[Buddha-l] Voltaire

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joy,

I should add that Candide used to be one of my favorite books when I was a
teenager -- one of the first great satires I ever read. Competing popes in
Africa and various places, with their own progeny fighting for hegemony,
etc. The sort of "speech" Richard wouldn't approve of, but a very true and
funny exposé of the religious hypocrisies of the time. Like others of that
time (Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, etc.), he favored a secular (in the meaning
that term had at that time) version of universal reason over the theocracies
of the day. Leibniz in particular popularized the notion of East Asia as a
haven of enlightened reason, based on the reports he got from missionaries
about neo-confucianism. For Voltaire, it would be a sign of enlightened
reason to cross over a cross into a cross-free zone, i.e., some place where
reason rather than theocracy reigned. In that, he overestimated and
over-romanticized the situation in Japan -- ironic in the sense that
romanticism, the quest, etc., was the narrative folly Candide targeted.

Or perhaps you read it differently...

Dan