Écrasez l'infame

So I said I'd write about Voltaire some time ago, when I began to prepare to teach World Humanities. City College mandates a traditional "Great Books" with, given a dash of multiculturalism; in the past I've taught the earlier section of the course, and like everyone I've taught these classics with a dash of my own obsessions -- I teach the Odyssey as a veteran's odyssey entirely mediated by women, and have emphasized the impact of the wars that cluster round Shakespeare and even Cervantes.

This term I'm teaching the second half, including Candide, and am blown away by Francois Arouet, who violates all stereotypes with his passion. He signed his letters, "Écrasez l'Infâme!" (Erase the infamy), by which he meant a Catholic Church that had just exhaled from the Inquisition and was busy endorsing the first world war, the Seven Years War, let alone treaties that left war crimes against persons unmentioned.  Of course, the very funny book I'm teaching was written in response to Leibniz, whose scientist's wonder at the miracle of creation led him to claim, famously, that such a wondrous world must be created by a perfect God, and therefore be the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire composed a heroic catalogue to challenge the very idea.

How did this working-class Frenchman get this radical? By spending more than one night in the Bastille, before going to England and tasting Shakespeare, Locke and Hume. (Monty Python moment; "Why, they're Protestants!") What astonishes the contemporary reader are the casual-sounding references to what we now consider war crimes: Cunegund, Candide's ladylove, is raped by invaders in chapter two and is a sex slave for much of the book, while chapters feature such titles as "Chapter 6 - How the Portuguese Made a Superb Auto-De-Fe to Prevent Any Future Earthquakes, and How Candide Underwent Public Flagellation." L'infame is usually identified as Christianity or Superstition; could it be the unthinking obedience to stupid beliefs that chained soldiers to lock him up?

Perhaps Arouet would be cheered by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or even Michael Moore -- making laughter so you don't cry. (And it is funny: my students were surprised.

But what did I mean by the Mennonites, when I first proposed this post? Only that reading of Voltaire's nearly atheist project had cheered me immensely in this OverFaithful zeitgeist (in a country, as Gore Vidal says, "just crazy for Jesus"). But I then had my glee tempered by an interview I did for the possible Gi Rights book: a young man just 25, about the age of an average soldier, who has recently revived the only overseas node of the the Military Counseling Network.

This young man was raised Mennonite, and is a third-generation pacifist, having majored in Justice, Peace and Conflict Studies at Eastern Mennonite University. He's met with Arafat (as part of a youth delegation) before moving on to spend his day talking to soldiers and sailors across dozens of bases in Europe and Iraq.

And meeting him reminded me:  I'd say over half the people I've known to have any staying power in this work -- for peace, for the environment, for an end to poverty -- did it from a faith perspective of some sort. The gut wants confirmation that it's worth it, that one's small-feeling effort or result is worth it: many, if not, most trying to draw it fromm within fall away. Voltaire made fun of their lot too -- all those hapless Jesuits trying to fix everything -- but that was, perhaps, just to make his point.

Or perhaps he would characterize that sturdy activism as exactly right - as cultivating our garden, in the process fixing the world. (Update; Upon looking at the newest Voltaire biography, "Voltaire in Exile," the man was also William Kunstler in his advocacy work. See the followup post of 3/4/05.)

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