Candide by Voltaire

I'm so glad that I read this for a variety of reasons.  I put it down after the first 15 minutes or so, intending not to finish it due to it's bizarre pacing and incongruity.  I picked it up again a week or so later and I'm better for having done so.

As I've read so much about the Enlightenment and 18th century philosophy over the last couple of years one question has been in the back of my mind: Why did so many of them write so many poems, plays and works of fiction?  For many of them these were their principal works.  Don't philosophers really just write essays and discourses?

After reading Candide I now understand how fiction can be used as a powerful tool of philosophy.  The work - often referred to as the "Folly of Optimism" - teaches us much as it entertains.  Through Candide Voltaire pokes fun at virtually everyone: the rich, the poor, the church, war, kingship, nobility and his contemporary Enlightenment philosophers.

Candide travels the world in search of happiness and never finds it.  He encounters all extremities of human travails and grandeur, only to watch them disappear in the blink of an eye.  The rich become poor, the poor become rich.  Those who appear happiest are truly unhappy inside.  Nothing is as it seems.  He finds no answers, no true happiness.

In the end, after all of his travels, he finds something close to happiness through prolonged hard work on a small farm with family and friends.  The message is expressed in the simple idea that one must "Cultivate his own garden" in order to find happiness.

I take this to mean we are responsible for our own happiness, or lack thereof.  That happiness takes work.  That searching high and low for happiness is a fool's errand.  That happiness comes from within, not from without.  That it takes time.  That it includes a small group of family and friends.

That's more philosophy for me than any number of essays could provide, all crammed into a lively, fast paced 160 pages.

Good stuff, Voltaire.