Abstract

The existence of evil seems to imply, according to the old Epicurean dilemma, that God cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent, and the search for the tortuous paths of Providence tends to become particularly urgent in the wake of great disasters. Voltaire’s Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, and Rousseau’s Lettre à Monsieur de Voltaire are two important attempts to provide philosophical answers to the questions raised by the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Voltaire’s alternative is simply to refuse the optimistic “all is well” philosophy of Leibniz and Pope, and proclaim that genuine and not only apparent evil is indeed loose on Earth. Rousseau undertakes the more arduous task of defending Providence, and manages to present some original considerations based on the idea of human responsibility in the disaster. In spite of a seemingly clear-cut opposition between the two authors, I hope to show in this paper that their disagreement is not so radical as it might seem, and that both are more interested in the practical consequences of their interpretations than in a dry re-enactment of old metaphysical and theological discussions