Lisbon: against "all is well"

Voltaire 1694 · 1778Crush intolerance with reason and irony.

What it claims

Saying "all is well today" is an illusion: we must admit evil, which reason does not explain. What remains is hope ("all will be well one day"), not a proof.

Why

Evil strikes the innocent and no one shows it was necessary, so we cannot claim that all is well.

In short

"Lisbon: against "all is well"" is an argument by Voltaire (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, 1756) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: deism). Its claim: Saying "all is well today" is an illusion: we must admit evil, which reason does not explain. What remains is hope ("all will be well one day"), not a proof. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, 1756

Valid with an implicit premise

On 1 November 1755, an earthquake destroyed Lisbon and killed tens of thousands. Philosophers following Leibniz and Pope kept saying that "all is well": every evil serves the good of the whole. Voltaire answered with a poem. Note: he does not deny God; he even writes "I do not fling myself against Providence". This is a deist's argument against one way of explaining evil: God exists, but no one can claim to read his providence in every event. (A debated classification: in the poem Voltaire still says he respects Providence, and keeps hope.) He holds that evil is real, that reason does not explain it, and that only hope remains.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where evil is real, where no one shows it was necessary, and where one is still entitled to say that all is well. That is exactly Leibniz's position: it is enough to know that God chose this world.

Valid with P4. P1 and P2 show a real evil whose usefulness no one proves; P4 says that one then cannot claim "all is well"; P3 adds that reason has no other explanation to offer. The decisive point is P4: it puts the burden of proof on the optimist. Leibniz rejects exactly that: for him, we know in advance that this world is the best, because God chose it, without needing to see what each evil is for. Note: the conclusion does not say that God does not exist. It says that optimism explains nothing, and Voltaire keeps his faith in a just God and a better future.

Analogy. A doctor tells a suffering patient: "Your pain is perfect, it serves the balance of the hospital." He does not know how, but he says so. The patient is entitled to answer: show it, or be quiet and treat me. Voltaire is that patient, and he still trusts the hospital's director.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Leibniz (Theodicy, 1710) 1710 · attacks premise 4

There is no need to see what each evil is for. God is perfect and chose this world: so we must judge "from the effect" that this world is the best possible, even when we do not understand the detail.

Voltaire replies

Voltaire Voltaire, article "All is well" (1764), against Leibniz, Shaftesbury and Pope

Man, this "puny animal", has the right to cry out and to try to understand why the eternal laws are not made for each individual's good. The "all is well" system makes the author of nature a powerful and malevolent king, who cares little that four or five hundred thousand men die, provided he gets his way. Far from consoling, the idea of the best of all possible worlds is a hopeless one for those who adopt it.

The debate goes on (our summary) A Leibnizian would answer that Voltaire judges God on part of the picture. If God is perfect, what looks malevolent to us is what wisdom required for the whole. So everything depends on what we know first: God's perfection, or the victims' suffering.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Voltaire retorts that "all is well" makes God a malevolent king and leaves those who adopt it in despair; Leibniz judges from the effect, God being perfect. The core disagreement: what do we know first, God's perfection or the victims' suffering? An open point.

Rousseau (Letter to Voltaire, 18 August 1756) 1756 · attacks premise 2

One should not say "all is good" for each, but "the whole is good". And most of our physical ills are our own work: it was not nature that piled up twenty thousand houses of six or seven storeys in Lisbon.

Voltaire replies

We have not yet found a direct reply by Voltaire in the texts.

H. J. McCloskey 1960

McCloskey, an atheist, does not answer Rousseau, but his objection goes Voltaire's way: the free will defence accounts only for moral evil. Earthquakes, diseases and animal suffering come from no human choice: physical evil remains as hard as before ("God and Evil", 1960). The rest of the debate is in Hume's argument from evil.

see the argument

The debate goes on (our summary) Voltaire does not answer on the substance: in a letter of 12 September 1756 he puts the discussion off, as his niece is seriously ill. Rousseau later said in his Confessions that the real answer was Candide (1759), where Pangloss explains among the ruins of Lisbon that "all is well". That is Rousseau's view, not a statement by Voltaire.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Rousseau says most physical ills are our own work and distinguishes the whole from the parts. Voltaire does not answer on the substance (see our summary). McCloskey objects that this does not cover natural evil. The core disagreement: does the human share of evils suffice to explain physical evil? An open point.

D'Holbach (System of Nature, 1770) 1770 · attacks the conclusion

If evil is real and reason does not explain it, why keep a good God? The misfortunes and crimes of mankind are the best objection against God. Hope is not a reason.

Voltaire replies

Voltaire

Voltaire grants that the objection is "fatal and terrible", and that the only answer is the hope of a better life, of which reason gives no certainty. But when it is proved that a vast edifice built with great art has an architect, we must believe in that architect, even if the edifice is stained with our blood and crushes us. Evil raises the question of God's goodness, not of his existence.

The debate goes on (our summary) D'Holbach could answer that the proof from the architect is precisely what is disputed (see the watchmaker argument). And is a God whose goodness is unknown still the God of believers?

Where the debate stands (our summary)Voltaire grants that evil is the strongest objection against a good God, but maintains that the order of the world implies an architect. D'Holbach disputes this proof, which leads back to the watchmaker argument. The core disagreement: what can be concluded from the world's order, and what from its evil? An open point.

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