectures about it.

MARK 82:45

We are supported by your donations if you enjoy this thing we do and want it to continue please go to our homepage and look for te little donate button. recent big donors include Peter Forbes, Christine Patino, Kenneth Daly, [xxx] Bartman, Dave Ramsey, Michael Risman, and Andrew Knot. The special thanks to Martin Demsy for his frequent and recent donations.

WES 83:00

Help us get advertisers, we need you to take a brief or not so brief survey. There is a link on the side and its required for new advertising we are trying to use. I know we asked about this before but we changed networks so...

MARK 83:21

Thanks guys, its been a special pleasure to have you in my [laughter] spidered webbed filled cluttered basement [laughter]

WES 83:37

Yes help us because I don't know if were ever going to get out of here. if your listing to this podcast and... [laughter]

SETH 83:45

look under marks backyard... [laughter]

MARK 83:50

I hardly thinking clutter of books and cds and instruments reaching to the ceiling is the same thing as the serial killer basement...

WES 83:58

Well the huge and all the torture devices. [laughter]

MARK 84:02

Oh now we're going to start making shit up. [laughter] Oh is that how it's going to work?

SETH 84:05

There's nothing made up about the fact that I'm sitting next to a roll of duct tape. [laughter]

MARK 84:16

Hey we have Facebook group you should join. You should go on Partially Examined Life and participate in the damn discussions. Why don't you don't do that.

WES 82:24

Follow us on Twitter.

SETH 84:24

Partially XLife on Twitter.

MARK 84:28

And close the toilet seat after you use it. I don't know. [laughter]

SETH 84:31

Goodnight.

DYLAN 84:32

Goodnight.

WES 84:33

Goodnight.

MARK 84:34

Goodnight.

MARK 84:34

I brought my little [xxx] would you like to see it? I'll stay until you get down here and I'll crawl through that monument. And if you could [xxx] the same way. And if you could please decide that if you should leave my side. We'll be the [xxx] on the same day. Oh whoa ho. Oh whoa whoa is me. I have seen my destiny and looked it in the eye. But I'll try. I say unto you it's nothing and I'll fall through you every night. And I'm willing to ask you out the same day. And if you believe I

29

died then you can receive my guide. [xxx] the same way. Oh whoa whoa ho. Oh whoa is me. I have seen my destiny and spent time passed me by. I'll try. I extol this messed up me and kiss you to the sky. I'll control the rest of me and love you by and by. I'll