The Refutation Of Leibniz's Candide

Candide is a thought provoking and compelling story with each event of the plot carefully intertwined into the inner working of the story. The book is an impeccable example of typical 18th century writing style. The plethora of coincidences and connections is rather overwhelming at times, compelling the story to be more and more unbelievable as more of the ubiquitous vicissitudes pile up and connect everything back around, relating every new plot development or character to something else in the story. Voltaire gives what he considers to be a refutation of Leibniz's theory: this is the best of all possible worlds. This theory is explored throughout the book with Pangloss and Candide looking at the world through this theory, living their lives as optimistically, and others in the opposite mindset, seeing the world pessimistically. However, as his characters can embrace Pangloss’s/Leibniz’s theory, Voltaire himself disagreed with this theory in which his book was based around.
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If everything were already preset, and the inhabitants of Earth didn’t have a choice of their own actions in the long run, then what would be the point of living. I believe that life and time and actions are all in flux and can be changed and altered in a million different ways. If we were all part of God’s big plan for the world then wouldn't we be able to tell, and if we are purposely tricked into think we can move thought the world freely, but unknowingly doing God’s bidding doesn't seem like good intentions if he[God] has to trick the humans into doing what he wants them to do. In conclusion, I definitely do agree with Voltaire, I enjoy optimism in a “glass half full” kind of way, not a “God’s plan is definite, all trust in God” kind of optimism. If a philosophy says that you can’t save a drowning man's life, right after he proved himself to be a worthy of saving man, then one should not find themselves in said