Letters on the English (Lettres philosophiques) (1733)
Praises English religious tolerance, Newton, Locke and parliamentary government as a rebuke to France; publicly burned in Paris (French edition 1734)
Philosophy
Voltaire
1694–1778 · French
Enlightenment; deism
Voltaire, the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, was the most famous writer and polemicist of the French Enlightenment. A deist rather than an atheist, he campaigned for religious toleration, freedom of expression and legal reform, and attacked clerical power and philosophical complacency with wit, above all in the satirical novella Candide.
How to spot them
- ▸Real name François-Marie Arouet; the Calas affair; the estate at Ferney
- ▸Candide, Pangloss and "the best of all possible worlds"; "we must cultivate our garden"
- ▸"Écrasez l'infâme" ("Crush the infamous thing") — his rallying cry against religious intolerance
- ▸Admirer of Newton, Locke and English liberty after his exile in England
Key works
Zadig (1747)
Philosophical tale of a Babylonian sage buffeted by fate, probing providence and reason
Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759)
Satire in which the tutor Pangloss insists all is for the best amid war, earthquake and cruelty — a mockery of Leibnizian optimism
Treatise on Tolerance (Traité sur la tolérance) (1763)
Plea for religious toleration prompted by the judicial murder of the Protestant Jean Calas
Philosophical Dictionary (Dictionnaire philosophique) (1764)
Alphabetical articles attacking the Church, dogma and superstition
Key ideas
- Deism: God exists as a rational creator, knowable through nature and reason, but revealed religion, miracles and clerical authority deserve scepticism
- Religious toleration: persecution for belief is irrational and barbaric; his campaigns in the Calas and other cases put this into practice
- Anti-optimism: the Lisbon earthquake (1755) and human suffering refute the Leibnizian claim that this is "the best of all possible worlds"
- Practical wisdom over metaphysics: Candide ends with "il faut cultiver notre jardin" — get on with useful work rather than idle speculation
- Admiration for English empiricism and science (Locke and Newton) as models for reforming French thought
Quick-fire facts
- •Was imprisoned in the Bastille (1717–18), where he adopted the name Voltaire
- •Lived in exile in England 1726–28, attending Newton's funeral in 1727
- •Lived with the mathematician and physicist Émilie du Châtelet at Cirey, and stayed at Frederick the Great's court at Potsdam (1750–53)
- •"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is NOT his — it was written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906 summarising his attitude
- •Genuinely wrote "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" (1770 verse epistle)
- •The phrase "pour encourager les autres" comes from Candide, alluding to the execution of Admiral Byng in 1757
- •Wrote the "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster" (1756) and the early science-fiction tale Micromégas (1752)
- •His remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris in 1791
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Voltaire
- Bertrand Russell — A History of Western Philosophy