"Then You Don't Believe in Free Will, Sir?"

My previous post was about Voltaire’s unique sense of writing: satire. Now we will analyze how Voltaire reflects his beliefs and personality through his own characters. Let’s take in Dr. Pangloss, the well-known philosopher from Westphalia. After he and Candide survive a devastating shipwreck, citizens helped them into a good meal, but the people were sad as they ate in silence. Pangloss came back to his reason that there is no cause without an effect. He ensures the people that the event was no tragedy, rather it was just destiny, it was inevitable no matter the circumstances,” For it is impossible for things not to be where they are, because everything is for the best ”(35). Here we can see how Voltaire expresses himself through Pangloss’s words, or perhaps it isn’t his way of thinking, but rather the people that surround him. As a reader I can sense catholicism starts to take place in the story, “…there can be no such thing as the fall of Man and eternal punishment ”(35).  This statement is said by a secondary character in the story of no importance, but what Voltaire wants the reader to understand is that the character represents the opposition to his beliefs. Pangloss is attacked with questions of Free Will but he believes that there is no such thing as Free Will, but rather it’s called Absolute Necessity. He means that the man does not make choices freely, but rather he makes them because they are vital of “necessity” as previously mentioned.

We know that Voltaire grew up with a certain thirst to reality. He is defined as a deist, but he did believe in the existence of God; “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”, he said. He understood people needed this kind of faith in order to survive all the grievances life brought upon them, but that God had no favorite people, church, or country. This page in Candide reflects Voltaire’s views on God; how he has no plan for eternal punishment of man, but instead he has equal tolerance to all mankind.