Voltaire–Leibniz on Theodicy
*Candide* against "the best of all possible worlds"
Venue: Leibniz, *Theodicy* (1710); Voltaire, *Poem on the Lisbon Disaster* (1755) and *Candide* (1759).
A posthumous demolition of philosophical optimism by satire and tragedy.
Leibniz's *Théodicée* (1710) defended divine goodness in the face of evil by arguing that the actual world, despite its evils, is the best of all possible worlds — any alteration would reduce its overall perfection. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake (60,000 dead, on All Saints' Day, in a Catholic capital during Mass) gave Voltaire the occasion for a direct empirical refutation. The *Poem on the Lisbon Disaster* attacked Leibnizian and Popean optimism as a moral and philosophical insult to the dead; *Candide* (1759) extended the polemic into sustained satire, with Dr. Pangloss's incorrigible "tout est pour le mieux" as the running joke. The exchange is asymmetric (Leibniz died 1716) but the philosophical confrontation is real and influential: post-Lisbon European thought largely abandoned philosophical optimism.
Historical Context
Leibniz had written *Théodicée* for Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia, the best-known defence of theistic theodicy in the modern period. Lisbon was the first mass-media disaster in European history, with detailed reports reaching Paris and London within days.
Parties
God, being all-good and all-powerful, has actualised the best of all possible worlds; evils are necessary components of a larger perfection we cannot fully comprehend.
Key arguments
- Principle of sufficient reason: God's choice of this world is grounded in its being the best; any other choice would lack a sufficient reason.
- Distinction between metaphysical evil (limitation), physical evil (suffering), and moral evil (sin); each plays a role in the overall harmony.
- God permits but does not author moral evil; free creatures are responsible for sin.
- Local apparent disorders are required by global harmony; the part-whole relation in the world is theological as well as metaphysical.
Allied schools
The world contains evils — natural disasters, slavery, war, disease — that no plausible theodicy can absorb. Philosophical optimism is a moral evasion of suffering, not a defence of providence.
Key arguments
- Lisbon earthquake: a city of believers destroyed during Mass falsifies any reading on which suffering tracks moral desert or divine pedagogy.
- Pangloss as reductio: a perfectly consistent optimist becomes morally monstrous, learning nothing from any catastrophe.
- Ethical response: "il faut cultiver notre jardin" — work, modest moral effort, refusal to accept evil as good.
- Empirical theology must answer to evidence; armchair speculation about possible-world rankings does not.
Allied schools
Dimensions Engaged
Observer
Observer · Metaphysical Agency: how can the existence of a providential agent be reconciled with the moral structure of observed evils?
Matter
Bears on Matter · Conservation in the form of natural disaster: is the physical order theologically meaningful?
Verdict in retrospect
Lisbon broke philosophical optimism as a public intellectual position; Kant's 1791 "On the Failure of All Philosophical Attempts at Theodicy" essentially concedes the Voltairean point. Theodicy remains a live theological subject but rarely in its Leibnizian "best of all possible worlds" form. Voltaire's ethical minimalism ("cultivate the garden") is one of the period's permanent contributions.
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Further reading
- Leibniz, *Theodicy* (1710; tr. Huggard, 1985)
- Voltaire, *Candide* (1759); *Poem on the Lisbon Disaster* (1755)
- Neiman, *Evil in Modern Thought* (2002)