Augustine and Voltaire: The Problem of Evil

One of the central concerns of both Augustine's Confessions and Voltaire's Candide is the problem of evil - that is, how can evil exist in God's perfect world? This represents one of the most significant obstacles to Augustine's conversion, as he struggles with the doctrine of God's perfection and the evil he sees in the world around him. He concludes that evil in itself does not exist and that what people call "evil" is simply the lack of good. Thus, his journey of conversion starts from the problem of evil and moves to theodicy. In Candide, however, the opposite occurs: Candide originally accepts the theodicy of Leibniz but moves to problematizing evil: the terrible misfortunes that befall Candide shake his faith in his theodicy. Thus, the two journeys can be seen as direct opposites of one another, putting Voltaire in dialogue with Augustine.