Lisbon and Voltaire: is everything well?

 

Lisbon and Voltaire: is everything well?

 

Marco Milani

 

(Text published in the newspaper Correio Fraterno – Edition 481 – May/June 2018)

 

On the morning of November 1, 1755, part of the population of Lisbon was occupying the streets and churches celebrating All Saints' Day. At the same time, a few hundred kilometers away, in the Atlantic Ocean, a strong seismic shock began a series of events that would painfully mark that date.

A tremor hit the Portuguese coast with violence. The earthquake was the prelude to what was yet to come. After the sudden retreat of the sea, huge waves devastated the low-lying areas of the city. Finally, a large-scale fire took days to be extinguished, consuming lives and goods, estimated at 60,000 fatalities.

About twenty days after that tragic event, the French Enlightenment philosopher François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, published a provocative text entitled Poem about the Lisbon disaster: or the examination of the axiom “everything is well”, questioning Leibniz’s ontological argument on divine providence.

How to explain the existence of a good and just God who allows or promotes human disasters? What crimes would have been committed by Portuguese children crushed under rubble along with their mothers?

These questions, however, reflect a discomfort that has always hovered in the philosophical environment about theistic dogmatism. Epicurus' paradox, formulated around 300 years before Christ, already presented a logical dilemma about the existence of evil and the qualities of God. In this paradox, it is stated that God could present, simultaneously, only two of the three characteristics: omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence.

If he were omniscient and omnipotent, he would have knowledge of evil and could extinguish it, but he would not be benevolent in allowing evil to exist.

If he were omnipotent and benevolent, then he could extinguish evil and, being good, he would want to eliminate it, but he would not do so because he didn't know where all the evil would be, so he wouldn't be omniscient.

If he were omniscient and benevolent, he would know where all evil was and would want to extinguish it, but since evil afflicts men, then he would not be omnipotent as he cannot extinguish evil even if he wanted to.

The paradox does not discuss the subjectivity present in the definitions of good and evil, but reflects the lack of understanding, facing divine attributes based on human experience. Different thinkers, at different times, have proposed answers to these questions, like Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who stated that Man would be unable to reach the divine mysteries by using reason, but only by faith could he achieve this.

Voltaire's Poem on the Lisbon disaster also received a response. His countryman, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote a letter in 1756 countering the skepticism and outrage expressed by the Enlightenment thinker. In addition to defending the perfection of Providence and the natural order of things that escape human understanding, Rousseau also pointed out that Man himself can act against himself, citing in the Portuguese case the dangerous constructions built recklessly to shelter many families that worsened the effects of the earthquake.

Not satisfied, Voltaire would take up the subject again in 1759, when he published one of his best-known works: Candide or Optimism. In this philosophical tale, with the Lisbon earthquake as a backdrop, the main character who gives the book its title is characterized as a naive young man who learns about Leibniz's optimism, but several tragic events make his worldview questioned. .

Voltaire passed away in 1778, leaving a legacy of criticism and mockery of religious beliefs and those who promoted the idea of divine natural order. However, Voltaire's cultural heritage is not just limited to these destructive attacks, but also includes appropriate contributions to reflection in political, social and economic fields. By fighting against absolutism and dogmatic fanaticism, he exalted the freedom of thought, civil liberties, and free trade, and was against state interference in people's lives and in the economy.

In the following century, Allan Kardec questioned the Spirits about the same issue of good and evil, and among other topics, about human misfortunes and divine justice.

The mediumistic answers obtained in questions 737 to 741 of The Spirits' Book recall some of Leibniz's and Rousseau's arguments, but supported by clarification on the evolutionary process of the spiritual being ar the expense of transitory matter. In short, what appears to be a punishment is, in fact, an opportunity for moral and intellectual improvement, both individually and collectively, a natural reflection of the evolutionary march in which Man finds himself and of his related needs. This order only makes sense by abandoning materialistic explanations or those that lead to church mysteries and embracing the principle of the plurality of human existences guided by unchanging natural laws, based on divine justice and love for the realization of the spiritual perfection that beings are susceptible to.

Evoked by Kardec in 1859 and in subsequent communications (see Spiritist Review Aug-Sep/1859, May/1862), Voltaire manifests himself as embittered by the course he took while embodied. He confesses to having let pride and sarcasm guide his actions and that he suffered from the harmful consequences he promoted by influencing many people, specifically on the religious aspect. Instead of illuminating minds, fighting the defects and vices of established religions, and exalting the perennial truth contained in the Christian message, he denied divine goodness and justice and became a victim of his own skeptical arrogance.

The spiritual perspective made Voltaire rethink his concepts about God and recognize the excellence of the model of virtue that humanity has in Jesus.

Today we benefit from the enlightenment that Spiritism offers, combining the reason that Voltaire valued so much with faith based on evidence and capable of moving mountains through individual freedom and responsibility. It is everything well.