Voltaire biography life

Voltaire spent three years in England, where he was influenced by British writers, such as William Shakespeare and also the different political system, which saw a constitutional monarchy rather than an absolute monarchy as in France. He also learnt from great scientists, such as Sir Isaac Newton. Voltaire was particularly impressed by the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, such as Adam Smith and David Hume, saying once:.

Although he had much in common with fellow French Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseauthe pair often disagreed and had a prickly relationship. On returning to France, he wrote letters praising the British system of government and their greater respect for freedom of speech. This enraged the French establishment, and again he was forced to flee Paris.

Seeking a safe place, Voltaire began a collaboration with Marquise du Chatelet. Voltaire argued for the separation of religion and state and also allowing freedom of belief and religious tolerance. Voltaire had a mixed opinion of the Bible and was willing to criticise it. Though not professing a religion, he believed in God, as a matter of reason.

Is it to believe that which is evident? It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason. InVoltaire returned to Paris, where he began a relationship with his niece, Marie Louise Mignot. They remained together until his death. The epic poem transformed French King Henry IV into a national hero for his attempts at instituting tolerance with his Edict of Nantes.

La Pucelleon the other hand, is a burlesque on the legend of Joan of Arc. Many of Voltaire's prose works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as polemics. Candide attacks the passivity inspired by Leibniz's philosophy of optimism through the character Pangloss's frequent refrain that, because God created it, this is of necessity the " best of all possible worlds ".

L'Homme aux quarante ecus The Man of Forty Pieces of Silver addresses social and political ways of the time; Zadig and others, the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy; and some were written to deride the Bible. In these works, Voltaire's ironic voltaire biography life, free of exaggeration, is apparent, particularly the restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment.

In general, his criticism and miscellaneous writing show a similar style to Voltaire's other works. Almost all of his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his caustic yet conversational tone. In a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings, he displays his skills at journalism.

The most oft-cited Voltaire quotation is apocryphal. He is incorrectly credited with writing, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Tallentyre in her biographical book The Friends of Voltaire. Then, in his Dictionnaire philosophiquecontaining such articles as "Abraham", "Genesis", "Church Council", he wrote about what he perceived as the human origins of dogmas and beliefs, as well as inhuman behavior of religious and political institutions in shedding blood over the quarrels of competing sects.

Amongst other targets, Voltaire criticized France's colonial policy in North America, dismissing the vast territory of New France as " a few acres of snow " " quelques arpents de neige ". Voltaire also engaged in an enormous amount of private correspondence during his life, totalling over 20, letters. Theodore Besterman 's collected edition of these letters, completed only infills volumes.

In Voltaire's correspondence with Catherine the Great he derided democracy. He wrote, "Almost nothing great has ever been done in the world except by the genius and firmness of a single man combating the prejudices of the multitude. Like other key Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire was a deist. Is it to believe that which is evident? It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being.

This is no matter of faith, but of reason. In a essay, Voltaire supported the toleration of other religions and ethnicities: "It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. The Turk my brother?

The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God? In one of his many denunciations of priests of every religious sect, Voltaire describes them as those who "rise from an incestuous bed, manufacture a hundred versions of God, then eat and drink God, then piss and shit God.

Historians have described Voltaire's description of the history of Christianity as "propagandistic". Voltaire is partially responsible for the misattribution of the expression Credo quia absurdum to the Church Fathers. Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among those who wish to think.

My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable which the human mind can point out. It is characteristic of fanatics who read the holy scriptures to tell themselves: God killed, so I must kill; Abraham lied, Jacob deceived, Rachel stole: so I must steal, deceive, lie. But, wretch, you are neither Rachel, nor Jacob, nor Abraham, nor God; you are just a mad fool, and the popes who forbade the reading of the Bible were extremely wise.

Voltaire's opinion of the Bible was mixed. Although influenced by Socinian works such as the Bibliotheca Fratrum PolonorumVoltaire's skeptical attitude to the Bible separated him from Unitarian theologians like Fausto Sozzini or even Biblical-political writers like John Locke. The deeply Christian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote to his father the year of Voltaire's death, saying, "The arch-scoundrel Voltaire has finally kicked the bucket As Christianity advances, disasters befall the [Roman] empire—arts, science, literature, decay—barbarism and all its revolting concomitants are made to seem the consequences of its decisive triumph—and the unwary reader is conducted, with matchless dexterity, to the desired conclusion—the abominable Manicheism of Candideand, in fact, of all the productions of Voltaire's historic school—viz.

However, Voltaire also acknowledged the self-sacrifice of Christians. He wrote: "Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our voltaire biography life. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity.

The attack, launched at first against clericalism and theocracy, ended in a furious assault upon Holy Scripture, the dogmas of the Church, and even upon the person of Jesus Christ Himself, who [he] depicted now as a degenerate. According to Orthodox rabbi Joseph Telushkinthe most significant Enlightenment hostility against Judaism was found in Voltaire; [ ] 30 of the articles in his Dictionnaire philosophique dealt with Jews or Judaism, describing them in consistently negative ways.

Whatever anti-semitism Voltaire may have felt, Gay suggests, derived from negative personal experience. Arthur Hertzberga Conservative Rabbiclaims that Gay's second suggestion is untenable, as Voltaire himself denied its validity when he remarked that he had "forgotten about much larger bankruptcies through Christians". His remarks on the Jews and their "superstitions" were essentially no different from his remarks on Christians.

Voltaire said of the Jews that they "have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race. Some authors link Voltaire's anti-Judaism to his polygenism. According to Joxe Azurmendi this anti-Judaism has a relative importance in Voltaire's philosophy of history.

However, Voltaire's anti-Judaism influenced later voltaire biographies life like Ernest Renan. Voltaire did have a Jewish friend, Daniel de Fonsecawhom he esteemed highly, and proclaimed him as "the only philosopher, perhaps, among the Jews of his time". Voltaire condemned the persecution of Jews on several occasions, including in Henriadeand he never advocated violence or attacks against them.

In his Essai sur les moeurs Voltaire denounced the ancient Hebrews in strong language. Subsequently, Voltaire agreed with the criticism of the anti-Semitic passages and stated that De Pinto's letter convinced him that there are "highly intelligent and cultivated people" among the Jews and that he had been "wrong to attribute to a whole nation the vices of some individuals"; [ ] he also promised to revise the objectionable passages for forthcoming editions of the Dictionnaire philosophiquebut he failed to do so.

Voltaire's views about Islam were generally negative, and he found its holy book, the Quranto be ignorant of the laws of physics. In this essay, Voltaire maintained that Mohammed was a "sublime charlatan". It must be admitted that he removed almost all of Asia from idolatry" and that "it was difficult for such a simple and wise religion, taught by a man who was constantly victorious, could hardly fail to subjugate a portion of the earth.

As a historian, he devoted several chapters to Islam, [ ] [ ] [ ] Voltaire highlighted the Arabian, Turkish courts, and conducts. According to Malise Ruthvenas Voltaire learned more about Islam his opinion of the faith became more positive. The play is a study of religious fanaticism and self-serving manipulation. The character Muhammad orders the murder of his critics.

Voltaire described Muhammad as an "impostor", a "false prophet", a "fanatic" and a "hypocrite". In his play, Muhammad is "whatever trickery can invent that is most atrocious and whatever fanaticism can accomplish that is most horrifying. Mahomet here is nothing other than Tartuffe with armies at his command. Voltaire continued about Islam, saying:.

Nothing is more terrible than a people who, having nothing to lose, fight in the united spirit of rapine and of religion. In a letter recommending the play to Pope Benedict XIVVoltaire described Muhammad as "the founder of a false and barbarous sect" and "a false prophet". Voltaire wrote: "Your holiness will pardon the liberty taken by one of the lowest of the faithful, though a zealous admirer of virtue, of submitting to the head of the true religion this performance, written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect.

To whom could I with more propriety inscribe a satire on the cruelty and errors of a false prophet, than to the vicar and representative of a God of truth and mercy? Commenting on the sacred texts of the Hindus, the VedasVoltaire observed:. The Veda was the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East. He regarded Hindus as "a peaceful and innocent people, equally incapable of hurting others or of defending themselves.

Works attributed to Confucius were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit missionaries stationed in China. Translations of Confucian texts influenced European thinkers of the period, [ ] particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who hoped to improve European morals and institutions by the serene doctrines of the East.

Confucius has no interest in falsehood; he did not pretend to be prophet; he claimed no inspiration; he taught no new religion; he used no delusions; flattered not the emperor under whom he lived Voltaire rejected the biblical Adam and Eve story and was a polygenist who speculated that each race had entirely separate origins. His most famous remark on slavery is found in Candidewhere the hero is horrified to learn "at what price we eat sugar in Europe" after coming across a slave in French Guiana who has been mutilated for escaping, who opines that, if all human beings have common origins as the Bible taught, it makes them cousins, concluding that "no one could treat their relatives more horribly".

Elsewhere, he wrote caustically about "whites and Christians [who] proceed to purchase negroes cheaply, in order to sell them dear in America". Voltaire has been accused of supporting the slave trade as per a letter attributed to him, [ ] [ ] [ ] although it has been suggested that this letter is a forgery "since no satisfying source attests to the letter's existence.

In his Philosophical DictionaryVoltaire endorses Montesquieu 's criticism of the slave trade: "Montesquieu was almost always in error with the learned, because he was not learned, but he was almost always right against the fanatics and the promoters of slavery. Zeev Sternhell argues that despite his shortcomings, Voltaire was a forerunner of liberal pluralism in his approach to history and non-European cultures.

This great misunderstanding about Chinese rituals has come about because we have judged their usages by ours, for we carry the prejudices of our contentious spirit to the end of the world. When writing about India, he declares, "It is time for us to give up the shameful habit of slandering all sects and insulting all nations! According to Victor Hugo : "To name Voltaire is to characterize the entire eighteenth century.

The more I read Voltaire the more I love him. He is a man always reasonable, never a charlatan, never a fanatic" [ ] though he later criticized Voltaire's work Mahomet during his captivity on Saint Helena. I shall say as much to Sophocles and Euripides; I shall speak to Thucydides of your histories, to Quintus Curtius of your Charles XII ; and perhaps I shall be stoned by these jealous dead because a single man has united all their different voltaire biographies life in himself.

In Russia, Catherine the Great had been reading Voltaire for sixteen years prior to becoming Empress in The content of these letters has been described as being akin to a student writing to a teacher. GogolVissarion Belinsky wrote that Voltaire "stamped out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe by ridicule. When Comte de Lally was executed for treason inVoltaire wrote a page document in his defense.

Subsequently, inthe judgment against de Lally was expunged just before Voltaire's death. The Genevan Protestant minister Pomaret once said to Voltaire, "You seem to attack Christianity, and yet you do the work of a Christian. Under the French Third Republicanarchists and socialists often invoked Voltaire's writings in their struggles against militarism, nationalism, and the Catholic Church.

Italy had a Renaissanceand Germany had a Reformationbut France had Voltaire; he was for his country both Renaissance and Reformation, and half the Revolution. His spirit moved like a flame over the continent and the century, and stirs a million souls in every generation. Voltaire's junior contemporary Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented on how Voltaire's book Letters on the English played a great role in his intellectual development.

Subsequently, when Rousseau sent Voltaire a copy of his book Discourse on InequalityVoltaire replied, noting his disagreement with the views expressed in the book:. No one has ever employed so much intellect to persuade men to be beasts. However, as it is more than sixty years since I lost that habit, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me to resume it.

No more about Jean-Jacques' romance if you please.

Voltaire biography life

I have read it, to my sorrow, and it would be to his if I had time to say what I think of this silly book. Voltaire quipped that the first half of Julie had been written in a brothel and the second half in a lunatic asylum. Paris recognized Voltaire's hand and judged the patriarch to be bitten by jealousy. In reviewing Rousseau's book EmileVoltaire dismissed it as "a hodgepodge of a silly wet nurse in four volumes, with forty pages against Christianity, among the boldest ever known.

InRousseau published Lettres de la montagne on religion and politics. In the fifth letter he wondered why Voltaire had not been able to imbue the Genevan councilors, who frequently met him, "with that spirit of tolerance which he preaches without cease, and of which he sometimes has need". The letter continued with an imaginary speech in the voice of Voltaire, acknowledging authorship of the heretical book Sermon of the Fiftywhich the real Voltaire had repeatedly denied.

Inwhen a priest sent Rousseau a pamphlet denouncing Voltaire, Rousseau responded by defending his rival:. He has said and done so many good things that we should draw the curtain over his irregularities. This was met by a sharp retort from Rousseau:. How dare you mock the honors rendered to Voltaire in the temple of which he is the god, and by the priests who for fifty years have been living off his masterpieces?

On 2 JulyRousseau died one month after Voltaire. Voltaire perceived the French voltaire biography life to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the Church as a static and oppressive force useful only on occasion as a counterbalance to the rapacity of kings, although all too often, even more rapacious itself.

Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. But his disappointments and disillusions with Frederick the Great changed his philosophy somewhat, and soon gave birth to one of his most enduring works, his novella Candide, ou l'Optimisme Candide, or Optimism,which ends with a new conclusion of quietism : "It is up to us to cultivate our garden.

Candide was also burned, and Voltaire jokingly claimed the actual author was a certain 'Demad' in a letter, where he reaffirmed the main polemical stances of the text. He particularly had admiration for the ethics and government as exemplified by the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Voltaire is also known for many memorable aphorisms, such as " Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer " "If God did not exist, it voltaire biography life be necessary to invent him"contained in a verse epistle fromaddressed to the anonymous author of a controversial work on The Three Impostors.

But far from being the cynical remark it is often taken for, it was meant as a retort to atheistic opponents such as d'HolbachGrimmand others. He has had his detractors among his later colleagues. The Scottish Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle argued that "Voltaire read history, not with the eye of devout seer or even critic, but through a pair of mere anti-catholic spectacles.

The town of Ferney, where Voltaire lived out the last 20 years of his life, was officially named Ferney-Voltaire in honor of its most famous resident, in A lateth-century industrial music group later adopted the same name. Astronomers have bestowed his name on the Voltaire crater on Deimos and the asteroid Voltaire. Voltaire was also known to have been an advocate for coffee, drinking it at every turn: fifty times a day, according to Frederick the Great; three times a day, said Wagniere.

In the s, the bibliographer and translator Theodore Besterman started to collect, transcribe and publish all of Voltaire's writings. Voltaire wrote between fifty and sixty plays tragediesincluding a few unfinished ones. The complex soul of France seemed to have divided itself into these two men, so different and yet so French. Nietzsche speaks of " la gaya scienzathe light feet, wit, fire, grace, strong logic, arrogant intellectuality, the dance of the stars"—surely he was thinking of Voltaire.

Now beside Voltaire put Rousseau: all heat and fantasy, a man with noble and jejune visions, the idol of la bourgeois gentile-femmeannouncing like Pascal that the heart has its reason which the head can never understand. It would seem he used the pen name as a means of hiding his identity from his family. Voltaire told his father that he was working as a notary in Paris when he was really spending most of his time writing poetry.

His father was furious when he found out and forced Voltaire to enter law school. The young philosopher continued to write even when after he was sent to work in the embassy at the Netherlands. He eventually lost his job for having an affair with a young woman. Eventually, he returned to Paris where he continued writing. He had a large number of readers and even those in the aristocracy spoke highly of his muse.

Not everyone was fond of what he had written. Not to be deterred, Voltaire continued to write and even produce plays. Voltaire wrote several very well-received and extremely controversial selections. In truth, he did suffer for his arts as he was constantly being imprisoned or placed in exile. As a vegetarian and an advocate of animal rights, however, Voltaire praised Hinduism, stating Hindus were "[a] peaceful and innocent people, equally incapable of hurting others or of defending themselves.

Voltaire wrote poetry and plays, as well as historical and philosophical works. His most well-known poetry includes The Henriade and The Maid of Orleanswhich he started writing in but never fully completed. Among the earliest of Voltaire's best-known plays is his adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipuswhich was first performed in Voltaire followed with a string of dramatic tragedies, including Mariamne In the latter, Voltaire took a unique approach to tracing the progression of world civilization by focusing on social history and the arts.

Candide is filled with philosophical and religious parody, and in the end the characters reject optimism. There is great debate on whether Voltaire was making an actual statement about embracing a pessimistic philosophy or if he was trying to encourage people to be actively involved to improve society. Inhe published another of his acclaimed philosophical works, Dictionnaire philosophiquean encyclopedic dictionary that embraced the concepts of Enlightenment and rejected the ideas of the Roman Catholic Church.

InVoltaire was exiled to Tulle for mocking the duc d'Orleans. Inhe returned to Paris, only to be arrested and exiled to the Bastille for a year on charges of writing libelous poetry. Voltaire was sent to the Bastille again infor arguing with the Chevalier de Rohan.