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For the singer/songwriter of the same name, see Voltaire (musician).
File:Voltaire houdon.jpg
The last of Voltaire's statues by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1781).

François-Marie Arouet (November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire (also called The Dictator of Letters), was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher.

Voltaire is well-known for his sharp wit, philosophical writings, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict censorship laws in France and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Church dogma and the French institutions of his day. Voltaire is considered one of the most influential figures of his time.

Biography

Early years

François Marie Arouet was born in Paris, France in 1694, the son of a notary (one who certifies legal documents) named Francois Arouet and his wife, Marie Marguerite D'Aumard. Most of Arouet’s life revolved around Paris until his exile. Arouet was educated at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, where Arouet’s education of the arts began. However, Arouet claimed to not have learned anything other than “Latin and the Stupidities.” Arouet spent eight years there, and, despite of the earlier rejection, the school allowed for his development of literary talents, especially in the area of theater.

After graduating, Arouet set out to begin a writing career. However, Arouet’s father was intent on having his son educated in law. Arouet then pretended to work in Paris as a lawyer’s assistant; however, much of his time was spent writing derogatory poetry. When Arouet’s father found out, he again sent Arouet to study law, but in the country. Arouet, nevertheless, continued to write, this time writing essays and historical (though not necessarily accurate) works. Arouet’s satirical wit made him popular among aristocratic families, and he continued to write about leading historical figures. One such work about Louis XIV’s regent, Philippe II, led to his being sent to the Bastille. There, Arouet wrote his debut play, Oedipe, and changed his name to Voltaire. Oedipe’s success began Voltaire’s influences and brought him into the Enlightment.

Exile to England

Voltaire’s repartee continued to bring him trouble, however. A battle of wits between him and the Chevalier de Rohan led to an infuriated nobleman. Using a lettre de cachet, a secret warrant that allowed for the punishment of people who had committed no crimes, the Chevalier de Rohan exiled Voltaire without a trial. This marked the beginning of Voltaire’s attempt to ameliorate the French judiciary system.

Voltaire’s exile to England greatly impacted him through ideas and experiences. The young man was greatly impressed by England’s monarchy, combined with the freedoms of speech and religion. He also met several influential people, such as Shakespeare, which he saw as an example French writers should look to. Many of his later works were influenced by this stay. After having been exiled for three years, Voltaire returned to Paris and published his ideas in a fictional document about the English government in his Lettres philosophiques (Philosophical letters on the English). Due to the fact that Voltaire regarded the English monarchy as more developed and more respectful of human rights (religious tolerance) than its French counterpart, these letters met great controversy in France, to the point where copies of the document were burned and Voltaire forced to leave Paris.

The Château de Cirey

Voltaire then set out to the Château de Cirey, on the borders of Champagne, France and Lorraine, renovated with a portion of his large sum of money, and lived in safety for fifteen years with the Marquise du Châtelet, Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil. A fifteen-year relationship between the two led to much intellectual development. Voltaire and the Marquise collected over 21,000 books, an enormous amount for their time. Together, Voltaire and the Marquise also studied these books and performed experiments. Both worked on experimenting with the ‘natural sciences,’ the term used in that epoch for physics, in his laboratory. Voltaire attempted many experiments, including one performed to determine the properties of fire.

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica comments that, "If the English visit may be regarded as having finished Voltaire's education, the Cirey residence was the first stage of his literary manhood." Having learnt from his previous brushes with the authorities, Voltaire began his future habit of keeping out of personal harm's way, and denying any awkward responsibility. He continued to write, publishing plays such as Mérope and some short stories. Again, a main source of inspiration for Voltaire were the years he spent exiled in England. During his time there, Voltaire had been strongly influenced by the works of Sir Isaac Newton, a leading philosopher and scientist of the epoch. Voltaire strongly believed in Newton’s theories, especially concerning optics (Newton’s discovery that white light is comprised of all the colors in the spectrum led to many experiments on his and the Marquise’s part), and gravity (the story of Newton and the apple falling from the tree is mentioned in his Essai sur la poésie épique (Essay on Epic Poetry)). Although both Voltaire and the Marquise were also curious about the philosophies of Gottfried Leibniz, a contemporary and rival, of Newton, Voltaire and the Marquise remained “Newtonians” and based their theories on Newton’s works and ideas. Though it has been stated that the Marquise may have been more “Leibnizian,” which may have caused tension between the two, this is probably exaggeration; the Marquise even wrote “je newtonise,” which means “I am “newtoning”. Voltaire wrote a book on Newton’s philosophies: the Eléments de la philosophie de Newton (The Elements of Newton’s Philosophies). The Elements was probably written with the Marquise, and describes the other branches of Newton’s ideas that fascinated him: it spoke of optics and the theory of attraction (gravity).

Voltaire and the Marquise also studied history - particularly the people who built up civilization to the point it was at the time. Voltaire had worked with history since his time in England; his second essay in English was entitled Essay upon the Civil Wars in France. When he returned to France, Voltaire wrote a biographical essay over King Charles XII. This essay was the beginning of Voltaire’s rejection of religion; he wrote that human life is not destined or controlled by greater beings. The essay gave him the position of historian in the king’s court, Voltaire and the Marquise also worked with philosophy, particularly with metaphysics, or the branch of philosophy dealing with the distant, and what cannot be directly proven: why and what life is, whether or not there is a God, and so on. Voltaire and the Marquise analyzed the Bible, trying to find its validity in the world. Voltaire renounced religion; he believed in the separation of church and state and in religious freedom, ideas he formed after his stay in England. Voltaire even claimed that the Bible would be short-lived, that it wouldn’t survive beyond a hundred years after his death.

After the death of the Marquise, Voltaire moved to Berlin to join Frederick of Prussia. The king had repeatedly invited him to his palace, and now gave him 20,000 francs a year. Though life went well at first, he began to encounter difficulties. Faced with a lawsuit and an argument with the president of the Berlin Academy of science, Voltaire wrote the Diatribe du docteur Akakia (Diatribe of Doctor Akakia) which derided the president. This greatly angered Frederick, who had all copies of the document burned and arrested Voltaire at an inn where he was staying along his journey home. Voltaire headed toward Paris, but Louis XIV banned him from the city, so Voltaire turned to Geneva, where he bought a large estate. Though he was received openly at first, the law in Geneva which banned theatrical performances and the publication of La pucelle dÓrléans against his will led to Voltaire’s writing of Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Optimism) and eventually his departure.

Final years

File:Voltaire'sdeathmask.jpg
Voltaire's Death mask

Voltaire settled in Ferney, an estate along the Swiss-French border. There he took up a fight for workers’ rights; his attack on serfdom made him extremely popular and influential in the politics of the area. Ironically, he provided money for the renovation of the church (the inscription “Deo erexit Voltaire” (Voltaire erected this to God) was placed on it) while his chief concern at the time was to fight the church.

In 1778, he returned to Paris for the first time in 28 years. There, he saw a performance of his play, Irene. Its success encouraged him to begin another tragedy. However, on May 30th of that year, he became ill. During that night, he passed away.

He was buried in the Abbey of Scellères, and his body was transferred to the Panthéon on July 10th, 1971, during the French Revolution. In 1814, after the first fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the House of Bourbon monarchy, Voltaire's bones were removed from the Pantheon and destroyed. His heart is preserved at La Comedie Francaise.

Works

Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form, authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, pamphlets, and over 20,000 letters.

Major works

Plays

Voltaire wrote between fifty and sixty plays (including a few unfinished ones). Ironically, despite Voltaire's comic talent, he wrote only one good comedy, Nanine, but many good tragedies -- two of them, Zaire and Mérope, are ranked among the ten or twelve best plays of the whole French classical school.

Poetry

From an early age, Voltaire displayed a talent for writing verse, and his first published work was poetry.

Voltaire wrote two long poems, the Henriade, and the Pucelle, besides many other smaller pieces. The Henriade has by wide consent been relegated to the position of a school reading book. Constructed and written in almost slavish imitation of Virgil, employing for medium a very unsuitable vehicle—the Alexandrine couplet (as reformed and rendered monotonous for dramatic purposes) —and animated neither by enthusiasm for the subject nor by real understanding thereof, it could not but be an unsatisfactory performance.

The Pucelle, if morally inferior, is from a literary point of view of far more value, it is desultory to a degree; it is a base libel on religion and history; it differs from its model Lodovico Ariosto in being, not, as Ariosto is, a mixture of romance and burlesque, but a sometimes tedious tissue of burlesque pure and simple. Nevertheless, with all the Pucelle 's faults, it is amusing. The minor poems are as much above the Pucelle as the Pucelle is above the Henriade.

Prose and romances

These productions—incomparably the most remarkable and most absolutely good fruit of his genius—were usually composed as pamphlets, with a purpose of polemic in religion, politics, or what not. Thus Candide attacks religious and philosophical optimism, L'Homme aux quarante ecus certain social and political ways of the time, Zadig and others the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy, while some are mere lampoons on the Bible, the unfailing source of Voltaire's wit. But (as always happens in the case of literary work where the form exactly suits the author's genius) the purpose in all the best of them disappears almost entirely.

It is in these works more than in any others that the peculiar quality of Voltaire—ironic style without exaggeration—appears. If one especial peculiarity can be singled out, it is the extreme restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment. Voltaire never dwells too long on this point, stays to laugh at what he has said, elucidates or comments on his own jokes, guffaws over them or exaggerates their form. The famous "pour encourager les autres" (that the shooting of Byng did "encourage the others" very much is not to the point) is a typical example, and indeed the whole of Candide shows the style at its perfection. Voltaire has, in common with Jonathan Swift, the distinction of paving the way for science fiction's philosophical irony. See especially Micromegas.

Historical

Voltaire wrote several major historical works, including:

  • History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (2 volumes 1731 age:37)
  • The Age of Louis XIV (3 volumes 1752 age 58)
  • The Age of Louis XV (3 Volumes 1746 age 52 to 1752 age 58)
  • Annals of the Empire - Charlemagne, A.D. 742 - Henry VII 1313, Vol. I (1754 age: 60)
  • Annals of the Empire - Louis of Bavaria, 1315 to Ferdinand II 1631 Vol. II (1754 age: 60)
  • History of the Russian Empire Under Peter the Great (Vol I, 1759 age: 65; Vol. II 1763 - age 69)

An Investigator of Gospels

Voltaire opposed Christian beliefs fiercely, but not consistently. On one hand, he claimed that the Gospels were figmented and Jesus did not exist--that they were produced by those who wanted to create God in their own image and were full of discrepancies. On the other hand, he claimed that this very same community preserved the texts without making any change to adjust those discrepancies. However, the defense of Christian apologetics of his time was usually not very convincing either, as many avoided Voltaire's work.

Philosophy

Voltaire wrote philosophical works as well as fiction and poetry. His largest philosophical work is the Dictionnaire philosophique, comprising articles contributed by him to the great Encyclopédie and of several minor pieces. While it directed criticism against French political institutions and Voltaire's personal enemies, the work mostly targeted the Bible and the Catholic Church. While his work is too superficial and common-sense to serve as philosophy in the sense of Kant or Rawles, it draws brilliant and insightful observations on concrete problems. The book ranks perhaps second only to the novels as showing the character, literary and personal, of Voltaire; and despite its form it is nearly as readable.

Miscellaneous

In general criticism and miscellaneous writing Voltaire is not inferior to himself in any of his other functions. Almost all his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his own light pungent causerie; and in a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings he shows himself a perfect journalist. In literary criticism pure and simple his principle work is the Commentaire sur Corneille, though he wrote a good deal more of the same kind—sometimes (as in his Life and notices of Molière) independently sometimes as part of his Siécles. Nowhere, perhaps, except when he is dealing with religion, are Voltaire's defects felt more than here. He was quite unacquainted with the history of his own language and literature, and more here than anywhere else he showed the extraordinarily limited and conventional spirit which accompanied the revolt of the French 18th century against limits and conventions in theological, ethical and political matters.

Correspondence

There remains only the huge division of his correspondence, which is constantly being augmented by fresh discoveries, and which, according to Georges Bengesco, has never been fully or correctly printed, even in some of the parts longest known. In this great mass Voltaire's personality is of course best shown, and perhaps his literary qualities not worst. His immense energy and versatility, his adroit and unhesitating flattery when he chose to flatter, his ruthless sarcasm when he chose to be sarcastic, his rather unscrupulous business faculty, his more than rather unscrupulous resolve to double and twist in any fashion so as to escape his enemies—all these things appear throughout the whole mass of letters.

Voltaire's works, and especially his private letters, constantly contain the word l'infâme and the expression (in full or abbreviated) écrasez l'infâme. This has been misunderstood in many ways - the mistake going so far as in some cases to suppose that Voltaire meant Christ by this opprobrious expression. No careful and competent student of his works has ever failed to correct this gross misapprehension. L'infâme is not God; it is not Christ; it is not Christianity; it is not even Catholicism. Its briefest equivalent may be given as "persecuting and privileged orthodoxy" in general, and, more particularly, it is the particular system which Voltaire saw around him, of which he had felt the effects in his own exiles and the confiscations of his books, and of which he saw the still worse effects in the hideous sufferings of Calas and La Barre.

Legacy

Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie 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 force only useful as a counterbalance since its "religious tax", or the tithe, helped to cement a powerbase against the monarchy.

Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. To Voltaire only an enlightened monarch, or Enlightened Absolutism, advised by philosophers like himself, could bring about change as it was in the king's rational interest to improve the power and wealth of France in the world. Voltaire is quoted as saying that he "would rather obey one lion, than 200 rats of (his own) species". Voltaire essentially believed monarchy to be the key to progress and change.

He is best known today for his novel, Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759), which satirizes the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz. Candide was subject to censorship and Voltaire did not openly claim it as his own work [1].

Voltaire is also known for many memorable aphorisms, like Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"), contained in a verse epistle from 1768, addressed to the anonymous author of a controversial work, The Three Impostors.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, not to be confused with the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sent a copy of his "Ode to Posterity" to Voltaire. Voltaire read it through and said, "I do not think this poem will reach its destination."

Voltaire is remembered and honoured in France as a courageous polemicist, who indefatigably fought for civil rights — the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion — and who denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the ancien régime.

But some of his critics, like Thomas Carlyle, do argue that while he was unsurpassed in literary form, not even the most elaborate of his works was of much value for matter, and that he has never uttered any significant idea of his own.

Contemporary Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul lays the blame for the failures of Western, technocratic society with Voltaire in his book Voltaire's Bastards: the Dictatorship of Reason in the West.

The town of Ferney (France) where he lived his last 20 years of life, is now named Ferney-Voltaire. His Château is now a museum (L'Auberge de l'Europe). Voltaire's library is preserved intact in the Russian National Library, St Petersburg.

Quotations

Wikiquote has quotations related to Voltaire.
  • "This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."
  • "You know that these two nations are at war over a few acres of snow near Canada, and that they are spending on this little war more than all of Canada is worth."
  • "In this country, from time to time, we like to kill an admiral, to encourage the others" (Referencing the execution of Admiral Byng)(Candide)
  • "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
  • "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it."
  • "Common sense is not so common."
  • "If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism; if there were two they would cut each other’s throats. But there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness."
  • "I shall finally have to renounce your Optimism? I'm afraid to say that it's a mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly." (Candide, renouncing the Leibnizian Optimism)
  • "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
  • "One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker." (1776)
  • "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." (Essay on Tolerance)
  • "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." Translation: "The best is the enemy of the good." (Dictionnaire Philosophique).
  • "Now now, dear man, this is not the time to be making enemies." (on his death bed when a priest asked him to "renounce satan")
  • "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." (Epistle on the "Three Imposters"). This statement by Voltaire became so familiar that Gustave Flaubert included it in his Dictionnaire des idées reçues ("Dictionary of commonplace ideas"), and it is still among the most frequently quoted of Voltaire's dicta [2].
  • "Truth is a fruit that can only be picked when it is very ripe."
  • "The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."

Misattribution

The following quote is commonly misattributed to Voltaire:

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

It was actually first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G. Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's attitude, based on statements in Essay on Tolerance where he asserts: "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Hall does not actually attribute it to him, but suggests it's in keeping with his attitude.

See also

French Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Voltaire.

References

  • Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • Spielvogel -- Western Civilization -- Volume II: Since 1500 (5th Edition -- 2003)
  • "Voltaire, Author and Philosopher." Lucidcafé. 8 Oct. 2005. Lucidcafé. 25 Nov. 2005 [3].
  • "Voltaire", in Richard Shenkman, Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of World History (HarperCollins, 1993), pages 148-51 passim.
  • "Voltaire", by Thomas S. Vernon. [4].
  • McNeil, Russell. "Voltaire (1694)." Malaspina Great Books. 25 Nov. 2005 [5].
  • Wade, Ira O. Studies on Voltaire. New York, NY : Russell & Russell, 1967.

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