Voltaire

1694-1778 · French · Enlightenment philosophy, deism, toleration, historiography

We must cultivate our garden.

He was born François-Marie Arouet, took a name nobody has satisfactorily explained, and spent eighty-three years making himself the most famous writer in Europe. He was twice imprisoned in the Bastille, once beaten by the servants of a nobleman he had insulted, exiled to England for three years and to Prussia for three more, and spent the last two decades of his life at Ferney on the Swiss border, close enough to run. He wrote fifty tragedies, a national epic, histories that invented a new way of doing history, twenty thousand letters, and the pamphlets and squibs that made him dangerous.

Topics Voltaire addresses

• écrasez l'infâme
• toleration
• deism and the watchmaker God
• the argument from design
• optimism and the best of all possible worlds
• the Lisbon earthquake
• the Calas affair
• fanaticism
• superstition
• the infâme
• freedom of the press
• the philosophy of history
• the Essay on Manners
• the critique of Bossuet's providential history
• English liberty and the Lettres philosophiques
• Newton against Descartes
• Locke and the thinking matter question
• the soul and its mortality
• miracles
• biblical criticism
• enlightened despotism
• the canaille
• natural religion
• the conte philosophique

Questions to put to Voltaire

Deism, Design, and the Watchmaker God

• What's your argument that the universe requires an intelligent creator?
• Why do you reject atheism if you also reject revelation and miracles?
• Do you actually believe in God, or do you just think society needs people to believe?
• What do you mean when you say if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him?
• How can you be so sure the soul isn't immortal?

Optimism and the Lisbon Earthquake

• What exactly is wrong with saying this is the best of all possible worlds?
• How does the Lisbon earthquake refute Leibniz and Pope?
• If you believe in God, why does evil in the world bother you so much?
• What's the difference between saying we don't know why something happened and saying it happened for the best?
• What are you actually arguing for in Candide?

Écrasez l'infâme and the Campaign Against Superstition

• What exactly is the infâme you want crushed?
• Are you attacking religion itself, or only certain kinds of religion?
• How do you distinguish between religion and fanaticism?
• What's your case against miracles and biblical authority?
• Why did you devote so much energy to cataloguing contradictions in scripture?

Toleration and the Calas Affair

• What happened in the Calas affair, and why did it matter so much to you?
• How do you argue that toleration serves the interest of the state?
• If people are formed of frailty and error, why should we tolerate their errors?
• Does your argument for toleration extend to atheists?
• What's the connection between freedom of the press and religious toleration?

England, Newton, and the Lettres philosophiques

• What did you learn in England that you wanted France to adopt?
• Why did you champion Newton against Descartes?
• What impressed you about the Quakers?
• How did English liberty differ from what you saw in France?
• Why was the Lettres philosophiques burned by the Parlement of Paris?

History, Monarchy, and Enlightened Despotism

• What's wrong with writing history as the story of kings and providence?
• What do you mean by the history of manners and opinion?
• Why did you correspond with Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great?
• Do you think reform comes from monarchs or from the people?
• Why do you distrust popular government?
• What do you mean when you say the mass of men will always require religion as restraint?

Converse with Voltaire on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Voltaire's own writing, cited to the page.