The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake,
took place on November 1, 1755, at 9:40 in the morning. It was one of
the most destructive and deadly earthquakes in history, killing
between 60,000 and 100,000 people. The earthquake was followed by a
tsunami and fire, resulting in the near-total destruction of Lisbon.
The earthquake accentuated political tensions in Portugal and
profoundly disrupted the country's eighteenth-century colonial
ambitions.
The event was widely discussed by European Enlightenment philosophers,
and inspired major developments in theodicy and in the philosophy of
the sublime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
Voltaire used that Earthquake as a prop in his major contribution to
philosophy and asked about what is the best possible world;
One of the most difficult issues confronting believers is the problem
of evil in the world. How can a person possibly believe in a good,
wise and powerful God in the face of human suffering. An answer
sometimes given is that of all possible worlds, this one, a world
where humans have free will, is the best possible world.
The French philosopher Voltaire revolted against this approach. In
1755 an earthquake struck the city of Lisbon. It was All Saints Day
when it struck, meaning that the churches were full. In just six
minutes 15,000 people were killed and another 15,000 severely wounded.
Voltaire could not accept that this was somehow the outworking of the
plans of a good God. In Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon he asks why it
is if God is free, just and good we suffer under his rule.
Later he wrote a satirical novel titled Candide. It tells the story of
a young man Candide, and his teacher, Dr Pangloss. Whatever disaster
befalls them Dr Pangloss glibly asserts that "this is the best of all
possible worlds." They are shipwrecked near Lisbon just as the
earthquake strikes. Candide is almost killed and Pangloss ends up
hanged by the Inquisition. This forces Candide to question. "Candide"
writes Voltaire, "terrified, speechless, bleeding, palpitating, said
to himself: 'If this is the best of all possible worlds, what can the
rest be?'"
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=vpql40t6sjqbd3%%40corp.supernews.com
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...Persecution and disillusionment had worn down his faith in life;
and his experiences at Berlin and Frankfort had taken the edge from
his hope. But both faith and hope suffered most when, in November,
1755, came the news of the awful earthquake at Lisbon, in which 30,000
people had been killed. The quake had come on All Saints' Day; the
churches had been crowded with worshippers; and death, finding its
enemies in close formation, had reaped a rich harvest. Voltaire was
shocked into seriousness and raged when he heard that the French
clergy were explaining the disaster as a punishment for the sins of
the people of Lisbon. He broke forth in a passionate poem in which he
gave vigorous expression to the old dilemma: Either God can prevent
evil and he will not; or he wishes to prevent it and he cannot. He was
not satisfied with Spinoza's answer that good and evil are human
terms, inapplicable to the universe, and that our tragedies are
trivial things in the perspective of eternity.
I am a puny part of the great whole.
Yes; but all animals condemned to live,
All sentient things, born by the same stern law,
Suffer like me, and like me also die.
The vulture fastens on his timid prey,
And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
All's well, it seems, for it. But in a while
An eagle tears the vulture into shreds;
The eagle is transfixed by shafts of man;
The man, prone in the dust of battlefields,
Mingling his blood with dying fellow men,
Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.
Thus the whole world in every member groans,
All born for torment and for mutual death.
And o'er this ghastly chaos you would say
The ills of each make up the good of all!
What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice,
Mortal and pitiful ye cry, "All's well,"
The universe belies you, and your heart
Refutes a hundred times your mind's conceit. . . .
What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate;
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thoughts, have measured the faint stars.
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ourselves we never see, or come to know.
This world, this theatre of pride and wrong,
Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness. . . .
Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone,
The sunny ways of pleasure's general rule;
The times have changed, and, taught by growing aget
And sharing of the frailty of mankind,
Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom,
I can but suffer, and will not repine.
A few months later the Seven Years' War broke out; Voltaire looked
upon it as madness and suicide, the devastation of Europe to settle
whether England or France should win "a few acres of snow" in Canada.
On the top of this came a public reply, by Jean Jacques Rousseau, to
the poem on Lisbon. Man himself was to be blamed for the disaster,
said Rousseau; if we lived out in the fields, and not in the towns, we
should not be killed on so large a scale; if we lived under the sky,
and not in houses, houses would not fall upon us. Voltaire was amazed
at the popularity won by this profound theodicy; and angry that his
name should be dragged into the dust by such a Quixote, he turned upon
Rousseau "that most terrible of all the intellectual weapons ever
wielded by man, the mockery of Voltaire." In three days, in 1751, he
wrote Candide.
Never was pessimism so gaily argued; never was man made to laugh so
heartily while learning that this is a world of woe. And seldom has a
story been told with such simple and hidden art; it is pure narrative
and dialogue; no descriptions pad it out; and the action is riotously
rapid. "In Voltaire's fingers," said Anatole France, "the pen runs and
laughs." It is perhaps the finest short story in all literature.
Candide, as his name indicates, is a simple and honest lad, son of the
great Baron of Thunder-Ten-Trockh of Westphalia, and pupil of the
learned Pangloss.
Pangloss was professor of metaphysicotheologicocosmonigology. . . .
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that all is necessarily for the best
end. Observe that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles . . .
legs were visibly designed for stockings . . . stones were designed to
construct casdes . . . pigs were made so that we might have pork all
the year round. Consequently, they who assert that all is well have
said a foolish thing; they should have said all is for the best."
While Pangloss is discoursing, the castle is attacked by the Bulgarian
army, and Candide is captured and turned into a soldier.
He was made to wheel about to the right and to the left, to draw his
rammer; to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march. . . . He
resolved,, one fine day in spring, to go for a walk, marching straight
before him, bejleving that it was a privilege of the human as well as
the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased. He had
advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four heroes six feet
tall, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked which
he would like the best, to be whipped six and diirty times through all
the regiment, or to receive at once two balls of lead in his brain. He
vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither the one
nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet six-and-
thirty times. He bore this twice.
Candide escapes, takes passage to Lisbon, and on board ship meets
Professor Pangloss, who tells how the Baron and Baroness were murdered
and the castle destroyed. "All this," he concludes, "was
indispensable; for private misfortune makes the general good, so that
the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general
good." They arrive in Lisbon just in time to be caught in the
earthquake. After it is over they tell each other their adventures and
sufferings; whereupon an old servant assures them that their
misfortunes are as nothing compared with her own. "A hundred times I
was on the point of killing myself, but I loved life. This ridiculous
foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there
anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which
one can always throw down?" Or, as another character expresses it,
"All things considered, the life of a gondolier is preferable to that
of a doge; but I believe the difference is so trifling that it is not
worth the trouble of examining."
Candide, fleeing from the Inquisition, goes to Paraguay; "there the
Jesuit Fathers possess all, and the people nothing; it is a
masterpiece of reason and justice." In a Dutch colony he comes upon a
negro with one hand, one leg, and a rag for clothing. "When we work at
the sugar canes," the slave explains, "and the mill snatches hold of a
finger, they cut off a hand; and when we try to run away, they cut off
a leg. . . . This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe."
Candide finds much loose gold in the unexplored interior; he returns
to the coast and hires a vessel to take him to France; but the skipper
sails off with the gold and leaves Candide philosophizing on the
wharf. With what little remains to him, Candide purchases a passage on
a ship bound for Bordeaux; and on board strikes up a conversation with
an old sage, Martin.
"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred one
another as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats,
traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons,
drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators,
debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites and fools?"
"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons
when they have found them?"
"Without doubt," said Candide.
"Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same
character, why should you imagine that men have changed theirs?"
"Oh!" said Candide, "there is a vast deal of difference, for free
will-"
And reasoning thus they arrived at Bordeaux.
We cannot follow Candide through the rest of his adventures, which
form a rollicking commentary on the difficulties of medieval theology
and Leibnitzian optimism. After suffering a variety of evils among a
variety of men, Candide settles down as a farmer in Turkey; and the
story ends with a final dialogue between master and pupil:
Pangloss sometimes said to Candide:
"There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible
worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent
castle; ... if you had not been put into the Inquisition; if you had
not walked over America; ... if you had not lost all your gold; . . .
you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."
"All that is very well," answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our
garden."
The Story of Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers of the Western World
by WILL DURANT
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671739166/
