The Purpose Of Life

These past few days we have been listening to Radio Lab, they mention how bad things leave a larger mark on you than good ones. A tragedy can leave a person completely marked for life. It is part of your self-preservation instinct to remember them and make sure that they don’t happen again. Voltaire as well as Epictetus, mentions how everything happens for a reason. We can see how Epictetus mentions that you have to let go of many things and accept what is meant to happen. Candide mentions, “all is for the best in this world of ours” (27) as one of Panglose’s teachings. If this is true then a death will be for the best and you have to accept it. As I mentioned in my previous blog Voltaire: Free Or Trapped, Epictetus and Candide have many things in common. A difference that changes the whole way you read each of them is, Candide is written as a story. As events occur in his life the reader learns.

A particular part of the story caught my attention. When there was a big commotion on the boat and one sailor falls into the water, another one decides to save him but “The efforts he made were so strenuous, however, that he was pitched into the sea in full view of the sailor, who left him to perish without taking the slightest notice” (32) What Voltaire is trying to teach the reader is to do things without thinking of the outcome. If the sailor who helped the one in the water stopped and doubted whether to save him or not, the sailor could have drowned. He did what he believed was right and even though he did not receive the same treatment, what he did was right. If you stop and think if the person you are helping will do the same to you, there is no reason to help. This is something that has to come from the heart spontaneously. I cannot understand what Voltaire was thinking about when he gave this example. It can have several meanings and a person can go through it without noticing what he is trying to say. Epictetus, on the other hand, does everything straight to the point. What were Voltaire’s intentions with this book? Was it meant as a story or as a handbook?