society is seen as the more important and as requiring more allegiance from every individual in it. The question of deviance enters as the individual at odds with his or her society is often labeled as deviant, a way of marginalizing them and of placing an onus on their individuality. Voltaire in his book Candide produced a satire on the society of his time, using the individual of Candide as the medium through which he observed that society and by which he could make comments on its structure and operation. Candide is an innocent who believes that this is the best of all possible worlds, but it is clear that the author does not believe this and that he is going to take the hero through a series of adventures in different places to show him that this is not the best of all possible worlds. Inherent in this journey is a sense of the importance of the individual, for it is the individual who must make these decisions and not society. Society may impose certain restrictions and prescriptions, but it is left to the individual to make the final decisions regarding the universe and his or her place in it.
The philosophy of Liebniz is important in this book. Liebniz offered a reinterpretation of Christian doctrine which is considered the ultimate philosophy to Pangloss, the character who serves as Candide's guide. However, Pangloss has taken Liebniz's views to a ridiculous degree so that he accepts all things as the way they have to be. The evils of this world have to be accepted:
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end" (Voltaire 332).
Voltaire saw this as a perversion of the optimism the true philosophy of Liebniz was meant to offer, and Butts states that the view of Liebniz and of the Christian doctrine he reinterprets is "optimistic." However, Voltaire was also opposed to blind o...