A Comparison of a Hobbsian World and the World of Candide Essay

The Disparity between a Hobbsian World and the World of Candide In an anarchistic Hobbsian man, man leads a purely egotistical existence, perpetually waging state of war against his fellow men. In this terra firma Nature subsists as a acting field for evolution only the strong and cunning survives, and even extract results in life that is nasty, brutish, and short (Hobbes). However, with restraints (that is, government), a Hobbsian world can crest into society. According to Hobbes, those who wish to subside from natural anarchy must implicitly surrender some personal freedom in exchange for societal order. Hobbes philosophies influenced many of his contemporaries and subsequent intellectuals, including Voltaire, demonstrated in his satire, Candide. At premier glance, Candide seems to be a strict manifestation of Hobbsian philosophy an anarchistic world centered around war, relieved only through the yield of personal freedom for communal order-Eldorado and the garden. Yet af ter a thorough interrogatory of the work, one recognizes that the characters in Candide are not Hobbsian. Hobbsian man is innately selfish and ambitious while Voltaires characters are not. Perhaps some characters in Candide are driven through their misfortunes as a result of their avarice however, this foible can not be ascribed as innately human. Instead, avarice, in the world of Candide, arises as a byproduct of the fallibility of man-made institutions (that is, religious and educational), which are the immemorial targets of Voltaires satire. Thus, the world of Candide, although structured like a Hobbsian world, contains men that are not Hobbsian. This d... ...the inability to cooperate. Or perhaps Voltaire suggests that the world can be controlled more(prenominal) effectively if the man-made institutions that he is satirizing could be somehow reorganized. All in all, Voltaires subtle divergence from strict Hobbsian philosophy enables him to pose perhaps unanswerable questio ns about mankind and our potentials.Works CitedBottiglia, William. Candides Garden. Voltaire A Collection of Critical Essays. newly Jersey Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Hobbes, Thomas. Of Religion. ed.Smith,Lacey Baldwin and Jean Reeder Smith. The Past Speaks. 2nd ed. 1 vol. Lexington Heath, 1993. Richter, Peyton. Voltaire. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1980. Tsanoff, Radoslav. Voltaires Candide and the Critics. atomic number 20 Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1966. Voltaire. Candide. New York Viking Publishers, 1996.