What did Voltaire refer to?
Does anyone have a suggestion to what Voltaire refers to in this quote from Candide? What can one call this will/desire? Is there a single word that captures this concept?
”I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing? That is a hard question,' said Candide”
”I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing? That is a hard question,' said Candide”
Comments (26)
The horrors he lists, some of them absurd, all happened to characters in the story. Are you familiar with Leonard Bernstein's opera, "Candide"? It's a great show. Here's a sample... Here Pangloss (with his face disfigured from syphilis) explains why everything is for the best to Candide.
It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss.[8] The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes Candide with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds".
Right now in my notes i just write ”Candide’s suffering”.
Good question. However, the choices don't make any sense. I didn't know Voltaire was logically that inept!
[quote=Voltaire]Le meglio è l'inimico del bene.[/quote]
Hmmmmm...
Quoting Olivier5
Quoting tim wood
Definitely not boredom.
This seems related :point: Embodiment Is Burdensome.
The concept that comes closest to what you're saying is: Necessary Evil.
The conversation now slowly drifts towards Gottfried Leibniz's notion of Best Of All Possible Worlds, the intended target of Voltaire's mockery.
What then?
One of the choices discussed is "...simply sit there and do nothing." This is not ennui. The other choice is clearly not something any person in faer right mind would be bored by.
You forgot the other half of the story.
It's a kind of self-indulgence, of the kind engaged in by those with far too much time on their hands.
However, I do not refer to the duties or burdens forced upon us by living, metioned by Inyenzi. Rather the will to carry a burden even when one has the option to comfortably sit and do nothing. Other quotes that embody the same concept:
”Have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm?” - Marcus Aurelius. A question that Aurelius strongly answered ”no” to.
”What makes you think that if you had everything you asked for, that would satisfy you? What if being dissatisfied is part of what satisfies you? What if the fact that you have to have limits and need them and that there’s an element of insanity in the world, and there’s an element of insecurity and vulnerability. What if that’s what you need? What if that’s what you want? What if that’s what gives your life meaning? You’re gonna be like a lion after its eaten a zebra and do nothing but sleep. That hardly constitutes the appropriate human paradise. What makes people think that merely to provide economic security would be sufficient? Who wants that? It’s what you offer a cow in its pen so that it remains calm and fat. It’s not something for human beings” - Jordan B. Peterson
Like why is the following quote by Gimli in the third Lord of the Rings movie exciting?: ” Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?”.
[quote=Pascal]All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.[/quote]
First of all, my sincerest apologies. I got the wrong end of the stick.
The choices offered by Voltaire are:
1. Do something (endure some amount of suffering)
or
2. Do nothing
For Voltaire both are bad but he wants to know which of the two is worse?
The relevant concepts here are, as I pointed out, Lesser-Evilism and Necessary Evil. Voltaire finds himself between Scylla and Charybdis.
For my money, it boils down to some kind of calculus involving the degree of suffering involved. Reminds me of two aphorisms:
3. No pain, no gain [2 is worse]
and
4. The game is not worth the candle [1 is worse]
I suppose what all this means is we'll have to take a case-by-case approach to issues that boil down to a choice between 1 and 2.
@Wayfarer once, in another thread, commented "...least worst option..."
That may be because you are an adventurous philosopher, a risk taking metaphysician.... :-) Better get it wrong once in a while than say nothing, or something amounting to nought.
There are some things one is better off without. Anyway I'll take that as a compliment.
Regarding boredom, if every situation eventually becomes a choice between enduring suffering or doing nothing, it would be repetitive and thus, as you said, boring. Becoming world-weary, another name for boredom, is inevitable. I suppose being capable of boredom is some kinda secret weapon we can deploy against reality - been there, done that, what's new? :yawn: