A Summary on Adams’ Essay on Candide

A Summary on Robert M. Adams’ “Summary: The Intellectual Backgrounds”
By James Dominguez
At the start of this brilliant summary, Adams brings up the outstanding question asked in the book Candide; why would a perfectly good God create a world containing so much evil? The first paragraph goes on to argue that there is no valid answer to the question of evil in the world. Adams points out that the question of the origin of evil has confronted thoughtful believers since the conception of the faith.
Later, Adams explains the orthodox Christian belief on the matter. This belief states that God created Man and Satan alike, with free will and the ability to obey God. However, instead of obedience both chose to disobey and in turn fell from glory. Adams delves deeper to expose the fact that belief in this system would demand that you also believe in salvation through Christ and many other parts of orthodox doctrine.
Moving on, Adams explains the ideas that commenced to become popular in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. These ideas were popularly called “rational Christianity,” “deism,” and “natural religion.” Beliefs of this nature went against orthodox Christianity in many ways. Adams touches on the point that these beliefs were based on the fact that all of the mankind did not fall when Adam sinned, and therefore did not need to be saved. The idealists also stated that there was no need for supernatural faith in God, and that there would be no individual judgment after death. Adams explains that the advances in areas such as psychology and physics may have supported the steady progress of these ideas. People may have felt that much of the universe had been explained. This could have removed some of the unreadiness to do away with old theologies. Adams points out that another underlying motivation may have been the war of sects which accompanied the Puritan revolution.
Whatever the case, Adams summarizes that the people of the time willingly jumped at the opportunity to deny mans sinful nature and as Adams stated “ . . . question the need of supernatural revelation or inspired faith.”
Adams tells how the new philosophy of optimism and rational religion unsurprisingly brought to life the question of evil. Adams tells how much of Voltaire’s life was consumed by the question of what to do about the broken and malfunctioning world around him. Adams continues on to point out that these are the questions that are directly raised in Voltaire’s Candide.
The end of the summary by Adams is dedicated to a list of the discussed positions, and their backgrounds. The list is in rough chronological order and is recommended for further reading. The full lecture including the list can be found on page seventy nine of the second edition of Candide, A Norton Critical Edition, Translated and edited by Robert M. Adams.