The article discusses the transformations of the idea of park in modernity. In the Age of Enlightenment Europe replaced the white of medieval cathedrals with the green of parks. A man, like Candide from Voltaire’s satire, started to “cultivate his garden,” changing private parks in public spaces. As a consequence of that process the idea of park as a place where you could experience beauty and pleasure completely “vanished”. Urban green spaces started to be determined by an efficacy parameter – which can be witnessed in Le Corbusier’s or Ebenezer Howard’s projects – thus opening the way for transforming former landscape parks into modern places of consumption: commercial parks and amusement parks.
This article deals with the ways Voltaire makes references in his texts to the philosophical thought of Leibniz. To achieve maximum coherence, this paper only discusses those writings by Voltaire that most directly refer to the Leibnizian issues. These are primarily Poem on the Lisbon Disaster and the philosophical tale Candide, or Optimism. The article critically examines various aspects of Leibniz’s philosophy, such as the theory of pre-established harmony and the concept of monads, and above all the notion of the best possible universe. Moreover, selected aspects of Voltaire’s and Leibniz’s thoughts are compared. For the purpose of consistent analysis, the article primarily focuses on those features in the German philosopher’s system that were particularly questioned by the author of Candide.
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