Voltaire | PHILOSOPHY

Voltaire (1694–1778)

A French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian.
Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Roman Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, but also scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets.

Voltaire was one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty. Through its critical capacity, wit, and satire, Voltaire’s work vigorously propagates an ideal of progress to which people of all nations have remained responsive. His long life spanned the last years of classicism and the eve of the revolutionary era, and during this age of transition his works and activities influenced the direction taken by European civilization.

Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance and religious dogma, as well as the French institutions of his day. His best-known work and magnum opus, Candide, is a novella which comments on, criticizes and ridicules many events, thinkers and philosophies of his time, most notably Gottfried Leibniz and his belief that our world is the "best of all possible worlds".

Voltaire rejected the biblical Adam and Eve story and was a polygenist who speculated that each race had entirely separate origins. According to William Cohen, like most other polygenists, Voltaire believed that because of their different origins, Black Africans did not entirely share the natural humanity of white Europeans. According to David Allen Harvey, Voltaire often invoked racial differences as a means to attack religious orthodoxy, and the Biblical account of creation. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire 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".

According to Orthodox rabbi Joseph Telushkin, the most significant Enlightenment hostility against Judaism was found in Voltaire; 30 of the 118 articles in his Dictionnaire philosophique dealt with Jews or Judaism, describing them in consistently negative ways. For example, in Voltaire's A Philosophical Dictionary, he wrote of Jews: "In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched." Telushkin states that Voltaire did not limit his attack to aspects of Judaism that Christianity used as a foundation, repeatedly making it clear that he despised Jews. 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." He further said, "They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race". However, Voltaire condemned the persecution of Jews on several occasions including in his work Henriade, and never advocated violence or attacks against them.

Historians have described Voltaire's description of the history of Christianity as "propagandistic". His Dictionnaire philosophique is responsible for the myth that the early Church had fifty gospels before settling on the standard canonical four as well as propagating the myth that the canon of the New Testament was decided at the First Council of Nicaea. Voltaire is partially responsible for the misattribution of the expression Credo quia absurdum to the Church Fathers. Furthermore, despite the death of Hypatia being the result of finding herself in the crossfires of a mob (likely Christian) during a political feud in 4th-century Alexandria, Voltaire promoted the theory that she was stripped naked and murdered by the minions of the bishop Cyril of Alexandria, concluding by stating that "when one finds a beautiful woman completely naked, it is not for the purpose of massacring her." Voltaire meant for this argument to bolster one of his anti-Catholic tracts. In a letter to Frederick the Great, 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. "Ours [i.e., the Christian religion] is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world. 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."

Voltaire's views about Islam were generally negative, and he found its holy book, the Quran, to be ignorant of the laws of physics. In a 1740 letter to Frederick the Great, Voltaire ascribes to Muhammad a brutality that "is assuredly nothing any man can excuse" and suggests that his following stemmed from superstition; Voltaire continued, "But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him".

Commenting on the sacred texts of the Hindus, the Vedas, Voltaire 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." Voltaire was himself a supporter of animal rights and was a vegetarian. He used the antiquity of Hinduism to land what he saw as a devastating blow to the Bible's claims and acknowledged that the Hindus' treatment of animals showed a shaming alternative to the immorality of European imperialists.

Voltaire saw Confucian rationalism as an alternative to Christian dogma. He praised Confucian ethics and politics, portraying the sociopolitical hierarchy of China as a model for Europe. Voltaire commented: "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..." With the translation of Confucian texts during the Enlightenment, the concept of a meritocracy reached intellectuals in the West, who saw it as an alternative to the traditional Ancien Régime of Europe. Voltaire wrote favourably of the idea, claiming that the Chinese had "perfected moral science" and advocating an economic and political system after the Chinese model.

Voltaire was a forerunner of liberal pluralism in his approach to history and non-European cultures. Voltaire wrote, "We have slandered the Chinese because their metaphysics is not the same as ours ... 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." In speaking of Persia, he condemned Europe's "ignorant audacity" and "ignorant credulity". 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!" In Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, he defended the integrity of the Native Americans and wrote favorably of the Inca Empire.

Quotes by Voltaire:

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal Awareness or Pure Consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.
Dare to think for yourself.
Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Common sense is not so common.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
The sovereign who knows no laws but his caprice, is called a tyrant .
Clever tyrants are never punished.
It is forbidden to kill, therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.