Voltaire used humorous characterizations of the “typical” optimist, or in the case of Candide, a man named Pangloss, to argue that optimism served as a ridiculously passive and inaccurate approach to life. The very name Pangloss symbolized a person who, despite the circumstances, remained naïve and optimistic. Pangloss had a tendency to disregard all the bad things that happened in the world and he never strove to find a further explanation than it being for the “best of all possible worlds”. The idea of the “best of all possible worlds” presented itself numerous times only to be refuted by Voltaire through satire and exaggeration. For example, Voltaire described a war scene in which there were
Voltaire used humorous characterizations of the “typical” optimist, or in the case of Candide, a man named Pangloss, to argue that optimism served as a ridiculously passive and inaccurate approach to life. The very name Pangloss symbolized a person who, despite the circumstances, remained naïve and optimistic. Pangloss had a tendency to disregard all the bad things that happened in the world and he never strove to find a further explanation than it being for the “best of all possible worlds”. The idea of the “best of all possible worlds” presented itself numerous times only to be refuted by Voltaire through satire and exaggeration. For example, Voltaire described a war scene in which there were