Voltaire

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“”I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to misattribute it to Voltaire.

—Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), better known by his "trade" name Voltaire, was a poet, playwright, novelist, historian, and philosopher who embodied the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century absolutist France. Voltaire was an Anglophile, and was instrumental in bringing the works of Newton and Locke from England to French intellectual circles. He is widely considered one of the greatest and most gifted Enlightenment writers.

Views and ideas

“”Though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of God is the problem to begin with.

—Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

As self-proclaimed deist, Voltaire loathed organized religion and intolerance between creeds. Strong anti-clericalism pervades most of Voltaire's writings. He believed that all religions attempt to teach morality and that all are based on just precepts — it is only the particulars of religious beliefs that are "absurd." As a deist, he was a supporter of the "clockmaker" argument for the existence of God. Voltaire despised superstition and optimism, themes that surface in the novel Candide, his most widely-known work. Voltaire subscribed to the revolutionary Enlightenment notion that "custom is a greater decider of difference than nature," a principle that still holds for today's anthropologists and all who practice multiculturalism.

Voltaire was also something of a popular science writer. For example, he published a condensed version of Isaac Newton's Principia, Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, to teach the French people about Newton's work on physics as well as counteract the influence of Cartesian philosophy, which he felt was clinging on to illusions rather than fully committing to skepticism.

That said, no man is perfect. Voltaire was also a virulent anti-Semite, referring to the Jewish people as "calculating animals," "plagiarists in everything," and "the biggest tramps who have ever spoiled the face of the earth." He was also a Eurocentric racist, a critic of Islam (some people take that to be Islamophobia) and derided Africans as "less intelligent than apes." In A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary he denounced the Egyptians as being "contemptible" and argued that their characters were fundamentally flawed simply because he disagreed with Egyptian governmental policy regarding slavery. Jeez, Volty. Everyone today would have loved you if it wasn't for that.

Despite this, he does sympathetically portray a mutilated black slave in Candide, who laments his treatment and says that if, as the priests taught, all people descend from Adam, that means they're cousins, and "no one could treat their relatives more horribly." This wasn't so contradictory as it might seem, as abolitionists weren't immune from the racial prejudices of their time. While a handful were genuine egalitarians, most (including Abraham Lincoln) still believed that black people were inferior, though opposing their enslavement. Some, most notably within the Free Soil movement, also opposed slavery less on moral and humanitarian grounds than on pragmatic, working-class economic ones, seeing slavery as putting downward pressure on the wages of free white farmers and workers.

Famous quotes

• "Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."
• "Love truth, but pardon error."
• "To hold a pen is to be at war."
• "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
• "It is dangerous to be right in matters where established authorities are wrong."
• "A witty saying proves nothing."
• "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
• "Christianity is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloody religion that has ever infected the world."
• "The Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

Famous non-quotes

“”To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?

—Kevin Alfred Strom, "All America Must Know the Terror That is Upon Us" (1993)

A paraphrased version of this statement ("To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize") has been widely misattributed to Voltaire. The actual quote is from neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Kevin Alfred Strom.

A thorough search of his writings has never turned up his saying that while he disagrees with someone, Voltaire defends his right to say it. The quote was falsely attributed to him due to the fact that its creator, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, was a woman. Hall wrote it as part of a biography on him, and few to this day grant her credit as its creator.

There is a claim that on his deathbed, a priest called on him to renounce the devil but he said "This is no time to be making new enemies". This appears to have originated in a joke about a dying Irishman that was first published 78 years after his death.

See also

• Just world hypothesis
• Age of Enlightenment

External links

• Works of Voltaire in French and English on Wikisource