Candide by
"Candide came into being largely because of Voltaire's great dissatisfaction with the explanation for the problem of evil and human suffering provided by the philosophers of his day. Published in 1759 when Voltaire was 65, Candide was a direct attack on the school of optimism championed by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and English poet Alexander Pope and popularized in the adventure and romance novels of the period." "Optimism, Voltaire's young hero, Candide, asserts, is "the mania for asserting that all is well when one is not." The danger of optimism, Voltaire believed, lies in its essentially passive response to life. If God has given human beings "the best of all possible worlds," as Leibniz claimed, and if everything that happens is somehow for the best, then to what point is human choice and action?" "In this well-balanced study, Mason relates the events in Voltaire's personal life and in the world around him that contributed to his revolt: the death of his closest companion; his exile from Paris; the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake of 1755; the eruption and often ruthless conduct of the Seven Years' War. The real-life hardships of psychological pain, natural disaster, and war, Voltaire found, could not be rationalized away by philosophy."
The Routledge Guidebook to Wollstonecraft's a Vindication of the Rights of Woman by
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the greatest philosophers and writers of the Eighteenth century. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Her most celebrated and widely-read work is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. This Guidebook introduces: Wollstonecraft's life and the background to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman The ideas and text of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft's enduring influence in philosophy and our contemporary intellectual life It is ideal for anyone coming to Wollstonecraft's classic text for the first time and anyone interested in the origins of feminist thought.