To Give Providence a Shake

For Enlightenment, in the middle of 18th century, it is significant to understand nature in the categories of physical and moral order. Providence plays special role in it: it guarantees this order, but, at the same time, it is subordinated to the rules of that order rigorously. In this perspective, monsters and natural disasters, i.e. contingent accidents, through which nature seems to negate itself and to question its rational order, are of special interest and, from an epistemological point of view, are quite confusing. Earthquake, which on 1st November 1755 happened in Lisbon, provokes a lot of impetuous discussions. In this essay the author describes polemics in this matter between Voltaire and Rousseau, and the later standpoint by Condorcet.