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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire
Voltaire
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François-Marie Arouet
Voltaire |
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Voltaire at 24, by Catherine Lusurier after Nicolas de Largillière 's painting |
| Born | 21 November 1694
Paris, France |
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| Died | 30 May 1778 ( 1778-05-30 ) (aged 83)
Paris, France |
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| Pen name | Voltaire |
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| Occupation | Writer, philosopher, playwright |
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| Nationality | French |
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Influences[show] |
Influenced[show] |
François-Marie Arouet ( French pronunciation: [f??~.swa ma.?i a?.w?] ; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen nameVoltaire ( pronounced: [v?l.t???] ), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws with harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.
Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Émilie du Châtelet ) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of
Philosophy
[edit] Religion
Voltaire at 70. Engraving from 1843 edition of his Philosophical Dictionary.
Voltaire did not believe that any single religious text or tradition of revelation was needed to believe in God. Voltaire's focus was rather on the idea of universal laws, demonstratable, and in the main, still waiting to be discovered in the physical world as well as those of the moral world, underlying every religious system, along with respect for nature reflecting the contemporary pantheism.
Like other key thinkers during the European Enlightenment, Voltaire considered himself a deist, expressing the idea: "What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. 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." [ 25 ] [ 26 ]
As for religious texts, Voltaire's opinion of the Bible was mixed. Although influenced by Socinian works such as the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, Voltaire's skeptical attitude to the Bible separated him from Unitarian theologians like Fausto Sozzini or even Biblical-political writers like John Locke. [ 27 ]
This did not hinder his religious practice, though it did win for him a bad reputation in certain religious circles. The deeply Catholic Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote to his father the year of Voltaire's death, saying, "The arch-scoundrel Voltaire has finally kicked the bucket...." [ 28 ]
Evolving views of Islam and its prophet, Muhammad, can be found in Voltaire's writings. In a letter recommending his play Fanaticism, or Mahomet to Pope Benedict XIV, Voltaire described the founder of Islam as "the founder of a false and barbarous sect" and "a false prophet", [ 29 ] a view he later revised upon further research for his Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations. [ 30 ]
There is an apocryphal story that his home at Ferney was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society and used for printing Bibles, [ 31 ] but this appears to be due to a misunderstanding of the 1849 annual report of the American Bible Society. [ 32 ] Voltaire's chateau is now owned and administered by the French Ministry of Culture.
In the Scottish Enlightenment the Scots began developing a uniquely practical branch of humanism to the extent that Voltaire said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation". [ 33 ] [ 34 ]
In a letter to Frederick II, King of Prussia, dated 5 January 1767 he wrote about Christianity :
| “ | La nôtre [religion] est sans contredit la plus ridicule, la plus absurde, et la plus sanguinaire qui ait jamais infecté le monde. [ 35 ]
(Ours [religion] is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloody to ever infect the world.) | ” |
[edit] Religious tolerance
In a 1763 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. What? 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?" [ 36 ]
[edit] Race and slavery
Voltaire rejected the Christian Adam and Eve story and was a polygenist who speculated that each race had separate origins. [ 37 ] Like other philosophes, such as Buffon, he divided humanity into varieties or races and attempted to explain the differences between these races. Voltaire took this position primarily to defy Christianity [citation needed] and biblical monogenism. He wondered if blacks fully shared in the common humanity or intelligence of whites due to their participation in the slave trade. [ 38 ] [ 39 ]
His most famous remark on slavery is found in "Candide", where the hero is horrified to learn 'at what price we eat sugar in Europe'. Elsewhere, he wrote caustically about "whites and Christians [who] proceed to purchase negroes cheaply, in order to sell them dear in America". [ 40 ] [ 41 ]
[edit] Anti-semitism
According to the rabbi Joseph Telushkin the most significant of Enlightenment hostility against Judaism was found in Voltaire, [ 42 ] although claims to the contrary have been made that his remarks were in fact anti-Biblical, not anti-semitic. [ 43 ] Thirty of the 118 articles in his Dictionnaire Philosophique dealt with Jews and described them in consistently negative ways, [ 44 ] although this analysis overlooks the fact that he had already defended the Jews as more tolerant than the Christians in his "Treatise On Toleration" the previous year and issued "Le Sermon du rabbin Akib", a text attacking anti-semitism, three years before that.
Emanuel Schikaneder, librettist of Die Zauberflöte, shown performing in the role of Papageno. The object on his back is a birdcage; see below. 
