The Lisbon Earthquake

Voltaire’s “The Lisbon Earthquake” deals with many theological and philosophical problems, the most significant of which is arguably the problem of evil. The problem of evil is one of the largest philosophical problems faced by Christian thinkers, and its roots go back even farther than Christianity. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who Voltaire references at Line 210, articulated the problem through propositional logic. The first proposition is that if an omnipotent, benevolent God exists, then evil must not exist. The second proposition is that if evil exists, then an omnipotent, benevolent God must not. The assumption underpinning the argument is that a benevolent being would not allow evil to exist if it were in their power to disallow it. The fact that evil exists in the world, to Epicurus, proves through these propositions that an omnipotent, benevolent God must not exist.

The problem of evil is the thematic and argumentative undercurrent of “The Lisbon Earthquake.” Voltaire’s argument takes this problem of evil and plugs in the real-world example of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In the poem the event operates both as a synecdoche for evil and as proof of evil’s existence in the world. This is why in the opening argument the speaker argues that recounting the “horrors” and “lamentations” resultant from the earthquake will “Prove that philosophy is false and vain” (Lines 3, 5, 6).