How might Voltaire be understood as critiquing the philosophical position that this is the best of all possible worlds as presented by Pangloss? Offer an example.

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Best of All Possible Worlds
The “best of all possible worlds” is a philosophy put forth by Gottfried Leibniz. It denotes the fact that the world is the best creation that God could ever make. The central argument of Leibniz is an attempt to provide the solution to the issue of evil. According to Pangloss, Voltaire criticizes the work of Leibniz by arguing that the universe has a lot of suffering that cannot be tolerated by optimism. The argument orchestrated by Leibniz is that suffering was meant to ignite human will. Voltaire, however, presents the argument that the extent of suffering is very severe and thus the world cannot be said to be the “best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire notes that the fact that God has an antecedent as well as consequent shows that the actual world is not the best that God had created (Walker 62).
Voltaire points out that the goodness of the universe is evident, but not evil. Therefore, since there is the problem of evil in the world, then it is not the “best of all possible worlds” as described by Pangloss. Besides, Voltaire criticizes the work of Leibniz by saying that God chose not to create a world without evil. The experiences of Voltaire led him into a conclusion that certainly the universe is not the “best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire looked at evil, death as well as destruction in the world and after examining everything he declared that the world was not at its best. The natural, as well as man-made disasters, support Voltaire’ critique of the philosophical position that the world is the “best of all possible worlds”.

This is a good example of Voltaire’s criticism of the said school of thought. Voltaire argues that the occurrence of bad things is not for the greater part of the good.

Works Cited
Walker, Ashley. “The Most Enlightened of All Possible Worlds: Reconciling Reason and Emotion in Candide.” The Sigma Tau Delta (2018): 62.