Candide is a book first published by the philosopher Voltaire (pen name of François-Marie Arouet) in 1759. Incase you aren't aware, the novel is a satire, revealing the wrongs in the optimistic viewpoint that many people had during this time period. The main character, named Candide, faces many hardships throughout his life, more than truly imaginable.
The novel begins when Candide is exiled for kissing Cunégonde, and he begins traveling the world. Along the way, Candide suffers many horrors, killing, rape, flogging, natural disasters, betrayal, disease, yet he is still told that "this is the best of all possible worlds."
This idea of "this is the best of all possible worlds" was an idea promoted mostly by Leibniz during this time period. This idea was pushed because the idea of an imperfect God was not something that people during this time period accepted. Ill doing on earth, then, was simply part of God's greater plan. Evil did not exist, only a grand map of how things should be in the end.
Voltaire continually degrades this idea throughout his novel through the ill fates that the optimists (Pangloss, and at the beginning, Candide) face. These hardships do not contribute to the greater good, yet they are still happening.
Above all of this, the greatest irony for me was that the largest flaw Pangloss had was basing his beliefs solely off of philosophical ideas rather than facts that can be depicted more than once. This point by Voltaire must have been extremely difficult to write as it is necessary to break down this false idea and uncover its false roots while maintaining his own credibility as a philosopher.
Whatever he did must have worked; Candide definitely stirred the waters and even got itself banned.
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