"The Enlightenment" is the name for a movement that encompasses a wide variety of ideas and advances in the fields of philosophy, science, and medicine that began in the seventeenth century and peaked in the eighteenth century. The primary feature of Enlightenment philosophy is a profound faith in the power of reason and rational thought to supposedly lead human beings to a better, happier social structure. Candide reflects Voltaire's lifelong aversion to Christian regimes of power and the arrogance of nobility, government, and the military, but it also criticizes certain aspects of the philosophical movement of the Enlightenment. It attacks the school of optimism that contends that rational thought can curtail the evils perpetrated by human beings upon human beings.

Pangloss is responsible for the novel's most famous idea: that all is for the best in this “best of all possible worlds.” This optimistic sentiment is the main target of Voltaire's satire. Pangloss believes that the world must be perfect if a perfect God created it. When human beings perceive something as wrong or evil, it is merely because they do not understand the ultimate good that the

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