September 28, 2003
Voltaire's Candide & the Plucked Chicken
I should have done this years ago, but I've only just now gotten around to reading Voltaire's Candide. I finished it in a few hours. It's pretty short: the actual text of the story embedded in the Daniel Gordon translation I have is 79 pages, surrounded by commentary and historiography. I'm going back through my marked-up copy of the text and looking into some of the parts I found most interesting. Near the end of Chapter 3 is this little gem:
A man who had never been baptized, a good Anabaptist named Jacques, saw the cruel and ignominious treatment inflicted on one of his fellows, a two-legged creature without feathers and with a soul [emphasis mine].
Does anyone else find this as funny as I do? One of my longstanding interests is philosophy, so I immediately recognized the reference. Here's one short account of the dispute between Plato and Diogenes on the nature of man:
Plato once defined man as a "featherless biped". When the philosopher Diogenes heard about Plato's definition, he presented his rival with a plucked chicken. "Here," he then declared, "is Plato's man!" [Plato then added "having broad nails" to his original definition.]
Priceless.
Posted by Russell Whitaker at September 28, 2003 12:58 PM | TrackBackComments
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