francois voltaire biography

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François-Marie d’Arouet (1694–1778), better known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer and public activist who played a singular role in defining the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment. At the center of his work was a new conception of philosophy and the philosopher that in several crucial respects influenced the modern concept of each. Yet in other ways Voltaire was not a philosopher at all in the modern sense of the term. He wrote as many plays, stories, and poems as patently philosophical tracts, and he in fact directed many of his critical writings against the philosophical pretensions of recognized philosophers such as Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes. He was, however, a vigorous defender of a conception of natural science that served in his mind as the antidote to vain and fruitless philosophical investigation. In clarifying this new distinction between science and philosophy, and especially in fighting vigorously for it in public campaigns directed against the perceived enemies of fanaticism and superstition, Voltaire pointed modern philosophy down several paths that it subsequently followed.

To capture Voltaire’s unconventional place in the history of philosophy, this article will be structured in a particular way. First, a full account of Voltaire’s life is offered, not merely as background context for his philosophical work, but as an argument about the way that his particular career produced his particular contributions to European philosophy. Second, a survey of Voltaire’s philosophical views is offered so as to attach the legacy of what Voltaire did with the intellectual viewpoints that his activities reinforced.

1.1 Voltaire’s Early Years (1694–1726)

1.2 the english period (1726–1729), 1.3 becoming a philosophe, 1.4 the newton wars (1732–1745), 1.5 from french newtonian to enlightenment philosophe (1745–1755), 1.6 fighting for philosophie (1755–1778), 1.7 voltaire, philosophe icon of enlightenment philosophie (1778–present), 2.1 liberty, 2.2 hedonism, 2.3 skepticism, 2.4 newtonian empirical science, 2.5 toward science without metaphysics, primary literature, primary literature in translation, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries, 1. voltaire’s life: the philosopher as critic and public activist.

Voltaire only began to identify himself with philosophy and the philosophe identity during middle age. His work Lettres philosophiques , published in 1734 when he was forty years old, was the key turning point in this transformation. Before this date, Voltaire’s life in no way pointed him toward the philosophical destiny that he was later to assume. His early orientation toward literature and libertine sociability, however, shaped his philosophical identity in crucial ways.

François-Marie d’Arouet was born in 1694, the fourth of five children, to a well-to-do public official and his well bred aristocratic wife. In its fusion of traditional French aristocratic pedigree with the new wealth and power of royal bureaucratic administration, the d’Arouet family was representative of elite society in France during the reign of Louis XIV. The young François-Marie acquired from his parents the benefits of prosperity and political favor, and from the Jesuits at the prestigious Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris he also acquired a first-class education. François-Marie also acquired an introduction to modern letters from his father who was active in the literary culture of the period both in Paris and at the royal court of Versailles. François senior appears to have enjoyed the company of men of letters, yet his frustration with his son’s ambition to become a writer is notorious. From early in his youth, Voltaire aspired to emulate his idols Molière, Racine, and Corneille and become a playwright, yet Voltaire’s father strenuously opposed the idea, hoping to install his son instead in a position of public authority. First as a law student, then as a lawyer’s apprentice, and finally as a secretary to a French diplomat, Voltaire attempted to fulfill his father’s wishes. But in each case, he ended up abandoning his posts, sometimes amidst scandal.

Escaping from the burdens of these public obligations, Voltaire would retreat into the libertine sociability of Paris. It was here in the 1720s, during the culturally vibrant period of the Regency government between the reigns of Louis XIV and XV (1715–1723), that Voltaire established one dimension of his identity. His wit and congeniality were legendary even as a youth, so he had few difficulties establishing himself as a popular figure in Regency literary circles. He also learned how to play the patronage game so important to those with writerly ambitions. Thanks, therefore, to some artfully composed writings, a couple of well-made contacts, more than a few bon mots , and a little successful investing, especially during John Law’s Mississippi Bubble fiasco, Voltaire was able to establish himself as an independent man of letters in Paris. His literary debut occurred in 1718 with the publication of his Oedipe , a reworking of the ancient tragedy that evoked the French classicism of Racine and Corneille. The play was first performed at the home of the Duchesse du Maine at Sceaux, a sign of Voltaire’s quick ascent to the very pinnacle of elite literary society. Its published title page also announced the new pen name that Voltaire would ever after deploy.

During the Regency, Voltaire circulated widely in elite circles such as those that congregated at Sceaux, but he also cultivated more illicit and libertine sociability as well. This pairing was not at all uncommon during this time, and Voltaire’s intellectual work in the 1720s—a mix of poems and plays that shifted between playful libertinism and serious classicism seemingly without pause—illustrated perfectly the values of pleasure, honnêteté , and good taste that were the watchwords of this cultural milieu. Philosophy was also a part of this mix, and during the Regency the young Voltaire was especially shaped by his contacts with the English aristocrat, freethinker,and Jacobite Lord Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke lived in exile in France during the Regency period, and Voltaire was a frequent visitor to La Source, the Englishman’s estate near Orléans. The chateau served as a reunion point for a wide range of intellectuals, and many believe that Voltaire was first introduced to natural philosophy generally, and to the work of Locke and the English Newtonians specifically, at Bolingbroke’s estate. It was certainly true that these ideas, especially in their more deistic and libertine configurations, were at the heart of Bolingbroke’s identity.

Yet even if Voltaire was introduced to English philosophy in this way, its influence on his thought was most shaped by his brief exile in England between 1726–29. The occasion for his departure was an affair of honor. A very powerful aristocrat, the Duc de Rohan, accused Voltaire of defamation, and in the face of this charge the untitled writer chose to save face and avoid more serious prosecution by leaving the country indefinitely. In the spring of 1726, therefore, Voltaire left Paris for England.

It was during his English period that Voltaire’s transition into his mature philosophe identity began. Bolingbroke, whose address Voltaire left in Paris as his own forwarding address, was one conduit of influence. In particular, Voltaire met through Bolingbroke Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and John Gay, writers who were at that moment beginning to experiment with the use of literary forms such as the novel and theater in the creation of a new kind of critical public politics. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels , which appeared only months before Voltaire’s arrival, is the most famous exemplar of this new fusion of writing with political criticism. Later the same year Bolingbroke also brought out the first issue of the Craftsman , a political journal that served as the public platform for his circle’s Tory opposition to the Whig oligarchy in England. The Craftsman helped to create English political journalism in the grand style, and for the next three years Voltaire moved in Bolingbroke’s circle, absorbing the culture and sharing in the public political contestation that was percolating all around him.

Voltaire did not restrict himself to Bolingbroke’s circle alone, however. After Bolingbroke, his primary contact in England was a merchant by the name of Everard Fawkener. Fawkener introduced Voltaire to a side of London life entirely different from that offered by Bolingbroke’s circle of Tory intellectuals. This included the Whig circles that Bolingbroke’s group opposed. It also included figures such as Samuel Clarke and other self-proclaimed Newtonians. Voltaire did not meet Newton himself before Sir Isaac’s death in March, 1727, but he did meet his sister—learning from her the famous myth of Newton’s apple, which Voltaire would play a major role in making famous. Voltaire also came to know the other Newtonians in Clarke’s circle, and since he became proficient enough with English to write letters and even fiction in the language, it is very likely that he immersed himself in their writings as well. Voltaire also visited Holland during these years, forming important contacts with Dutch journalists and publishers and meeting Willem’s Gravesande and other Dutch Newtonian savants. Given his other activities, it is also likely that Voltaire frequented the coffeehouses of London even if no firm evidence survives confirming that he did. It would not be surprising, therefore, to learn that Voltaire attended the Newtonian public lectures of John Theophilus Desaguliers or those of one of his rivals. Whatever the precise conduits, all of his encounters in England made Voltaire into a very knowledgeable student of English natural philosophy.

When French officials granted Voltaire permission to re-enter Paris in 1729, he was devoid of pensions and banned from the royal court at Versailles. But he was also a different kind of writer and thinker. It is no doubt overly grandiose to say with Lord Morley that, “Voltaire left France a poet and returned to it a sage.” It is also an exaggeration to say that he was transformed from a poet into a philosophe while in England. For one, these two sides of Voltaire’s intellectual identity were forever intertwined, and he never experienced an absolute transformation from one into the other at any point in his life. But the English years did trigger a transformation in him.

After his return to France, Voltaire worked hard to restore his sources of financial and political support. The financial problems were the easiest to solve. In 1729, the French government staged a sort of lottery to help amortize some of the royal debt. A friend perceived an opportunity for investors in the structure of the government’s offering, and at a dinner attended by Voltaire he formed a society to purchase shares. Voltaire participated, and in the fall of that year when the returns were posted he had made a fortune. Voltaire’s inheritance from his father also became available to him at the same time, and from this date forward Voltaire never again struggled financially. This result was no insignificant development since Voltaire’s financial independence effectively freed him from one dimension of the patronage system so necessary to aspiring writers and intellectuals in the period. In particular, while other writers were required to appeal to powerful financial patrons in order to secure the livelihood that made possible their intellectual careers, Voltaire was never again beholden to these imperatives.

The patronage structures of Old Regime France provided more than economic support to writers, however, and restoring the crédit upon which his reputation as a writer and thinker depended was far less simple. Gradually, however, through a combination of artfully written plays, poems, and essays and careful self-presentation in Parisian society, Voltaire began to regain his public stature. In the fall of 1732, when the next stage in his career began to unfold, Voltaire was residing at the royal court of Versailles, a sign that his re-establishment in French society was all but complete.

During this rehabilitation, Voltaire also formed a new relationship that was to prove profoundly influential in the subsequent decades. He became reacquainted with Emilie Le Tonnier de Breteuil,the daughter of one of his earliest patrons, who married in 1722 to become the Marquise du Châtelet. Emilie du Châtelet was twenty-nine years old in the spring of 1733 when Voltaire began his relationship with her. She was also a uniquely accomplished woman. Du Châtelet’s father, the Baron de Breteuil, hosted a regular gathering of men of letters that included Voltaire, and his daughter, ten years younger than Voltaire, shared in these associations. Her father also ensured that Emilie received an education that was exceptional for girls at the time. She studied Greek and Latin and trained in mathematics, and when Voltaire reconnected with her in 1733 she was a very knowledgeable thinker in her own right even if her own intellectual career, which would include an original treatise in natural philosophy and a complete French translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica —still the only complete French translation ever published—had not yet begun. Her intellectual talents combined with her vivacious personality drew Voltaire to her, and although Du Châtelet was a titled aristocrat married to an important military officer, the couple was able to form a lasting partnership that did not interfere with Du Châtelet’s marriage. This arrangement proved especially beneficial to Voltaire when scandal forced him to flee Paris and to establish himself permanently at the Du Châtelet family estate at Cirey. From 1734, when this arrangement began, to 1749, when Du Châtelet died during childbirth, Cirey was the home to each along with the site of an intense intellectual collaboration. It was during this period that both Voltaire and Du Châtelet became widely known philosophical figures, and the intellectual history of each before 1749 is most accurately described as the history of the couple’s joint intellectual endeavors.

For Voltaire, the events that sent him fleeing to Cirey were also the impetus for much of his work while there. While in England, Voltaire had begun to compose a set of letters framed according to the well-established genre of a traveler reporting to friends back home about foreign lands. Montesquieu’s 1721 Lettres Persanes , which offered a set of fictionalized letters by Persians allegedly traveling in France, and Swift’s 1726 Gulliver’s Travels were clear influences when Voltaire conceived his work. But unlike the authors of these overtly fictionalized accounts, Voltaire innovated by adopting a journalistic stance instead, one that offered readers an empirically recognizable account of several aspects of English society. Originally titled Letters on England , Voltaire left a draft of the text with a London publisher before returning home in 1729. Once in France, he began to expand the work, adding to the letters drafted while in England, which focused largely on the different religious sects of England and the English Parliament, several new letters including some on English philosophy. The new text, which included letters on Bacon, Locke, Newton and the details of Newtonian natural philosophy along with an account of the English practice of inoculation for smallpox, also acquired a new title when it was first published in France in 1734: Lettres philosophiques .

Before it appeared, Voltaire attempted to get official permission for the book from the royal censors, a requirement in France at the time. His publisher, however, ultimately released the book without these approvals and without Voltaire’s permission. This made the first edition of the Lettres philosophiques illicit, a fact that contributed to the scandal that it triggered, but one that in no way explains the furor the book caused. Historians in fact still scratch their heads when trying to understand why Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques proved to be so controversial. The only thing that is clear is that the work did cause a sensation that subsequently triggered a rapid and overwhelming response on the part of the French authorities. The book was publicly burned by the royal hangman several months after its release, and this act turned Voltaire into a widely known intellectual outlaw. Had it been executed, a royal lettre de cachet would have sent Voltaire to the royal prison of the Bastille as a result of his authorship of Lettres philosophiques ; instead, he was able to flee with Du Châtelet to Cirey where the couple used the sovereignty granted by her aristocratic title to create a safe haven and base for Voltaire’s new position as a philosophical rebel and writer in exile.

Had Voltaire been able to avoid the scandal triggered by the Lettres philosophiques , it is highly likely that he would have chosen to do so. Yet once it was thrust upon him, he adopted the identity of the philosophical exile and outlaw writer with conviction, using it to create a new identity for himself, one that was to have far reaching consequences for the history of Western philosophy. At first, Newtonian science served as the vehicle for this transformation. In the decades before 1734, a series of controversies had erupted, especially in France, about the character and legitimacy of Newtonian science, especially the theory of universal gravitation and the physics of gravitational attraction through empty space. Voltaire positioned his Lettres philosophiques as an intervention into these controversies, drafting a famous and widely cited letter that used an opposition between Newton and Descartes to frame a set of fundamental differences between English and French philosophy at the time. He also included other letters about Newtonian science in the work while linking (or so he claimed) the philosophies of Bacon, Locke, and Newton into an English philosophical complex that he championed as a remedy for the perceived errors and illusions perpetuated on the French by René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche. Voltaire did not invent this framework, but he did use it to enflame a set of debates that were then raging, debates that placed him and a small group of young members of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris into apparent opposition to the older and more established members of this bastion of official French science. Once installed at Cirey, both Voltaire and Du Châtelet further exploited this apparent division by engaging in a campaign on behalf of Newtonianism, one that continually targeted an imagined monolith called French Academic Cartesianism as the enemy against which they in the name of Newtonianism were fighting.

The centerpiece of this campaign was Voltaire’s Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton , which was first published in 1738 and then again in 1745 in a new and definitive edition that included a new section, first published in 1740, devoted to Newton’s metaphysics. Voltaire offered this book as a clear, accurate, and accessible account of Newton’s philosophy suitable for ignorant Frenchman (a group that he imagined to be large). But he also conceived of it as a machine de guerre directed against the Cartesian establishment, which he believed was holding France back from the modern light of scientific truth. Vociferous criticism of Voltaire and his work quickly erupted, with some critics emphasizing his rebellious and immoral proclivities while others focused on his precise scientific views. Voltaire collapsed both challenges into a singular vision of his enemy as “backward Cartesianism”. As he fought fiercely to defend his positions, an unprecedented culture war erupted in France centered on the character and value of Newtonian natural philosophy. Du Châtelet contributed to this campaign by writing a celebratory review of Voltaire’s Éléments in the Journal des savants , the most authoritative French learned periodical of the day. The couple also added to their scientific credibility by receiving separate honorable mentions in the 1738 Paris Academy prize contest on the nature of fire. Voltaire likewise worked tirelessly rebutting critics and advancing his positions in pamphlets and contributions to learned periodicals. By 1745, when the definitive edition of Voltaire’s Éléments was published, the tides of thought were turning his way, and by 1750 the perception had become widespread that France had been converted from backward, erroneous Cartesianism to modern, Enlightened Newtonianism thanks to the heroic intellectual efforts of figures like Voltaire.

This apparent victory in the Newton Wars of the 1730s and 1740s allowed Voltaire’s new philosophical identity to solidify. Especially crucial was the way that it allowed Voltaire’s outlaw status, which he had never fully repudiated, to be rehabilitated in the public mind as a necessary and heroic defense of philosophical truth against the enemies of error and prejudice. From this perspective, Voltaire’s critical stance could be reintegrated into traditional Old Regime society as a new kind of legitimate intellectual martyrdom. Since Voltaire also coupled his explicitly philosophical writings and polemics during the 1730s and 1740s with an equally extensive stream of plays, poems, stories, and narrative histories, many of which were orthogonal in both tone and content to the explicit campaigns of the Newton Wars, Voltaire was further able to reestablish his old identity as an Old Regime man of letters despite the scandals of these years. In 1745, Voltaire was named the Royal Historiographer of France, a title bestowed upon him as a result of his histories of Louis XIV and the Swedish King Charles II. This royal office also triggered the writing of arguably Voltaire’s most widely read and influential book, at least in the eighteenth century, Essais sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (1751), a pioneering work of universal history. The position also legitimated him as an officially sanctioned savant. In 1749, after the death of du Châtelet, Voltaire reinforced this impression by accepting an invitation to join the court of the young Frederick the Great in Prussia, a move that further assimilated him into the power structures of Old Regime society.

Had this assimilationist trajectory continued during the remainder of Voltaire’s life, his legacy in the history of Western philosophy might not have been so great. Yet during the 1750s, a set of new developments pulled Voltaire back toward his more radical and controversial identity and allowed him to rekindle the critical philosophe persona that he had innovated during the Newton Wars. The first step in this direction involved a dispute with his onetime colleague and ally, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. Maupertuis had preceded Voltaire as the first aggressive advocate for Newtonian science in France. When Voltaire was preparing his own Newtonian intervention in the Lettres philosophiques in 1732, he consulted with Maupertuis, who was by this date a pensioner in the French Royal Academy of Sciences. It was largely around Maupertuis that the young cohort of French academic Newtonians gathered during the Newton wars of 1730s and 40s, and with Voltaire fighting his own public campaigns on behalf of this same cause during the same period, the two men became the most visible faces of French Newtonianism even if they never really worked as a team in this effort. Like Voltaire, Maupertuis also shared a relationship with Emilie du Châtelet, one that included mathematical collaborations that far exceeded Voltaire’s capacities. Maupertuis was also an occasional guest at Cirey, and a correspondent with both du Châtelet and Voltaire throughout these years. But in 1745 Maupertuis surprised all of French society by moving to Berlin to accept the directorship of Frederick the Great’s newly reformed Berlin Academy of Sciences.

Maupertuis’s thought at the time of his departure for Prussia was turning toward the metaphysics and rationalist epistemology of Leibniz as a solution to certain questions in natural philosophy. Du Châtelet also shared this tendency, producing in 1740 her Institutions de physiques , a systematic attempt to wed Newtonian mechanics with Leibnizian rationalism and metaphysics. Voltaire found this Leibnizian turn dyspeptic, and he began to craft an anti-Leibnizian discourse in the 1740s that became a bulwark of his brand of Newtonianism. This placed him in opposition to Du Châtelet, even if this intellectual rift in no way soured their relationship. Yet after she died in 1749, and Voltaire joined Maupertuis at Frederick the Great’s court in Berlin, this anti-Leibnizianism became the centerpiece of a rift with Maupertuis. Voltaire’s public satire of the President of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin published in late 1752, which presented Maupertuis as a despotic philosophical buffoon, forced Frederick to make a choice. He sided with Maupertuis, ordering Voltaire to either retract his libelous text or leave Berlin. Voltaire chose the latter, falling once again into the role of scandalous rebel and exile as a result of his writings.

This event proved to be Voltaire’s last official rupture with establishment authority. Rather than returning home to Paris and restoring his reputation, Voltaire instead settled in Geneva. When this austere Calvinist enclave proved completely unwelcoming, he took further steps toward independence by using his personal fortune to buy a chateau of his own in the hinterlands between France and Switzerland. Voltaire installed himself permanently at Ferney in early 1759, and from this date until his death in 1778 he made the chateau his permanent home and capital, at least in the minds of his intellectual allies, of the emerging French Enlightenment.

During this period, Voltaire also adopted what would become his most famous and influential intellectual stance, announcing himself as a member of the “party of humanity” and devoting himself toward waging war against the twin hydras of fanaticism and superstition. While the singular defense of Newtonian science had focused Voltaire’s polemical energies in the 1730s and 1740s, after 1750 the program became the defense of philosophie tout court and the defeat of its perceived enemies within the ecclesiastical and aristo-monarchical establishment. In this way, Enlightenment philosophie became associated through Voltaire with the cultural and political program encapsulated in his famous motto, “ Écrasez l’infâme! ” (“Crush the infamy!”). This entanglement of philosophy with social criticism and reformist political action, a contingent historical outcome of Voltaire’s particular intellectual career, would become his most lasting contribution to the history of philosophy.

The first cause to galvanize this new program was Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie . The first volume of this compendium of definitions appeared in 1751, and almost instantly the work became buried in the kind of scandal to which Voltaire had grown accustomed. Voltaire saw in the controversy a new call to action, and he joined forces with the project soon after its appearance, penning numerous articles that began to appear with volume 5 in 1755. Scandal continued to chase the Encyclopédie , however, and in 1759 the work’s publication privilege was revoked in France, an act that did not kill the project but forced it into illicit production in Switzerland. During these scandals, Voltaire fought vigorously alongside the project’s editors to defend the work, fusing the Encyclopédie ’s enemies, particularly the Parisian Jesuits who edited the monthly periodical the Journal de Trevoux , into a monolithic “infamy” devoted to eradicating truth and light from the world. This framing was recapitulated by the opponents of the Encyclopédie , who began to speak of the loose assemblage of authors who contributed articles to the work as a subversive coterie of philosophes devoted to undermining legitimate social and moral order.

As this polemic crystallized and grew in both energy and influence, Voltaire embraced its terms and made them his cause. He formed particularly close ties with d’Alembert, and with him began to generalize a broad program for Enlightenment centered on rallying the newly self-conscious philosophes (a term often used synonymously with the Encyclopédistes ) toward political and intellectual change. In this program, the philosophes were not unified by any shared philosophy but through a commitment to the program of defending philosophie itself against its perceived enemies. They were also imagined as activists fighting to eradicate error and superstition from the world. The ongoing defense of the Encyclopédie was one rallying point, and soon the removal of the Jesuits—the great enemies of Enlightenment, the philosophes proclaimed—became a second unifying cause. This effort achieved victory in 1763, and soon the philosophes were attempting to infiltrate the academies and other institutions of knowledge in France. One climax in this effort was reached in 1774 when the Encyclopédiste and friend of Voltaire and the philosophes , Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, was named Controller-General of France, the most powerful ministerial position in the kingdom, by the newly crowned King Louis XVI. Voltaire and his allies had paved the way for this victory through a barrage of writings throughout the 1760s and 1770s that presented philosophie like that espoused by Turgot as an agent of enlightened reform and its critics as prejudicial defenders of an ossified tradition.

Voltaire did bring out one explicitly philosophical book in support this campaign, his Dictionnaire philosophique of 1764–1770. This book republished his articles from the original Encyclopédie while adding new entries conceived in the spirit of the original work. Yet to fully understand the brand of philosophie that Voltaire made foundational to the Enlightenment, one needs to recognize that it just as often circulated in fictional stories, satires, poems, pamphlets, and other less obviously philosophical genres. Voltaire’s most widely known text, for instance, Candide, ou l’Optimisme , first published in 1759, is a fictional story of a wandering traveler engaged in a set of farcical adventures. Yet contained in the text is a serious attack on Leibnizian philosophy, one that in many ways marks the culmination of Voltaire’s decades long attack on this philosophy started during the Newton wars. Philosophie à la Voltaire also came in the form of political activism, such as his public defense of Jean Calas who, Voltaire argued, was a victim of a despotic state and an irrational and brutal judicial system. Voltaire often attached philosophical reflection to this political advocacy, such as when he facilitated a French translation of Cesare Beccaria’s treatise on humanitarian justice and penal reform and then prefaced the work with his own essay on justice and religious toleration (Calas was a French protestant persecuted by a Catholic monarchy). Public philosophic campaigns such as these that channeled critical reason in a direct, oppositionalist way against the perceived injustices and absurdities of Old Regime life were the hallmark of philosophie as Voltaire understood the term.

Voltaire lived long enough to see some of his long-term legacies start to concretize. With the ascension of Louis XVI in 1774 and the appointment of Turgot as Controller-General, the French establishment began to embrace the philosophes and their agenda in a new way. Critics of Voltaire and his program for philosophie remained powerful, however, and they would continue to survive as the necessary backdrop to the positive image of the Enlightenment philosophe as a modernizer, progressive reformer, and courageous scourge against traditional authority that Voltaire bequeathed to later generations. During Voltaire’s lifetime, this new acceptance translated into a final return to Paris in early 1778. Here, as a frail and sickly octogenarian, Voltaire was welcomed by the city as the hero of the Enlightenment that he now personified. A statue was commissioned as a permanent shrine to his legacy, and a public performance of his play Irène was performed in a way that allowed its author to be celebrated as a national hero. Voltaire died several weeks after these events, but the canonization that they initiated has continued right up until the present.

Western philosophy was profoundly shaped by the conception of the philosophe and the program for Enlightenment philosophie that Voltaire came to personify. The model he offered of the philosophe as critical public citizen and advocate first and foremost, and as abstruse and systematic thinker only when absolutely necessary, was especially influential in the subsequent development of the European philosophy. Also influential was the example he offered of the philosopher measuring the value of any philosophy according by its ability to effect social change. In this respect, Karl Marx’s famous thesis that philosophy should aspire to change the world, not merely interpret it, owes more than a little debt Voltaire. The link between Voltaire and Marx was also established through the French revolutionary tradition, which similarly adopted Voltaire as one of its founding heroes. Voltaire was the first person to be honored with re-burial in the newly created Pantheon of the Great Men of France that the new revolutionary government created in 1791. This act served as a tribute to the connections that the revolutionaries saw between Voltaire’s philosophical program and the cause of revolutionary modernization as a whole. In a similar way, Voltaire remains today an iconic hero for everyone who sees a positive linkage between critical reason and political resistance in projects of progressive, modernizing reform.

2. Voltaire’s Enlightenment Philosophy

Voltaire’s philosophical legacy ultimately resides as much in how he practiced philosophy, and in the ends toward which he directed his philosophical activity, as in any specific doctrine or original idea. Yet the particular philosophical positions he took, and the way that he used his wider philosophical campaigns to champion certain understandings while disparaging others, did create a constellation appropriately called Voltaire’s Enlightenment philosophy. True to Voltaire’s character, this constellation is best described as a set of intellectual stances and orientations rather than as a set of doctrines or systematically defended positions. Nevertheless, others found in Voltaire both a model of the well-oriented philosophe and a set of particular philosophical positions appropriate to this stance. Each side of this equation played a key role in defining the Enlightenment philosophie that Voltaire came to personify.

Central to this complex is Voltaire’s conception of liberty. Around this category, Voltaire’s social activism and his relatively rare excursions into systematic philosophy also converged. In 1734, in the wake of the scandals triggered by the Lettres philosophiques , Voltaire wrote, but left unfinished at Cirey, a Traité de metaphysique that explored the question of human freedom in philosophical terms. The question was particularly central to European philosophical discussions at the time, and Voltaire’s work explicitly referenced thinkers like Hobbes and Leibniz while wrestling with the questions of materialism, determinism, and providential purpose that were then central to the writings of the so-called deists, figures such as John Toland and Anthony Collins. The great debate between Samuel Clarke and Leibniz over the principles of Newtonian natural philosophy was also influential as Voltaire struggled to understand the nature of human existence and ethics within a cosmos governed by rational principles and impersonal laws.

Voltaire adopted a stance in this text somewhere between the strict determinism of rationalist materialists and the transcendent spiritualism and voluntarism of contemporary Christian natural theologians. For Voltaire, humans are not deterministic machines of matter and motion, and free will thus exists. But humans are also natural beings governed by inexorable natural laws, and his ethics anchored right action in a self that possessed the natural light of reason immanently. This stance distanced him from more radical deists like Toland, and he reinforced this position by also adopting an elitist understanding of the role of religion in society. For Voltaire, those equipped to understand their own reason could find the proper course of free action themselves. But since many were incapable of such self-knowledge and self-control, religion, he claimed, was a necessary guarantor of social order. This stance distanced Voltaire from the republican politics of Toland and other materialists, and Voltaire echoed these ideas in his political musings, where he remained throughout his life a liberal, reform-minded monarchist and a skeptic with respect to republican and democratic ideas.

In the Lettres philosophiques , Voltaire had suggested a more radical position with respect to human determinism, especially in his letter on Locke, which emphasized the materialist reading of the Lockean soul that was then a popular figure in radical philosophical discourse. Some readers singled out this part of the book as the major source of its controversy, and in a similar vein the very materialist account of “ Âme ,” or the soul, which appeared in volume 1 of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie , was also a flashpoint of controversy. Voltaire also defined his own understanding of the soul in similar terms in his own Dictionnaire philosophique . What these examples point to is Voltaire’s willingness, even eagerness, to publicly defend controversial views even when his own, more private and more considered writings often complicated the understanding that his more public and polemical writings insisted upon. In these cases, one often sees Voltaire defending less a carefully reasoned position on a complex philosophical problem than adopting a political position designed to assert his conviction that liberty of speech, no matter what the topic, is sacred and cannot be violated.

Voltaire never actually said “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Yet the myth that associates this dictum with his name remains very powerful, and one still hears his legacy invoked through the redeclaration of this pronouncement that he never actually declared. Part of the deep cultural tie that joins Voltaire to this dictum is the fact that even while he did not write these precise words, they do capture, however imprecisely, the spirit of his philosophy of liberty. In his voluminous correspondence especially, and in the details of many of his more polemical public texts, one does find Voltaire articulating a view of intellectual and civil liberty that makes him an unquestioned forerunner of modern civil libertarianism. He never authored any single philosophical treatise on this topic, however, yet the memory of his life and philosophical campaigns was influential in advancing these ideas nevertheless. Voltaire’s influence is palpably present, for example, in Kant’s famous argument in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” that Enlightenment stems from the free and public use of critical reason, and from the liberty that allows such critical debate to proceed untrammeled. The absence of a singular text that anchors this linkage in Voltaire’s collected works in no way removes the unmistakable presence of Voltaire’s influence upon Kant’s formulation.

Voltaire’s notion of liberty also anchored his hedonistic morality, another key feature of Voltaire’s Enlightenment philosophy. One vehicle for this philosophy was Voltaire’s salacious poetry, a genre that both reflected in its eroticism and sexual innuendo the lived culture of libertinism that was an important feature of Voltaire’s biography. But Voltaire also contributed to philosophical libertinism and hedonism through his celebration of moral freedom through sexual liberty. Voltaire’s avowed hedonism became a central feature of his wider philosophical identity since his libertine writings and conduct were always invoked by those who wanted to indict him for being a reckless subversive devoted to undermining legitimate social order. Voltaire’s refusal to defer to such charges, and his vigor in opposing them through a defense of the very libertinism that was used against him, also injected a positive philosophical program into these public struggles that was very influential. In particular, through his cultivation of a happily libertine persona, and his application of philosophical reason toward the moral defense of this identity, often through the widely accessible vehicles of poetry and witty prose, Voltaire became a leading force in the wider Enlightenment articulation of a morality grounded in the positive valuation of personal, and especially bodily, pleasure, and an ethics rooted in a hedonistic calculus of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. He also advanced this cause by sustaining an unending attack upon the repressive and, to his mind, anti-human demands of traditional Christian asceticism, especially priestly celibacy, and the moral codes of sexual restraint and bodily self-abnegation that were still central to the traditional moral teachings of the day.

This same hedonistic ethics was also crucial to the development of liberal political economy during the Enlightenment, and Voltaire applied his own libertinism toward this project as well. In the wake of the scandals triggered by Mandeville’s famous argument in The Fable of the Bees (a poem, it should be remembered) that the pursuit of private vice, namely greed, leads to public benefits, namely economic prosperity, a French debate about the value of luxury as a moral good erupted that drew Voltaire’s pen. In the 1730s, he drafted a poem called Le Mondain that celebrated hedonistic worldly living as a positive force for society, and not as the corrupting element that traditional Christian morality held it to be. In his Essay sur les moeurs he also joined with other Enlightenment historians in celebrating the role of material acquisition and commerce in advancing the progress of civilization. Adam Smith would famously make similar arguments in his founding tract of Enlightenment liberalism, On the Wealth of Nations , published in 1776. Voltaire was certainly no great contributor to the political economic science that Smith practiced, but he did contribute to the wider philosophical campaigns that made the concepts of liberty and hedonistic morality central to their work both widely known and more generally accepted.

The ineradicable good of personal and philosophical liberty is arguably the master theme in Voltaire’s philosophy, and if it is, then two other themes are closely related to it. One is the importance of skepticism, and the second is the importance of empirical science as a solvent to dogmatism and the pernicious authority it engenders.

Voltaire’s skepticism descended directly from the neo-Pyrrhonian revival of the Renaissance, and owes a debt in particular to Montaigne, whose essays wedded the stance of doubt with the positive construction of a self grounded in philosophical skepticism. Pierre Bayle’s skepticism was equally influential, and what Voltaire shared with these forerunners, and what separated him from other strands of skepticism, such as the one manifest in Descartes, is the insistence upon the value of the skeptical position in its own right as a final and complete philosophical stance. Among the philosophical tendencies that Voltaire most deplored, in fact, were those that he associated most powerfully with Descartes who, he believed, began in skepticism but then left it behind in the name of some positive philosophical project designed to eradicate or resolve it. Such urges usually led to the production of what Voltaire liked to call “philosophical romances,” which is to say systematic accounts that overcome doubt by appealing to the imagination and its need for coherent explanations. Such explanations, Voltaire argued, are fictions, not philosophy, and the philosopher needs to recognize that very often the most philosophical explanation of all is to offer no explanation at all.

Such skepticism often acted as bulwark for Voltaire’s defense of liberty since he argued that no authority, no matter how sacred, should be immune to challenge by critical reason. Voltaire’s views on religion as manifest in his private writings are complex, and based on the evidence of these texts it would be wrong to call Voltaire an atheist, or even an anti-Christian so long as one accepts a broad understanding of what Christianity can entail. But even if his personal religious views were subtle, Voltaire was unwavering in his hostility to church authority and the power of the clergy. For similar reasons, he also grew as he matured ever more hostile toward the sacred mysteries upon which monarchs and Old Regime aristocratic society based their authority. In these cases, Voltaire’s skepticism was harnessed to his libertarian convictions through his continual effort to use critical reason as a solvent for these “superstitions” and the authority they anchored. The philosophical authority of romanciers such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz was similarly subjected to the same critique, and here one sees how the defense of skepticism and liberty, more than any deeply held opposition to religiosity per se, was often the most powerful motivator for Voltaire.

From this perspective, Voltaire might fruitfully be compared with Socrates, another founding figure in Western philosophy who made a refusal to declaim systematic philosophical positions a central feature of his philosophical identity. Socrates’s repeated assertion that he knew nothing was echoed in Voltaire’s insistence that the true philosopher is the one who dares not to know and then has the courage to admit his ignorance publicly. Voltaire was also, like Socrates, a public critic and controversialist who defined philosophy primarily in terms of its power to liberate individuals from domination at the hands of authoritarian dogmatism and irrational prejudice. Yet while Socrates championed rigorous philosophical dialectic as the agent of this emancipation, Voltaire saw this same dialectical rationalism at the heart of the dogmatism that he sought to overcome. Voltaire often used satire, mockery and wit to undermine the alleged rigor of philosophical dialectic, and while Socrates saw this kind of rhetorical word play as the very essence of the erroneous sophism that he sought to alleviate, Voltaire cultivated linguistic cleverness as a solvent to the false and deceptive dialectic that anchored traditional philosophy.

Against the acceptance of ignorance that rigorous skepticism often demanded, and against the false escape from it found in sophistical knowledge—or what Voltaire called imaginative philosophical romances—Voltaire offered a different solution than the rigorous dialectical reasoning of Socrates: namely, the power and value of careful empirical science. Here one sees the debt that Voltaire owed to the currents of Newtonianism that played such a strong role in launching his career. Voltaire’s own critical discourse against imaginative philosophical romances originated, in fact, with English and Dutch Newtonians, many of whom were expatriate French Huguenots, who developed these tropes as rhetorical weapons in their battles with Leibniz and European Cartesians who challenged the innovations of Newtonian natural philosophy. In his Principia Mathematica (1687; 2 nd rev. edition 1713), Newton had offered a complete mathematical and empirical description of how celestial and terrestrial bodies behaved. Yet when asked to explain how bodies were able to act in the way that he mathematically and empirically demonstrated that they did, Newton famously replied “I feign no hypotheses.” From the perspective of traditional natural philosophy, this was tantamount to hand waving since offering rigorous causal accounts of the nature of bodies in motion was the very essence of this branch of the sciences. Newton’s major philosophical innovation rested, however, in challenging this very epistemological foundation, and the assertion and defense of Newton’s position against its many critics, not least by Voltaire, became arguably the central dynamic of philosophical change in the first half of the eighteenth century.

While Newtonian epistemology admitted of many variations, at its core rested a new skepticism about the validity of apriori rationalist accounts of nature and a new assertion of brute empirical fact as a valid philosophical understanding in its own right. European Natural philosophers in the second half of the seventeenth century had thrown out the metaphysics and physics of Aristotle with its four part causality and teleological understanding of bodies, motion and the cosmic order. In its place, however, a new mechanical causality was introduced that attempted to explain the world in equally comprehensive terms through the mechanisms of an inert matter acting by direct contact and action alone. This approach lead to the vortical account of celestial mechanics, a view that held material bodies to be swimming in an ethereal sea whose action pushed and pulled objects in the manner we observe. What could not be observed, however, was the ethereal sea itself, or the other agents of this supposedly comprehensive mechanical cosmos. Yet rationality nevertheless dictated that such mechanisms must exist since without them philosophy would be returned to the occult causes of the Aristotelian natural tendencies and teleological principles. Figuring out what these point-contact mechanisms were and how they worked was, therefore, the charge of the new mechanical natural philosophy of the late seventeenth century. Figures such as Descartes, Huygens, and Leibniz established their scientific reputations through efforts to realize this goal.

Newton pointed natural philosophy in a new direction. He offered mathematical analysis anchored in inescapable empirical fact as the new foundation for a rigorous account of the cosmos. From this perspective, the great error of both Aristotelian and the new mechanical natural philosophy was its failure to adhere strictly enough to empirical facts. Vortical mechanics, for example, claimed that matter was moved by the action of an invisible agent, yet this, the Newtonians began to argue, was not to explain what is really happening but to imagine a fiction that gives us a speciously satisfactory rational explanation of it. Natural philosophy needs to resist the allure of such rational imaginings and to instead deal only with the empirically provable. Moreover, the Newtonians argued, if a set of irrefutable facts cannot be explained other then by accepting the brute facticity of their truth, this is not a failure of philosophical explanation so much as a devotion to appropriate rigor. Such epistemological battles became especially intense around Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. Few questioned that Newton had demonstrated an irrefutable mathematical law whereby bodies appear to attract one another in relation to their masses and in inverse relation to the square of the distance between them. But was this rigorous mathematical and empirical description a philosophical account of bodies in motion? Critics such as Leibniz said no, since mathematical description was not the same thing as philosophical explanation, and Newton refused to offer an explanation of how and why gravity operated the way that it did. The Newtonians countered that phenomenal descriptions were scientifically adequate so long as they were grounded in empirical facts, and since no facts had yet been discerned that explained what gravity is or how it works, no scientific account of it was yet possible. They further insisted that it was enough that gravity did operate the way that Newton said it did, and that this was its own justification for accepting his theory. They further mocked those who insisted on dreaming up chimeras like the celestial vortices as explanations for phenomena when no empirical evidence existed to support of such theories.

The previous summary describes the general core of the Newtonian position in the intense philosophical contests of the first decades of the eighteenth century. It also describes Voltaire’s own stance in these same battles. His contribution, therefore, was not centered on any innovation within these very familiar Newtonian themes; rather, it was his accomplishment to become a leading evangelist for this new Newtonian epistemology, and by consequence a major reason for its widespread dissemination and acceptance in France and throughout Europe. A comparison with David Hume’s role in this same development might help to illuminate the distinct contributions of each. Both Hume and Voltaire began with the same skepticism about rationalist philosophy, and each embraced the Newtonian criterion that made empirical fact the only guarantor of truth in philosophy. Yet Hume’s target remained traditional philosophy, and his contribution was to extend skepticism all the way to the point of denying the feasibility of transcendental philosophy itself. This argument would famously awake Kant’s dogmatic slumbers and lead to the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy in new terms, but Voltaire had different fish to fry. His attachment was to the new Newtonian empirical scientists, and while he was never more than a dilettante scientist himself, his devotion to this form of natural inquiry made him in some respects the leading philosophical advocate and ideologist for the new empirico-scientific conception of philosophy that Newton initiated.

For Voltaire (and many other eighteenth-century Newtonians) the most important project was defending empirical science as an alternative to traditional natural philosophy. This involved sharing in Hume’s critique of abstract rationalist systems, but it also involved the very different project of defending empirical induction and experimental reasoning as the new epistemology appropriate for a modern Enlightened philosophy. In particular, Voltaire fought vigorously against the rationalist epistemology that critics used to challenge Newtonian reasoning. His famous conclusion in Candide , for example, that optimism was a philosophical chimera produced when dialectical reason remains detached from brute empirical facts owed a great debt to his Newtonian convictions. His alternative offered in the same text of a life devoted to simple tasks with clear, tangible, and most importantly useful ends was also derived from the utilitarian discourse that Newtonians also used to justify their science. Voltaire’s campaign on behalf of smallpox inoculation, which began with his letter on the topic in the Lettres philosophiques , was similarly grounded in an appeal to the facts of the case as an antidote to the fears generated by logical deductions from seemingly sound axiomatic principles. All of Voltaire’s public campaigns, in fact, deployed empirical fact as the ultimate solvent for irrational prejudice and blind adherence to preexisting understandings. In this respect, his philosophy as manifest in each was deeply indebted to the epistemological convictions he gleaned from Newtonianism.

Voltaire also contributed directly to the new relationship between science and philosophy that the Newtonian revolution made central to Enlightenment modernity. Especially important was his critique of metaphysics and his argument that it be eliminated from any well-ordered science. At the center of the Newtonian innovations in natural philosophy was the argument that questions of body per se were either irrelevant to, or distracting from, a well focused natural science. Against Leibniz, for example, who insisted that all physics begin with an accurate and comprehensive conception of the nature of bodies as such, Newton argued that the character of bodies was irrelevant to physics since this science should restrict itself to a quantified description of empirical effects only and resist the urge to speculate about that which cannot be seen or measured. This removal of metaphysics from physics was central to the overall Newtonian stance toward science, but no one fought more vigorously for it, or did more to clarify the distinction and give it a public audience than Voltaire.

The battles with Leibnizianism in the 1740s were the great theater for Voltaire’s work in this regard. In 1740, responding to Du Châtelet’s efforts in her Institutions de physiques to reconnect metaphysics and physics through a synthesis of Leibniz with Newton, Voltaire made his opposition to such a project explicit in reviews and other essays he published. He did the same during the brief revival of the so-called “vis viva controversy” triggered by du Châtelet’s treatise, defending the empirical and mechanical conception of body and force against those who defended Leibniz’s more metaphysical conception of the same thing. In the same period, Voltaire also composed a short book entitled La Metaphysique de Newton , publishing it in 1740 as an implicit counterpoint to Châtelet’s Institutions . This tract did not so much articulate Newton’s metaphysics as celebrate the fact that he avoided practicing such speculations altogether. It also accused Leibniz of becoming deluded by his zeal to make metaphysics the foundation of physics. In the definitive 1745 edition of his Éléments de la philosophie de Newton , Voltaire also appended his tract on Newton’s metaphysics as the book’s introduction, thus framing his own understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and empirical science in direct opposition to Châtelet’s Leibnizian understanding of the same. He also added personal invective and satire to this same position in his indictment of Maupertuis in the 1750s, linking Maupertuis’s turn toward metaphysical approaches to physics in the 1740s with his increasingly deluded philosophical understanding and his authoritarian manner of dealing with his colleagues and critics.

While Voltaire’s attacks on Maupertuis crossed the line into ad hominem , at their core was a fierce defense of the way that metaphysical reasoning both occludes and deludes the work of the physical scientist. Moreover, to the extent that eighteenth-century Newtonianism provoked two major trends in later philosophy, first the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy à la Kant through his “Copernican Revolution” that relocated the remains of metaphysics in the a priori categories of reason, and second, the marginalization of metaphysics altogether through the celebration of philosophical positivism and the anti-speculative scientific method that anchored it, Voltaire should be seen as a major progenitor of the latter. By also attaching what many in the nineteenth century saw as Voltaire’s proto-positivism to his celebrated campaigns to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority through the debunking of the “irrational superstitions” that appeared to anchor such authority, Voltaire’s legacy also cemented the alleged linkage that joined positivist science on the one hand with secularizing disenchantment and dechristianization on the other. In this way, Voltaire should be seen as the initiator of a philosophical tradition that runs from him to Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin, and then on to Karl Popper and Richard Dawkins in the twentieth century.

Because of Voltaire’s celebrity, efforts to collect and canonize his writings began immediately after his death, and still continue today. The result has been the production of three major collections of his writings including his vast correspondence, the last unfinished. Together these constitute the authoritative corpus of Voltaire’s written work.

• Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire , edited by A. Beuchot. 72 vols. Paris: Lefevre, 1829–1840.
• Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire , edited by L.E.D. Moland and G. Bengesco. 52 vols. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877–1885.
• Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire , edited by Theodore Besterman. 135 vols. (projected) Geneva, Banbury, and Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968–.

Collections of Writings

• The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version , William F. Fleming (ed. and tr.), 21 vols., New York: E.R. Du Mont, 1901. [Complete edition available at the Online Library of Liberty ]
• The Portable Voltaire , Ben Ray Redman (ed.), New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
• Selected Works of Voltaire , Joseph McCabe (ed.), London: Watts, 2007.
• Shorter Writings of Voltaire , J.I. Rodale (ed.), New York: A.S. Barnes, 1960.
• Voltaire in his Letters, Being a Selection of his Correspondence , S.G. Tallentyre (tr.), Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.
• Voltaire on Religion: Selected Writings , Kenneth W. Applegate (ed.), New York: F. Ungar, 1974.
• Voltaire: Selected Writings , Christopher Thacker (ed.), London: Dent, 1995.
• Voltaire: Selections , Paul Edwards (ed.), New York: Macmillan, 1989.
• Translations of Voltaire’s major plays are found in: The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version , William F. Fleming (ed. and tr.), New York: E.R. Du Mont, 1901. [Complete edition available at the Online Library of Liberty ]
• Seven Plays (Mérope (1737), Olympia (1761), Alzire (1734), Orestes (1749), Oedipus (1718), Zaire, Caesar) , William Fleming (tr.), New York: Howard Fertig, 1988.
• The Age of Louis XIV (1733) and other Selected Writings , J.H. Brumfitt (ed.), New York: Twayne, 1963.
• The Age of Louis XIV (1733) , Martyn P. Pollack (tr.), London and New York: Dutton, 1978.
• History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1727) , Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2002.
• History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1727) , Antonia White and Ragnhild Marie Hatton (eds.), New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.
• The Philosophy of History (1764) , New York: The Philosophical Library, 1965.

Essays, Letters, and Stories

• Vol. 1: The Huron (1771), The History of Jenni (1774), The One-eyed Street Porter, Cosi-sancta (1715), An Incident of Memory (1773), The Travels of Reason (1774), The Man with Forty Crowns (1768), Timon (1755), The King of Boutan (1761), and The City of Cashmere (1760).
• Vol. 2: The Letters of Amabed (1769), The Blind Judges of Colors (1766), The Princess of Babylon (1768), The Ears of Lord Chesterfield and Chaplain Goudman (1775), Story of a Good Brahman (1759), An Indian Adventure (1764), and Zadig, or, Destiny (1757).
• Vol. 3: Micromegas (1738), Candide, or Optimism (1758), The World as it Goes (1750), The White and the Black (1764), Jeannot and Colin (1764), The Travels of Scarmentado (1756), The White Bull (1772), Memnon (1750), Plato’s Dream (1737), Bababec and the Fakirs (1750), and The Two Consoled Ones (1756).
• The English Essays of 1727 , David Williams and Richard Walker (eds.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996.
• Epistle of M. Voltaire to the King of Prussia (1738) , Glasgow, 1967.
• The History of the Travels of Scarmentado (1756) , Glasgow: The College Press, 1969.
• Micromégas and other Short Fictions (1738), Theo Cuffe and Haydn Mason (eds.), London and New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
• The Princess of Babylon (1768) , London: Signet Books, 1969.
• The Virgin of Orleans, or Joan of Arc (1755) , Howard Nelson (tr.), Denver: A. Swallow, 1965.
• Voltaire. Essay on Milton (1727) , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954.
• Voltaire’s Romances , New York: P. Eckler, 1986.
• Zadig, or L’Ingénu (1757), London: Penguin Books, 1984.
• Zadig, or the Book of Fate (1757) , New York: Garland, 1974.
• Zadig, or The Book of Fate an Oriental History (1757) , Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1982.
• The Calas Affair: A Treatise on Tolerance (1762) , Brian Masters (ed.), London: The Folio Society, 1994.
• The Sermon of the Fifty (1759) , J.A.R. Séguin (ed.), Jersey City, NJ: R. Paxton, 1963.
• A Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays , Joseph McCabe (ed.), Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994.
• A Treatise on Tolerance and other Writings , edited by Brian Masters, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994
• Voltaire. Political Writings , edited by David Williams, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994

Editions of Major Individual Works

• Translated John Hanna. London: Cass, 1967.
• Birmingham, AL: Gryphon Editions, 1991.
• Edited by Theodore Besterman. London: Penguin Books, 2002.
• Translated by Peter Gay. New York: Basic Books, 1962.
• Philosophical Dictionary: A Compendium , Wade Baskin (ed.), New York: Philosophical Library, 1961.
• Philosophical Dictionary: Selections , Chicago: The Great Books Foundation, 1965.
• John Leigh and Prudence L. Steiner (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007.
• Leonard Tancock (ed.), London and New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
• Ernest Dilworth (ed.), Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003.
• Nicholas Cronk (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• F.A. Taylor (ed.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946.
• Harvard Classics, Vol. 34, Part 2. [ Available online from Bartleby.com ]
• Voltaire’s Letters on the Quakers (1727) , Philadelphia: William H. Allen, 1953.
• C.H.R. Niven (ed.), London: Longman, 1980.
• Candide and other Writings , Haskell M. Block (ed.), New York: Modern Library, 1985.
• Richard Aldington, Ernest Dilworth, and others (eds.), New York: Modern Library, 1992.
• Shane Weller (ed.), New York: Dover, 1993.
• Candide: A Dual Language Book , New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.
• Robert Martin Adams (ed.), New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
• Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project, 1998. [Available online at Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project ]
• Daniel Gordon (ed.), Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
• Candide and Related Texts , David Wooton (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000.
• Lowell Bair (ed.), New York: Bantam Books, 2003.
• Candide & Zadig , Lester G. Crocker (ed.), New York: Pocket Books, 2005.
• Raffael Burton (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
• Theo Cuffe (ed.), London and New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
• Candide and other Stories , Roger Pearson (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories , Donald Frame (tr. and ed.), New York: Signet Classic, 2009.

The scholarly literature on Voltaire is vast, and growing larger every day. The summary here, therefore, will be largely restricted to scholarly books, with only a few articles of singular import listed. The Voltaire Foundation’s series Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century changed its name in 2013 to Oxford University Studies on Enlightenment . The original series published over 450 volumes, many related to Voltaire, and while the new title reflects a change toward a broader publishing agenda, it remains, along with Cahier Voltaire published by La Fondation Voltaire à Ferney, the best periodical source for new scholarship on Voltaire.

• Aldridge, Alfred Owen, 1975, Voltaire and the Century of Light , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Badinter, Elizabeth, 1983, Émilie, Émilie, l’ambition féminine au XVIIIe siècle , Paris: Flammarion.
• –––, 1999–2002, Les Passions intellectuelles , 2 volumes, Paris: Fayard.
• Barber, W.H., 1955, Leibniz in France from Arnauld to Voltaire: A Study in French Reactions to Leibnizianism 1670–1760 , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Barrell, Rex A., 1988, Bolingbroke and France , Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
• Besterman, Theodore, 1969, Voltaire , New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.
• Bird, Stephen, 2000, Reinventing Voltaire: The Politics of Commemoration in Nineteenth-century France , Oxford: Oxford University Studies on Enlightenment.
• Brooks, Richard A., 1964, Voltaire and Leibniz , Geneva: Droz.
• Brown, Harcourt, 1947, Voltaire and the Royal Society of London , Toronto: University of Toronto Quarterly.
• Brumfitt, J.H., 1970, Voltaire: historian , London: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1973, The French Enlightenment , Cambridge: Schenkman Pub. Co.
• Brunel, Lucien, 1967, Les Philosophes et l’académie française au dix-huitième siècle , Genève: Slatkine Reprints.
• Brunet, Pierre, 1931, L’introduction des théories de Newton en France au XVIIIe siècle , Paris: A. Blanchard.
• Collins, J. Churton, 1908, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in England , London: E. Nash.
• Conlon, Pierre M., 1961, Voltaire’s literary career from 1728 to 1750 , Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire.
• Cottret, Bernard, 1992, Bolingbroke: exil et écriture au siècle des Lumières , Paris: Klincksieck.
• Cronk, Nicolas, 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2014, Voltaire: a very short introduction , Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation.
• Darnton, Robert, 1979, The Business of Enlightenment: The Publishing History of the Encyclopédie , 1775–1800, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1982, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Dickinson, H.T., 1970, Bolingbroke , London: Constable.
• Dieckmann, Herbert, 1943, Le Philosophe: Texts and Interpretations , (Washington University Studies, New Series, Language and Literature, no. 18), St. Louis: Washington University Press.
• Duchet, Michèle, 1971, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Diderot , Paris: F. Maspero.
• Ehrman, Esther, 1986, Mme. du Châtelet: Scientist, Philosopher and Feminist of the Enlightenment , Leamington [Spa]: Berg.
• Gandt, François de, 2001, Cirey dans la vie intellectuelle: la réception de Newton en France , Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
• Gardiner Janik, Linda, 1982, “Searching for the Metaphysics of Science: The Structure and Composition of Mme. Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physiques , 1737–1740”, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century , 201: 85–113.
• Gay, Peter, 1954, The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment , New York: Knopf.
• Gay, Peter, 1969, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (Volume 1: The Science of Freedom ), New York: Knopf.
• –––, 1977, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (Volume 2: The Rise of Modern Paganism ), New York: Knopf 1977.
• –––, 1988, Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Guerlac, Henry, 1981, Newton on the Continent , Ithaca.
• Gurrado, Antonio, 2013, Voltaire cattolico , Torino: Lindau.
• Hagengruber, Ruth (ed.), 2011, Emilie du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton , Dordrecht: Springer.
• Ḥadīd, Javādī, 2012, Voltaire et l’Islam , Ozoir la Ferriere : Albouraq.
• Hellman, Lilian, 1980, Dorothy Parker, John La Touche, Richard Wilbur, and Leonard Bernstein, 1956–1957, Candide, An Operetta in Two Acts , New York: Jaini Publications.
• Hutchison, Ross, 1991, Locke in France: 1688–1734 , Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
• Iltis, Carolyn, 1977, “Madame du Châtelet’s metaphysics and mechanics”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science , 8: 29–48.
• Israel, Jonathan, 2000, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2006, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2009, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Clarke, Samuel | Descartes, René | hedonism | Hume, David: Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm | liberty: positive and negative | Newton, Isaac | skepticism

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Author of the satirical novella 'Candide,' Voltaire is widely considered one of France's greatest Enlightenment writers.

(1694-1778)

Who Was Voltaire?

Voltaire established himself as one of the leading writers of the Enlightenment. His famed works include the tragic play Zaïre , the historical study The Age of Louis XIV and the satirical novella Candide . Often at odds with French authorities over his politically and religiously charged works, he was twice imprisoned and spent many years in exile. He died shortly after returning to Paris in 1778.

Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet to a prosperous family on November 21, 1694, in Paris, France. He was the youngest of five children born to François Arouet and Marie Marguerite d'Aumart. When Voltaire was just seven years old, his mother passed away. Following her death, he grew closer to his free-thinking godfather.

In 1704, Voltaire was enrolled at the Collége Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit secondary school in Paris, where he received a classical education and began showing promise as a writer.

Beliefs and Philosophy

Voltaire, in keeping with other Enlightenment thinkers of the era, was a deist — not by faith, according to him, but rather by reason. He looked favorably on religious tolerance, even though he could be severely critical towards Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

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."

Major Works

Voltaire wrote poetry and plays, as well as historical and philosophical works. His most well-known poetry includes The Henriade (1723) and The Maid of Orleans , which he started writing in 1730 but never fully completed.

Among the earliest of Voltaire's best-known plays is his adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus , which was first performed in 1718. Voltaire followed with a string of dramatic tragedies, including Mariamne (1724). His Zaïre (1732), written in verse, was something of a departure from previous works: Until that point, Voltaire's tragedies had centered on a fatal flaw in the protagonist's character; however, the tragedy in Zaïre was the result of circumstance. Following Zaïre, Voltaire continued to write tragic plays, including Mahomet (1736) and Nanine (1749).

Voltaire's body of writing also includes the notable historical works The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). In the latter, Voltaire took a unique approach to tracing the progression of world civilization by focusing on social history and the arts.

Voltaire's popular philosophic works took the form of the short stories Micromégas (1752) and Plato's Dream (1756), as well as the famed satirical novella Candide (1759), which is considered Voltaire's greatest work. 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.

In 1764, he published another of his acclaimed philosophical works, Dictionnaire philosophique , an encyclopedic dictionary that embraced the concepts of Enlightenment and rejected the ideas of the Roman Catholic Church.

Arrests and Exiles

In 1716, Voltaire was exiled to Tulle for mocking the duc d'Orleans. In 1717, he 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 in 1726, for arguing with the Chevalier de Rohan. This time he was only detained briefly before being exiled to England, where he remained for nearly three years.

The publication of Voltaire's Letters on the English (1733) angered the French church and government, forcing the writer to flee to safer pastures. He spent the next 15 years with his mistress, Émilie du Châtelet, at her husband's home in Cirey-sur-Blaise.

Voltaire moved to Prussia in 1750 as a member of Frederick the Great's court, and spent later years in Geneva and Ferney. By 1778, he was recognized as an icon of the Enlightenment's progressive ideals, and he was given a hero's welcome upon his return to Paris. He died there shortly afterward, on May 30, 1778.

In 1952, researcher and writer Theodore Besterman established a museum devoted to Voltaire in Geneva. He later set about writing a biography of his favorite subject, and following his death in 1976, the Voltaire Foundation was vested permanently at the University of Oxford.

The foundation continued to work toward making the Enlightenment writer's prolific output available to the public. It was later announced that The Oxford Complete Works of Voltaire , the first exhaustive annotated edition of Voltaire’s novels, plays and letters, would expand to 220 volumes by 2020.

In November 2017, during an event to celebrate what would have been Voltaire's 323rd birthday, foundation director Nicholas Cronk explained how the famed writer used inaccuracies to generate attention. Among his fabrications, Voltaire offered up differing dates for his birthday and lied about the identity of his biological father.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Voltaire
• Birth Year: 1694
• Birth date: November 21, 1694
• Birth City: Paris
• Birth Country: France
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Author of the satirical novella 'Candide,' Voltaire is widely considered one of France's greatest Enlightenment writers.
• Writing and Publishing
• Astrological Sign: Scorpio
• Collége Louis-le-Grand
• Nationalities
• Occupations
• Death Year: 1778
• Death date: May 30, 1778
• Death City: Paris
• Death Country: France

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

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Philosophers

Francis Bacon

Auguste Comte

Charles-Louis de Secondat

Saint Thomas Aquinas

William James

John Stuart Mill

Jean-Paul Sartre

Immanuel Kant

François Voltaire

• Literature Notes
• Francois Voltaire Biography
• Book Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Chapters II-III
• Chapters IV-VI
• Chapters VII-X
• Chapters XI-XII
• Chapters XIII-XVI
• Chapters XVII-XVIII
• Chapter IXX
• Chapters XX-XXIII
• Chapters XXIV-XXVI
• Chapters XXVII-XXX
• Critical Essays
• The Philosophy of Leibnitz
• Alexander Pope's Essay on Man
• Poème Sur Le Désastre De Lisoonne
• Other Sources of Influence
• Structure and Style
• Satire and Irony
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

A Voltairean, as defined by Ernest Benot, philosophical writer and one-time director of the Ecole normale superior, in his  Etudes et pensées  (1884) is:

"a man who prefers to see clearly in all matters; in religion and in philosophy, he believes willingly only what he understands, and he admits that there are things he does not know; he values application above speculation, simplifies ethics as well as doctrine, and tries to direct it toward useful virtues; he likes a moderate political system that preserves natural liberty, the liberty of conscience, of speech and of the individual, reduces evil as much as possible, procures the greatest good, and places justice among the highest benefits; in the arts, he admires above all moderation and truth; he has a deadly hatred for hypocrisy, fanaticism and bad taste; he does not limit himself to detesting them, he fights them to death."

The man who inspired these words, often called the Father of the French Revolution, may indeed have had limitations as regards his personal life, but he did emerge as the leading apostle of tolerance and freedom in the eighteenth century, which has been called the "century of Voltaire."

Voltaire is the name he adopted in his maturity; his real one was Francois Marie Arouet. He was born on November 21, 1694, in Paris, the fifth child of his middle-class parents, who were natives of Poitou. Voltaire's father was a rather prosperous lawyer and notary who became treasurer to the Chambres des Comptes. A sickly child, Francois was not expected to live. And it must be admitted that, like Alexander Pope, whom he was to meet and with whom he corresponded, his life could be described as "one long disease." Yet he was to live that life energetically and to survive until May 30, 1778.

The Abbé de Châteauneuf, Voltaire's godfather, took special interest in the boy. Among other things, he introduced him to deism. The Abbé, noted for his skepticism and wit, also taught him to recite lines from the satirical and shocking poem Moïsade.

Voltaire's father was determined that his son should study law, and the lad was enrolled in the Jesuit College of Louis-le-grande in 1704. He remained there until his seventeenth year, winning many academic prizes. Evidence of his precocity is also found in the fact that the gifted Ninon de Leclos, one of his father's clients, was sufficiently impressed by the young man to will him 2,000 francs for the specific purpose of buying books. At the Jesuit college, Voltaire received a sound liberal education, developed his ability as a writer, and trained his critical sense. Of significance also is the fact that he gained considerable theatrical training, for the Jesuits continued the Renaissance tradition of having plays in Latin and the vernacular performed by their charges.

Voltaire had already demonstrated his ability to write verse and was determined to become a great poet. But his father had little faith in literature as a means of earning a good living, and he insisted that his son continue to study law. The young man complied, but only in a perfunctory way.

All his life Voltaire was to demonstrate his ability to make friends among the influential, and he knew that the right circle in pre-Revolutionary France was the aristocratic one. Therefore he was elated when his godfather, the sophisticated Abbé de Châteauneuf, introduced him into the daringly liberal society of the Temple, where he was welcomed by such freethinking aristocrats as the Duke de Sully, the Duke de Vendôme, the Prince de Carti, and other persons of high rank as well as by men of letters. To Voltaire, the Temple was a society of "princes and poets." Determined to distinguish himself among the latter, he wrote satirical verse and, since the surest way to fame in literature at that time was to become a tragic poet, began planning a tragedy in verse. It may be added that Voltaire exercised that charm of which he was always capable and became quite a gallant and favorite of the ladies.

At this point, Voltaire's father, alarmed not only because his son was neglecting his legal studies but because the society the young man now kept was notoriously libertine, forced him to leave Paris. This was the first of the many "exiles" he was to experience. He was sent to Holland as a page to the French ambassador. The result, however, was an unfortunate love affair with a respectable young lady whose Protestantism was not acceptable to Voltaire's father. The young man found himself back in Paris again. The year was 1713.

By this time, Voltaire had won quite a reputation for his satirical verse and prose. But his gift was to get him into trouble from time to time throughout his life. When he was publicly accused of writing libelous poems, his father again sent him away from Paris, this time into the country, where for nearly a year he was the guest of the Marquis de Saint-Ange. He spent his time writing essays and working on his first tragedy, certainly not in studying law.

Mention has been made of Voltaire's ability to make friends, but it should be noted that he was something of a past master at making enemies, largely because of his sensitivity and the fact that he took almost malicious pleasure in using his sardonic wit to attack those with whom he did not agree. He demonstrated both capacities when he was allowed to return to Paris. He was introduced to the Court de Seaux, a famous literary and political salon, over which the attractive Duchess du Maine presided. It was apparently the duchess who got Voltaire to write lampoons against her enemy, The Regent, Orleans. So, in May 1716, Voltaire once more was forced to leave Paris for a time, going first to Tulle and later to Sully. He was not back in Paris very long when he faced more trouble. Two specially offensive libels appeared, Puerto Regnanto and J'ai vu. And this time Voltaire, suspected of being the author, was sent to the Bastille on May 16, 1717. He was to remain there for eleven months and then to be exiled to Châtenay and elsewhere. While occupying the room that came to be known by his name in the famous prison, Voltaire revised his tragedy, which was entitled Œ dipe, and began work on his epic poem L' Henriade, which celebrated the deeds of Henry IV of France. It is notable that these two earliest works reveal Voltaire as a man dedicated to freedom and justice as he understood those concepts. A dominant theme in the play is the tyranny of the priesthood; the epic poem is memorable for the plea or tolerance.

It was on his release from prison that Voltaire adopted the name by which he is now known universally, Aurot de Voltaire. The aristocratic particle de is of special interest since he belonged to a bourgeois family. This indeed points to the fact that he was determined to rise in the world. The most common explanation of the name is that it is an imperfect anagram of Arouet, l.j. (le jeune), but other explanations have been advanced. Some have believed that it was an older name on his mother's side of the family; still others argue that it was derived from his schoolboy sobriquet, le volontaire.

The tragedy Œ dipe, first acted in November 1718, was an immediate success, enjoying a run of forty-five days. Now Voltaire was welcomed back to Paris as a gifted tragic poet. But his reputation for writing lampoons and other satiric verse directed against public figures was too great for him to avoid new difficulties. He was falsely accused of being the author of the La Grange-Chancel libels, the Philippiques, which were virulent satires directed against the Duc d' Orleans. This time he was guest of the Duc de Villars, maréchal of France and famous war hero. While living with the maréchal and harmlessly making love to the duchess, Voltaire commenced gathering material for his historical works.

By the end of 1725, Voltaire was flourishing, enjoying as he did the patronage and friendship of the Duke of Richelieu. Then his fortunes turned again. The arrogant Chevalier du Rohan, obviously jealous of Voltaire's popularity, taunted him about his adopted name. There followed a harsh exchange between the two, and the Chevalier subsequently had his lackeys attack his foe. When the latter challenged him to a duel, the Chevalier had his opponent sent to the Bastille. Voltaire was imprisoned only for a fortnight, but when released he again faced exile.

Voltaire had met Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke in the early 1720s when the Englishman was himself in exile. The two became firm friends, and Voltaire, always a great letter writer, corresponded with him regularly. It was perhaps this relationship that led the Frenchman to spend most of the next three years in England. The consensus is that this period in Voltaire's life was of the greatest importance to him. John Morley, one of his better known English biographers, went so far as to say that the English Deists formed Voltaire's mind. This, no doubt, is an exaggeration, in view of the Frenchman's apprenticeship to the Abbé de Châteauneuf, his admiration of Henri Bayle, and the evidence found in his growing list of publications. But certainly Saintsbury did not exaggerate when he wrote as follows (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition):

Before the English visit, Voltaire had been an elegant trifler, an adept in the forms of literature popular in French society, a sort of superior Dorat or Boufflers of earlier growth. He returned from that visit one of the foremost literary men in Europe.

The cultural and intellectual climate of England at this time (1726 to 1729) delighted the young Voltaire. He was welcomed in Tory and Whig circles alike. Among his friends and acquaintances were the leading literary figures of the day, among them Pope, Swift, Gay, Young, and Thomson. He was to record his respect and admiration for the author of A Tale of a Tub and the newly published Gulliver's Travels, a work that was not without its influence on Candide. But especially he revered Alexander Pope, with whom he had so much in common — the satiric gift, wit, great facility at versifying, the critical temperament and, yes, the vindictiveness, the inability to suffer a fool gladly.

While in England, Voltaire learned to read and write the language fluently. He read avidly the works of Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton (whose allegory of Death and Sin he found unacceptable), Newton, and Locke (whose views on tolerance particularly were acceptable to him). His newfound interest in Shakespeare was to lead him to begin writing his own Roman play, Brutus. Later he was to establish himself as a dedicated Newtonian and to write a treatise on Newton's system. Voltaire also collected materials for his Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais, in which he interpreted most favorably English culture for his countrymen and contrasted it with that of France. Gustave Lanson, the noted French literary historian, called these English Letters the first bomb thrown at the ancien régime. It is clear that Voltaire had only admiration for England and Englishmen. In contrast to the France he had known, he found freedom and tolerance in his temporary home. This was the man who declared that he might disapprove of what an individual said but that he would defend to his own death the individual's right to say it. Little wonder that he so admired the island kingdom. As regards the exile in England, one more thing may be reported. He brought out an English edition of L'Henriade, dedicating it to the English queen. It was a great success, the author realizing some 1000 pounds from subscriptions alone.

Voltaire, however, remained a Frenchman and a Parisian. However much he enjoyed the sojourn in England, he yearned to return home. In the spring of 1729, he secured permission to do so. But not too much time passed before Voltaire again experienced difficulties. In 1733, the publication of the English letters and the satirical poem Temple du Goût enraged many people of influence. The first, while lauding the English, attacked the French government and the Church; the second satirized contemporary writers, especially J. B. Rousseau, the man who had once predicted that Voltaire was to make a great name for himself. The government issued a warrant for Voltaire's arrest, and his house was searched. By that time, however, the author of the two offensive works was at Cirey in Lorraine, an independent duchy, the guest of Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, with whom he had been intimate during the previous year. The relationship between her and Voltaire was to last for some sixteen years and marks the next important stage in his long career.

Mme. du Châtelet, twelve years Voltaire's junior, was in many ways a remarkable woman. Short of temper, often difficult, persona non grata in fashionable society, she nevertheless had her attractions. A woman of keen intellect, she was devoted to mathematics, science, and philosophy. Particularly was she dedicated to the optimistic philosophy of Leibnitz; assisted by Voltaire, she spent much of her time writing an exposition of the German's conclusions. She shared Voltaire's enthusiasm for Newton, and while her companion worked on an exposition of the Newtonian system, she translated the Principia into French, adding a commentary.

These were indeed productive years for Voltaire. Among other works, he completed a treatise on metaphysics, wrote six plays, completed two poems — Le Mondain, a satire against the Jansenists, whose doctrine had much in common with Calvinism, and the philosophical Discours sur l'homme. He also labored on the Siècle de Louis XIV and his universal history, Essai sur moeurs.

Once the Regent had died, Paris again beckoned to him. After 1743, he found himself in favor at Court, thanks largely to Richelieu and Madame de Pompadour, who admired the dramatist Voltaire. When a new work, Poème de Fontenay (1745), proved to be a success, he was rewarded by being made the royal historiographer and received a substantial pension. The post had been held earlier by Racine and Corneille. It was about this time that he turned to another type of writing, the philosophical tales, among which Candide was to become best known. He also continued to write plays, now in competition with Crébillon, with whom he was to engage in a bitter quarrel. In 1746, finally, Voltaire was elected to the French Academy; most certainly he had attained maturity as a literary artist and philosophe .

Nothing could stop the audacities of Voltaire's pen. In his bitingly satirical Trajan est-il content? there were obvious references to Louis XV himself. In 1748, he found it expedient to find refuge with the Duchess de Sceaux, and somewhat later he joined Mme. de Châtelet at Lunéville. In September 1749, his close friend Mme. de Châtelet, died while giving birth to a child, the father of whom was neither her husband nor Voltaire. Again he had reached the crossroads in his eventful life. What to do now? He could not return to Paris, especially because of the continuing feud with Crébillon.

Frederick the Great, whom Voltaire had once met and with whom he had been corresponding regularly for some time, had been urging the Frenchman to come to Potsdam, where the Prussian king had established his academy and was anxious to add another star to his galaxie of philosophes, the intellectuals of Europe. So Voltaire took up his residence at Potsdam in 1750. There, the recipient of a generous pension, he completed his most ambitious historical work, the Siècle de Louis XIV; wrote a new philosophical tale, Micromégas, which illustrates the influence of Swift's Gulliver's Travels upon his own fiction; and worked on his universal history.

Unfortunately, the friendship of Frederick and Voltaire did not flourish; both could be difficult individuals in their respective ways. Voltaire was offended by elements in the king's personal life and found him to be particularly arrogant. What ultimately led to the break in their relationship, however, was Voltaire's attack upon the president of Frederick's cherished Academy of Science. Entitled the Diatribe du Doctor Akakia, it was published without permission, and despite his assurance that all copies would be destroyed, Voltaire took malicious pleasure in seeing to it that the work circulated. As a result, he suffered the indignity of being arrested at Frankfort and having his baggage searched. No longer could he stay in Germany under the patronage of the man whom he had once eulogized as a Horace, a Catullus, a Maecenas, a Socrates, as Augustus and as the Solomon of the North.

Aware that he would not be welcome back in Paris, especially because his sojourn in Germany was looked upon as an insult to his fellow countrymen, Voltaire took up residence in Geneva, where in most respects the air of freedom was purer. He was now a wealthy man. He had inherited sums of money from his father and brother, he had been given pensions by the French and Prussian kings, and he had gained more money from many of his works (particularly his plays). Early in young manhood, he had demonstrated his skill in speculation. Indeed, had he chosen to concentrate on finance rather than literature, he very well could have emerged as a Rothschild. He purchased a chateau near Geneva and called it Les Délices, his "summer palace." He bought another residence at Monrion, Lausanne, which he called his "winter palace." As busy as ever as a writer, he nevertheless found time to encourage the local manufacturers, particularly the watchmakers. It was here that he wrote Candide, as well as a tragedy and much verse. Polemical works also came from his pen, for he continued the attack upon religion with his war cry "Écrasez l'Infame."

Although Voltaire did find greater tolerance in Switzerland, his relations with the Calvinists were not harmonious. Specifically, they were shocked to learn that he had built a private theater at Les Délices and frequently staged plays. So, retaining possession of that chateau, he bought the chateau and demesne of Ferney, in France, quite close to the Swiss border; he moved there in 1760 and lived with his niece, Mme. Denis. Here indeed he flourished as a manorial lord, served by as many as sixty persons. He was extremely hospitable and welcomed the many distinguished visitors from all parts of Europe who came to see and talk with the now widely famous man. He remained in residence at Ferney for twenty years.

Although he continued to the end to write on literary subjects, they received less attention. All his life he had been convinced that all literature should teach, and he had used drama and tales for that very purpose. His works demonstrate his sustained interest in religious, political, social, and philosophical questions. But now he was not content merely to use belletristic literature as his medium. He became the active champion of tolerance and justice, emerging as an eighteenth-century Zola. Most notable is his Traité sur la tolerance (1763), which he wrote in defense of Jean Calais, who had been tortured and executed as a result of a religious controversy. This was effective enough so that Calais was recognized as the victim of judicial murder. The death of the young Chevalier de la Barre for alleged sacrilege led Voltaire to write another powerful tract that was effective in clearing the Chevalier's name. To note just one other example, he came to the rescue of one Sirven, a French Protestant declared guilty of the murder of his Roman Catholic daughter and who had been banished as a then penniless criminal. Voltaire succeeded in having the sentence reversed. Little wonder that he was hailed as the apostle of freedom, as well as intellectual potentate of Europe.

Voltaire began his literary career as a tragic poet, if one excepts minor verse; he was to end it as one — and to end it triumphantly. In the spring of 1778, his last play, the tragedy Irene, was accepted for performance in Paris, and the old man was determined to be present at the premiere. His return to the city from which he had been exiled time and again created a sensation. He was honored by the French Academy as its most distinguished member. But his rapidly failing health made it impossible for him to witness the great success of his tragedy on the opening night. He was able, however, to attend the sixth performance and to receive the acclaim of an enthusiastic audience.

Voltaire, the longtime valetudinarian who now was eighty-four years of age, died on May 30, 1778. Typically, the man who had erected a Catholic Church on one of his estates (having the inscription "Deo erexit Voltaire" placed upon it), and who in his last years played chess regularly with a Jesuit, refused Extreme Unction and absolution. There was thus difficulty relating to his burial, and his body was hastily interred at the abbey of Scellières in Champagne barely before the interdict of the bishop. But thirteen years later the body was brought back to Paris for repose in the Pantheon, the famous church that is the French equivalent of Westminster Abbey.

It is clear that Voltaire was a brilliant, complex individual. He manifested great charm that won him many friends among influential members of both sexes; he also possessed almost a genius for making enemies. He was a man who liked to oppose. Witness his quarrel with J. B. Rousseau and the completely uncalled-for one with Crébillon. And surely it was not all Frederick the Great's fault that Voltaire did not flourish at Potsdam. There is a comparable contrast with reference to his reputation. Goethe praised him in superlatives, speaking of his genius, his "eagle's sweep of vision," his "vast understanding"; for the great German, the Frenchman was "perfection indeed." One dissenter was the writer Joseph Joubert, who believed that Voltaire lacked compassion — a curious judgment on the man who came to the defense of such victims of intolerance as Calais, Sirven, and the Chevalier de la Barre. We shall find that the critical estimates of Candide also vary markedly, but the consensus is that, of its kind, the tale is unsurpassed.

Reference has been made to various works by Voltaire, giving an indication of his breadth. Indeed one must turn to a Lope de Vega or a Daniel Defoe to find as prolific a writer. It is now desirable to provide a short survey of the works. They are properly described as "vast and various" by Saintsbury and may be easily classified as to type.

First are the tragedies and comedies, some fifty to sixty in all. As has been indicated Voltaire was a dramatist early and late, beginning his literary career with a tragedy and ending it with one. Nanine has been called his best comedy although, curiously enough, this man with such a superior wit was not too well at home in this genre. Zaïre (1732) and Mérope (1741) have been placed among the superior plays of the entire Classical School in France.

The second grouping is that of the non-dramatic poems. He was an indefatigable writer in this area. It will suffice to note three here. First is the heroic epic L'Henriade, an ambitious work modeled after Virgil's Aeneid and written in alexandrine couplets. Next is the scandalous but often amusing La Pucelle (surreptitiously printed in 1755; first authorized edition, 1755); this is actually a burlesque attacking the reputation of Joan of Arc. It was one of the several works (including Candide ) the authorship of which Voltaire for a time denied. The third poem that deserves notice, particularly because of its close relationship to Candide, is Désastre de Lisbon, published in 1756, the year following the terrifying earthquake. It is true that Voltaire lacked what may be called the true passion, but his verse is memorable for technical virtuosity and superior diction — and quite often for superior wit.

A third classification is that of the historical works, which, excepting Voltaire's correspondence, are most voluminous. Mention has been made of the Siècle de Louis XIV and to Essai sur les moeurs, chiefly remarkable for the amount of private, personal information Voltaire was able to include in them. His short monographs on Charles XII and on Peter the Great, as well as the Annales de l'empire, deserve mention. In this field Voltaire was competent enough, but there is no danger of anyone confusing him with an Edward Gibbon.

Voltaire wrote a great deal on the subject of physics in which he demonstrated considerable knowledge, but it is to the philosophical works that we now turn, to two in particular: the Dictionnaire philosophique, which is largely made up of material that he had prepared for the Encyclopédie, of which Diderot may be considered the guiding spirit; and the ambitious Traité de Metaphysique. The first is a prime source for Voltaire's religious and political views; the second, which did not really succeed, merely proves that Voltaire, however intellectual he may have been, was not a philosopher in the sense that Locke or Leibnitz was.

Still another division is that of critical and miscellaneous writing. In pamphlet after pamphlet, he demonstrated superior ability as a journalist. The ones in defence of Calais and others are prime examples. The best of his several critical works is his Commentaire sur Corneille.

Logically the prose tales should have been discussed after the plays and the poems, but it is desirable to conclude this introduction with a discussion of them, since Candide is the best known philosophic tale, one that has been called "the most remarkable fruit of Voltaire's genius." The author, who believed that all literature should teach, used the tale as a vehicle for his profoundest views on politics, religion, and philosophy. Besides Candide, memorable among them are Zadig (1747), first published under the title of Memnon, in which the young hero, like Candide, travels far and wide, and experiences great dangers. The special interest of this tale is that Voltaire concluded it on a completely optimistic note. L'Homme aux quarante écus (1768) attacks certain political and social practices of eighteenth-century France. A few are out-and-out lampoons on the Bible. Histoires des voyages de Scarmentado (1756) has been described by Gustave Lanson as a kind of preliminary sketch of Candide.

Apparently aware that Candide would shock and offend many readers, Voltaire did not acknowledge authorship of the tale at first. He gave the work the fictitious subtitle: "Translated from the German of Dr. Ralph, with the additions found in the doctor's pocket when he died at Minden, in the year of grace 1759." Its immediate and sustained popularity is indicated by the fact that forty-three editions appeared between 1759 and 1789. A second part, or sequel, was published with the original first in an English edition and erroneously attributed to Voltaire. Further evidence of the popularity of the work is found in the attention given to it by critics from the very start.

In a letter to Voltaire dated February 23, 1759, Nicholas-Claude Theirot praised him as the "most excellent author and inventor of quips and jests" and said that his "book is snatched from hand to hand." Theirot went so far as to predict that Voltaire's work would live for a century and considered it "more like Lucian, Rabelais, and Swift than all three put together." In the same year, Friedrich M. Grimm expressed his views in a letter. He too appreciated the wit and gaiety in Candide but deplored what he considered the author's bad taste, referring to the "vulgarity, indecent talk, and filth without disguise to make them bearable." For him, Candide was no more than a plaisanterie. But for many others, like Mme. de Staël, it was the serious work of a scoffing philosopher.

The same division in critical estimates of the tale is to be found abroad. We have Boswell's word for it that Samuel Johnson, literary dictator of his age, never tired of expressing his admiration for Candide, which in its "plan and conduct" is so much like his own philosophical tale, Rasselas. But to the poet Edward Young, whom Voltaire had met in England, Candide was no more than "bold trash." So with the romanticist William Wordsworth, who referred to it as

     this dull product of a scoffer's pen,

     Impure conceits discharging from a heart

     Hardened by impious pride.

     ( The Excursion, II, 484-486)

Carlyle's name may be added to those who either dismissed the tale as a kind of joke or deplored Voltaire's cynicism. Carlyle denied that the Frenchman had one great thought and described the work as "mere logical pleasantry."

The pendulum has, however, swung far in Voltaire's favor as the years have advanced. William Hazlitt, refuting Wordsworth, flatly declared that " Candide is a masterpiece of wit"; Henry Brougham (in Lives of Men of Letters, 1856) praised it as "most extraordinary"; John Morley, perhaps best known among the many biographers of Voltaire, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, admired its "fresh and unflagging spontaneity." G. Lytton-Strachey and Aldous Huxley are among the many who have hailed Candide as a masterpiece. Ira O. Wade has provided the correct explanation of why there should have been such widely divergent views of the tale: " Candide is . . . in its inner substance not wholly optimistic, or pessimistic, or skeptical or cynical; it is all these things at the same time" (Voltaire and Candide, 1959, 319). Whether viewed favorably or unfavorably, Candide remains a classic. Theirot wrote that it would live a hundred years; it has already survived for well over two hundred and will continue to live as long as there is an intelligent reading public.

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The Life and Work of Voltaire, French Enlightenment Writer

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Born François-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778) was a writer and philosopher of the French Enlightenment period . He was an incredibly prolific writer, advocating for civil freedoms and criticizing major institutions such as the Catholic Church.

Fast Facts: Voltaire

• Full Name : François-Marie Arouet
• Occupation : Writer, poet, and philosopher
• Born : November 21, 1694 in Paris, France
• Died : May 30, 1778 in Paris, France
• Parents: François Arouet and Marie Marguerite Daumard
• Key Accomplishments : Voltaire published significant criticism of the French monarchy. His commentary on religious tolerance, historiographies, and civil liberties became a key component of Enlightenment thinking.

Voltaire was the fifth child and fourth son of François Arouet and his wife Marie Marguerite Daumard. The Arouet family had already lost two sons, Armand-François and Robert, in infancy, and Voltaire (then François-Marie) was nine years younger than his surviving brother, Armand, and seven years younger than his sole sister, Marguerite-Catherine. François Arouet was a lawyer and a treasury official; their family was part of the French nobility , but at the lowest possible rank. Later in life, Voltaire claimed to be the illegitimate son of a higher-ranked nobleman by the name of Guérin de Rochebrune.

His early education came from the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand. From the age of ten until seventeen, Voltaire received classical instruction in Latin, rhetoric , and theology. Once he left school, he decided he wanted to become a writer, much to the dismay of his father, who wanted Voltaire to follow him into the law. Voltaire also continued learning outside the confines of formal education. He developed his writing talents and also became multilingual, attaining fluency in English, Italian, and Spanish in addition to his native French.

First Career and Early Romance

After leaving school, Voltaire moved to Paris. He pretended to be working as an assistant to a notary, theoretically as a stepping stone into the legal profession. In reality, though, he was actually spending most of his time writing poetry. After a time, his father found out the truth and sent him away from Paris to study law in Caen, Normandy.

Even this did not deter Voltaire from continuing to write. He merely switched over from poetry to writing studies on history and essays. During this period, the witty style of writing and speaking that made Voltaire so popular first appeared in his work, and it endeared him to many of the higher-ranking nobles he spent time around.

In 1713, with his father’s assistance, Voltaire began working at the Hague in the Netherlands as a secretary to the French ambassador, the marquis de Châteauneuf. While there, Voltaire had his earliest known romantic entanglement, falling in love with a Huguenot refugee, Catherine Olympe Dunoyer. Unfortunately, their connection was considered unsuitable and caused something of a scandal, so the marquis forced Voltaire to break it off and return to France. By this point, his political and legal career had all but been given up.

Playwright and Government Critic

Upon returning to Paris, Voltaire launched his writing career. Since his favorite topics were critiques of the government and satires of political figures, he landed in hot water pretty quickly. One early satire, which accused the Duke of Orleans of incest, even landed him in prison in the Bastille for nearly a year. Upon his release, however, his debut play (a take on the Oedipus myth ) was produced, and it was a critical and commercial success. The Duke whom he had previously offended even presented him with a medal in recognition of the achievement.

It was around this time that François-Marie Arouet began going by the pseudonym Voltaire, under which he would publish most of his works. To this day, there’s much debate as to how he came up with the name. It may have its roots as an anagram or pun on his family name or several different nicknames. Voltaire reportedly adopted the name in 1718, after being released from the Bastille. After his release, he also struck up a new romance with a young widow, Marie-Marguerite de Rupelmonde.

Unfortunately, Voltaire’s next works did not have nearly the same success as his first. His play Artémire flopped so badly that even the text itself only survives in a few fragments, and when he tried to publish an epic poem about King Henry IV (the first Bourbon dynasty monarch), he couldn’t find a publisher in France. Instead, he and Rupelmonde journeyed to the Netherlands, where he secured a publisher in The Hague. Eventually, Voltaire convinced a French publisher to publish the poem, La Henriade , secretly. The poem was a success, as was his next play, which was performed at the wedding of Louis XV.

In 1726, Voltaire became involved in a quarrel with a young nobleman who reportedly insulted Voltaire’s change of name. Voltaire challenged him to a duel, but the nobleman instead had Voltaire beaten, then arrested without a trial. He was, however, able to negotiate with authorities to be exiled to England rather than imprisoned at the Bastille again.

English Exile

As it turns out, Voltaire’s exile to England would change his entire outlook. He moved in the same circles as some of the leading figures of English society, thought, and culture, including Jonathan Swift , Alexander Pope, and more. In particular, he became fascinated by the government of England in comparison with France: England was a constitutional monarchy , whereas France still lived under an absolute monarchy . The country also had greater freedoms of speech and religion, which would become a key component of Voltaire’s criticisms and writings.

Voltaire was able to return to France after a little more than two years, though still banned from the court at Versailles. Thanks to participation in a plan to literally purchase the French lottery, along with an inheritance from his father, he quickly became incredibly rich. In the early 1730s, he began publishing work that showed his clear English influences. His play Zaïre was dedicated to his English friend Everard Fawkener and included praise of English culture and freedoms. He also published a collection of essays that praised British politics, attitudes towards religion and science, and arts and literature, called the  Letters Concerning the English Nation , in 1733 in London. The next year, it was published in French, landing Voltaire in hot water again. Because he did not get the approval of the official royal censor before publishing, and because the essays praised British religious freedom and human rights, the book was banned and Voltaire had to quickly flee from Paris.

In 1733, Voltaire also met the most significant romantic partner of his life: Émilie, the Marquise du Châtelet, a mathematician who was married to the Marquis du Châtelet. Despite being 12 years younger than Voltaire (and married, and a mother), Émilie was very much an intellectual peer to Voltaire. They amassed a shared collection of over 20,000 books and spent time studying and performing experiments together, many of which were inspired by Voltaire’s admiration of Sir Isaac Newton . After the Letters scandal, Voltaire fled to the estate belonging to her husband. Voltaire paid to renovate the building, and her husband did not raise any fuss about the affair, which would continue for 16 years.

Somewhat abashed by his multiple conflicts with the government, Voltaire began keeping a lower profile, although he continued his writing, now focused on history and science. The Marquise du Châtelet contributed considerably alongside him, producing a definitive French translation of Newton’s Principia and writing reviews of Voltaire’s Newton-based work. Together, they were instrumental in introducing Newton’s work in France. They also developed some critical views on religion, with Voltaire publishing several texts that sharply criticized the establishment of state religions, religious intolerance, and even organized religion as a whole. Similarly, he railed against the style of histories and biographies of the past, suggesting they were filled with falsehoods and supernatural explanations and needed a fresh, more scientific and evidence-based approach to research.

Connections in Prussia

Frederick the Great , while he was still just the crown prince of Prussia, began a correspondence with Voltaire around 1736, but they did not meet in person until 1740. Despite their friendship, Voltaire still went to Frederick’s court in 1743 as a French spy to report back on Frederick’s intentions and capabilities with regards to the ongoing War of Austrian Succession.

By the mid-1740s, Voltaire’s romance with the Marquise du Châtelet had begun to wind down. He grew tired of spending nearly all his time at her estate, and both found new companionship. In Voltaire’s case, it was even more scandalous than their affair had been: he was attracted to, and later lived with, his own niece, Marie Louise Mignot. In 1749, the Marquise died in childbirth, and Voltaire moved to Prussia the following year.

During the 1750s, Voltaire’s relationships in Prussia began to deteriorate. He was accused of theft and forgery relating to some bond investments, then had a feud with the president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences that ended with Voltaire writing a satire that angered Frederick the Great and resulted in the temporary destruction of their friendship. They would, however, reconcile in the 1760s .

Geneva, Paris, and Final Years

Forbidden by King Louis XV to return to Paris, Voltaire instead arrived in Geneva in 1755. He continued publishing, with major philosophical writings such as Candide, or Optimism , a satire of Leibniz's philosophy of optimistic determinism which would become Voltaire’s most famous work.

Starting in 1762, Voltaire took up the causes of unjustly persecuted people, particularly those who were victims of religious persecution. Among his most notable causes was the case of Jean Calas, a Huguenot who was convicted of murdering his son for wanting to convert to Catholicism and tortured to death; his property was confiscated and his daughters forced into Catholic convents. Voltaire, along with others, strongly doubted his guilt and suspected a case of religious persecution. The conviction was overturned in 1765.

Voltaire’s last year was still full of activity. In early 1778, he was initiated into Freemasonry , and historians dispute as to whether he did so at the urging of Benjamin Franklin or not. He also returned to Paris for the first time in a quarter century to see his latest play, Irene , open. He fell ill on the journey and believed himself to be on death’s doorstep, but recovered. Two months later, however, he became ill again and died on May 30, 1778. Accounts of his deathbed vary wildly, depending on the sources and their own opinions of Voltaire. His famous deathbed quote—in which a priest asked him to renounce Satan and he replied “Now is not the time for making new enemies!”—is likely apocryphal and actually traced to a 19 th -century joke that was attributed to Voltaire in the 20 th century.

Voltaire was formally denied a Christian burial because of his criticism of the Church, but his friends and family managed to secretly arrange a burial at the abbey of Scellières in Champagne. He left behind a complicated legacy. For instance, while he argued for religious tolerance, he also was one of the origins of Enlightenment-era anti-Semitism. He endorsed anti-enslavement and anti-monarchical views, but disdained the idea of democracy as well. In the end, Voltaire’s texts became a key component of Enlightenment thinking , which has allowed his philosophy and writing to endure for centuries.

• Pearson, Roger. Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom . Bloomsbury, 2005.
• Pomeau, René Henry. “Voltaire: French Philosopher and Author.” Encyclopaedia Britannica , https://www.britannica.com/biography/Voltaire.
• “Voltaire.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Stanford University, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voltaire/
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Biography Online

Voltaire Biography

“Love truth, but pardon error.”

– Voltaire

Voltaire was a prolific writer, producing more than 20,000 letters and over 2,000 books and pamphlets. Despite strict censorship laws, he frequently risked large penalties by breaking them and questioning the establishment.

Short Biography of Voltaire

Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet, in Paris. He was educated by Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704–1711), becoming fluent in Greek, Latin and the major European languages.

His father tried to encourage Voltaire to become a lawyer, but Voltaire was more interested in becoming a writer. Instead of studying to be a lawyer, he began writing poetry and mild criticisms of the church and state. His humorous, satirical writing made him popular with sections of Paris society, though they also started attracting the attention of the censors.

In 1726, he was exiled to England after being involved in a scuffle with a French nobleman. The nobleman used his wealth to have him arrested, and this would cause Voltaire to try and reform the French judicial system. After this first imprisonment in the Bastilles, he changed his name to Voltaire – signifying his departure from his past. He also used numerous other pen names throughout the course of his life, in a bid to escape censorship.

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:

“We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation”

Although he had much in common with fellow French Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau , the pair often disagreed and had a prickly relationship. However, after Rousseau wrote Emile / Vicaire Savoyard, Voltaire offered Rousseau a safe haven because he appreciated Rousseau’s attack on religious hypocrisy. Rousseau regretted not replying to Voltaire’s offer.

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. During this time, Voltaire wrote on Newton’s scientific theories and helped to make Newton’s ideas accessible to a much wider section of European society. He also began attacking the church’s relationship with the state. 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.

“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.”  On Catholicism

In a letter to Frederick II, King of Prussia, (5 January 1767) he once wrote:

“Ours [religion] is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most blood-thirsty ever to infect the world.”

In 1744, Voltaire returned to Paris, where he began a relationship with his niece, Marie Louise Mignot. They remained together until his death.

For a brief time, he was invited by Frederick the Great, to Potsdam. Here, Voltaire wrote more articles of a scientific nature, but later incurred the displeasure of the king as he started satirising the abuses of power within the state.

In 1759, he wrote his best-known work – Candide, ou l’Optimisme ( Candide , or Optimism ) This was a satire on the philosophy of Leibniz. After a brief stay in Geneva, he settled for 20 years in Ferny on the French border.

In his later life, Voltaire continued to write and also to support persecuted religious minorities. He was visited by some of the leading European intellectuals of the day – such as James Boswell and Adam Smith.

In 1778, he died after shortly returning to Paris. Some of his enemies claimed he made a deathbed conversion to Catholicism, but this is disputed.

In February of that year, fearing he would die, he wrote:

“I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”

Voltaire was secretly buried before a pronouncement could be made public.

Three years after his death, on 11 July 1791, he was brought back to Paris to be enshrined in the Pantheon. It is said up to a million people came to see Voltaire – now considered a French hero and fore-runner of the French revolution.

Influence of Voltaire

• Voltaire revolutionised the art of history. He sought to avoid bias and included discussion of social and economic issues, moving away from dry military accounts.
• Voltaire argued for an extension of education, hoping greater literacy would free society from ignorance.
• Voltaire wrote poems and plays, including two epics. Voltaire politicised writing by showing that even poetry and romance could be laced with satire and political polemic. Often it was indirect criticism that was most effective.
• Voltaire was a passionate and persistent critic of those in power who misused their position. By attacking the abuses of the absolute monarchy and church, he paved the way for a less deferential attitude which was a significant underlying cause of the French revolution.
• At a time of religious persecution, Voltaire illustrated how religious dogmas were created by human ignorance and led to needless bloodshed and suffering.
• Voltaire was a key figure of the enlightenment which sought to use a range of scientific and literary books to explain the underlying nature of life. Voltaire believed no one book or dogma could explain everything. But, true understanding required the use of reason and an open mind.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “ Biography of Voltaire” , Oxford, www.biographyonline.net – 3 February 2013. Last updated 7 February 2018.

Voltaire Quotes

“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?”

– Voltaire A Treatise on Toleration (1763)

Candide – Voltaire

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The Portable Voltaire

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Famous Philosophers

Biography, Facts and Works

François-Marie d’Arouet, famous by his pen name Voltaire, was a prominent philosopher of the Enlightenment movement of the Eighteenth century. Born on November 21 1694, Voltaire gave remarkable concepts of freedom and enlightenment. He was also a noted historian and an outspoken, witty intellectual of his times.

Voltaire was not a philosopher in the strict sense of the term, though he put across new ideas and thoughts prolifically through his varied style of writing. He experimented with almost all forms of writing, including poetry, prose, letters, plays, essays, novels and even scientific works. The count of his letters reaches to 20,000, while books and pamphlets sum up to more than two thousand. Most of his books are works of satire, comprising of content sparking much controversy.

On the subject of morality, he tried to find a middle ground. In his most famous work Candide (1759), he spoke sharply against the overly optimistic philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . On the other hand, he also wrote in opposition of the pessimistic ideas regarding human evilness by Blaise Pascal. He focused on judging morality based solely on reasoning.

As a philosopher, he published the famous Philosophical Dictionary in 1764, and various other essays under the title of Encyclopedia , compiled between the years 1751-1772. He openly criticized the various sections of the French society, especially religious and political institutions.

Voltaire’s contribution to history cannot be neglected, as he provided a new perspective on how to record the past. Voltaire is considered to be the first person to keep track of historical events fundamentally based on culture. The Age of Louis XIV in 1751 and the Essay on Customs and Spirit of Nations published in 1756 are vital examples of his historiography capabilities.

Voltaire opposed almost all religions, calling the Bible and the Quran outdated manuscripts, deeming them not as divine presents but written by mortals. His harsh criticism of religion and religious scriptures and institutions often makes him come across as an atheist. In reality, however, he was a deist; he was one of the most important advocates of deism in England and France. He did not outright reject the possibility of a supreme being, but believed that an all-knowing and all-governing deity should be found through observation and reasoning, instead of blind faith. In the Treatise on Toleration (1763), he defended the right of religious freedom for all, and said that all humans are people of the same God, thus they should not create divisions and conflicts on the basis of religion.

Voltaire’s political philosophy was highly inspired by the ideas given by Confucius . For him, democracy was a practice of displaying mass foolishness.  He was in favor of a sensible, responsible monarchy as form of government. For Voltaire, the provision of education to the masses would not only be favorable for the people, but also for the monarch. After observing the failure of this theory by Frederick the Great, he came to the conclusion that educating ourselves is a duty which only we can fulfill in its entirety.

He also spoke against the unfair authority of the church and the state which they exercised above the middle class, which comprised of most of the tax-paying population of the country.

Voltaire died on 30 May 1778. France remembers him as a brave polemic who was never afraid to speak his mind, in spite of fierce opposition. His ideas have remained impactful throughout the Enlightenment period and are honored around the world to this day.

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How Voltaire Went from Bastille Prisoner to Famous Playwright

Three hundred years ago this week, the French philosopher and writer began his career with a popular retelling of Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus’

Lorraine Boissoneault

François-Marie d’Arouet was the kind of precocious teen who always got invited to the best parties. Earning a reputation for his wit and catchy verses among the elites of 18th-century Paris, the young writer got himself exiled to the countryside in May 1716 for writing criticism of the ruling family. But Arouet—who would soon adopt the pen name “Voltaire”—was only getting started in his takedowns of those in power. In the coming years, those actions would have far more drastic repercussions: imprisonment for him, and a revolution for his country. And it all started with a story of incest.

In 1715, the young Arouet began a daunting new project: adapting the story of Oedipus for a contemporary French audience. The ancient Greek tale chronicles the downfall of Oedipus, who fulfilled a prophecy that he would kill his father, the king of Thebes, and marry his mother. Greek playwright Sophocles wrote the earliest version of the play in his tragedy, Oedipus Rex . As recently as 1659, the famed French dramatist Pierre Corneille had adapted the play, but Arouet thought the story deserved an update, and he happened to be living at the perfect time to give it one.

On September 1, 1715, Louis XIV (also known as the “Sun King”) died without leaving a clear successor. One of the most powerful rulers in the history of France, raising its fortunes and expanding colonial holdings, Louis also dragged the country into three major wars. He centralized power in France and elevated the Catholic Church by ruthlessly persecuting French Protestants. The king’s only son predeceased him, as did his grandson. His great-grandson, at age 5, needed a regent to oversee the ruling of the state. That duty fell to Philippe Duc d’Orléans, who used his position to essentially rule the country as Regent until his own death.

Philippe change the geopolitical trajectory of France, forming alliances with Austria, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. He also upended the old social order, opposing censorship and allowing once-banned books to be reprinted. The atmosphere “changed radically as the country came under the direction of a man who lived in the Palais-Royal, at the heart of Paris, and was widely known to indulge mightily in the pleasures of the table, the bottle, and the flesh—including, it was no less commonly believed, the flesh of his daughter, the duchesse de Berry,” writes Roger Pearson in Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom .

For Arouet, the loosening of social restrictions created an almost limitless sense of possibilities, and harnessing theater was perhaps the most effective way to spread the message of freedom and tolerance to the public.

“Voltaire estimated that only five percent of the population in Europe could read in his Letters on England in 1733,” says Gail Noyer, the editor and translator of Voltaire’s Revolution: Writings From His Campaign to Free Laws From Religion . “So [public performances of] plays had far more influence than books did, until much later in the century.”

As for where his work would be performed, only one choice presented itself, even though Paris hosted multiple theaters. “The Comédie Française had a virtual monopoly as the only theatre authorized and supervised by the court for the staging of tragedies and serious dramas,” writes Ian Davidson in Voltaire: A Life . “Almost anybody who wanted to be a writer wanted to write for the Comédie Française.”

Arouet worked feverishly on his play, Oedipe , only for it to be rejected by the Comédie Française. Still, the theater didn’t give him an absolute dismissal, instead suggesting revisions, which he continued hacking away at for several years. Finally, on January 19, 1717, the theatre agreed to put on a revised form of the play.

But the timing for Arouet’s success couldn’t have been worse. While he’d been at work on his play, Arouet continued to write popular verses that were shared among his friends—including a piece that referenced the rumors of the Regent’s incestuous conduct with his daughter:

“It is not the son, it is the father;

It is the daughter, and not the mother;

So far, so good.

They have already made Eteocles;

If suddenly he loses his two eyes;

That would be a true story for Sophocles.”

The verse clearly pointed to the Regent , Philippe, and his relationship with his daughter, and even for the permissive ruler, it was a bridge too far. On May 16, 1717, Arouet was arrested and taken to the formidable Bastille. He tried to plead innocence in his case, claiming he wasn’t the one who’d written the verses, but he had already admitted authorship to several friends—friends who turned out to be spies. “Conditions in the Bastille were harsh and oppressive, with its ten-foot walls, its ‘triple locks, and grills and bolts and bars’, and with poor food and no sunlight,” Davidson writes . Even worse, Arouet had no idea when he might be set free, if ever. His case never went through any type of judicial process; the length of his detention depended solely on the whim of the Regent.

After 11 months, the Regency decided to show mercy to Arouet, releasing him on Holy Thursday, April 14, 1718. Arouet was placed on the 18th-century equivalent of house arrest for several more months, but was finally allowed free entry in and out of Paris, and on November 18, 1718, the young man who had started to address himself as “Voltaire” had the first major success of his life: the staging of Oedipe at the Comédie Française.

The play was immensely popular, going on to run for a nearly unprecedented 32 performances, Davidson writes. Perhaps some of that popularity stemmed from the Regent’s titillating scandals. But Voltaire didn’t just attack hereditary monarchy; he also leveled charges against the corrupt power of the Church. In one of the playwright’s most famous lines, Queen Jocasta says , “Our priests are not what the foolish people imagine; their wisdom is based solely on our credulity.” Considering how powerful the Catholic Church remained, it was a dangerous dig to make—but one audiences thrilled to hear.

“Generally, the moral content of earlier plays stressed love of God and king, patriotic duty and the like,” writes literary historian Marcus Allen . “In the hands of Voltaire, however, the play itself became the primary vehicle for launching attacks upon the evils of the ancien régime.”

The popularity of the play catapulted Voltaire to true fame, but it also taught him of the dangers that accompanied outspokenness. As he continued writing plays, poems, letters and stories, Voltaire faced an increasing number of critics as well as fans, and would be exiled from France multiple times over the course of his life for offending the Catholic Church and the monarchy. But Voltaire’s stays in England, Holland, Belgium and Prussia exposed him to some of the era’s greatest Enlightenment figures; he was the first to bring the writings of Isaac Newton and philosopher John Locke to France. With his condemnation of torture, war, religious persecution and absolute monarchy, Voltaire paved the way for the ideas that would fuel the French Revolution in 1789, and inspired great American intellects like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Yet according to Noyer, much of that legacy is forgotten today.

“The only thing people seem to know anymore is Candide,” Noyer says, referencing a satirical novel about the dangers of optimism. “I think it’s only chosen as a safe subject, because it certainly wasn’t a big deal in his lifetime.” For Noyer, the real masterpiece is how much Voltaire managed to achieve with his words: helping to inspire the French Revolution and teaching people to think more critically about religious intolerance and injustice.

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Lorraine Boissoneault | | READ MORE

Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Website: http://www.lboissoneault.com/

Voltaire: A Biography

Voltaire (françois-marie arouet )  (1694-1778).

François-Marie Arouet (nicknamed ‘Voltaire,’) was a French philosopher, poet, pamphleteer and fiction writer. Candide , a novel, is the work that has lasted best, still thriving in the modern world. It is widely taught in French schools and universities and French departments in universities worldwide. The British literary critic, Martin Seymour-Smith, named it as one of the hundred most influential books ever written. It is included in the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World . The novel has influenced modern writers of dark satirical humour such as Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Terry Southern and Kurt Vonnegut. Its brand of parody and the picaresque methods Voltaire uses have become standard techniques of black humorists.

Voltaire was a versatile writer, writing in almost every literary form – including plays, poems, 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 champion of liberty, at great danger to himself. He was a staunch critic of the intolerance, religious dogma, and French institutions of his time.

The influence of Voltaire’s writings, particular Candide , on subsequent literature, has been profound. Some twentieth-century works influenced by Candide are novels of dystopian science fiction, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , George Orwell ’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We .

Portrait of Voltaire

Some of the modern genres in literature have been influenced by Candide , for example, the 20th century’s Theatre of the Absurd. The Voltaire scholar, Hadyn Mason, cites similarities between Candide and Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot . Becket has acknowledged the influence of Voltaire on his work. Several novelists have based their novels more squarely on Candide . It has also been made into an opera by Leonard Bernstein, and there have been a number of films, including the 1973 the BBC featuring it in its Play of the Month series.

Voltaire was enormously influential in the development of a modern approach to history, demonstrating fresh ways to look at the past. His best-known histories are The Age of Louis XIV (1751), and Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). The latter traced the progress of world civilization in a universal context and rejected both nationalism and the Christian frame of reference that had been the tradition in history writing. Voltaire was thefirst scholar to make a serious attempt to write the history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks in favour of economics, culture and political history.

Voltaire’s influence as a philosopher is incalculable. Western thinking has been conditioned to a large extent by such of his statements as:

• ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’
• ‘Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing’
• ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him’
• ‘God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh’

…and many others that are familiar to us and whichwe use in our everyday speech.

Read biographies of all of the 30 greatest writers ever >>

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10 Things You Should Know About Voltaire

By: Evan Andrews

Updated: August 8, 2023 | Original: November 21, 2014

1. The origins of his famous pen name are unclear.

Voltaire had a strained relationship with his father, who discouraged his literary aspirations and tried to force him into a legal career. Possibly to show his rejection of his father’s values, he dropped his family name and adopted the nom de plume “Voltaire” upon completing his first play in 1718.

Voltaire never explained the meaning of his pen name, so scholars can only speculate on its origins. The most popular theory maintains the name is an anagram of a certain Latinized spelling of “Arouet,” but others have claimed it was a reference to the name of a family chateau or a nod to the nickname “volontaire” (volunteer), which Voltaire may have been given as a sarcastic reference to his stubbornness.

2. He was imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year. 

Voltaire’s caustic wit first got him into trouble with the authorities in May 1716, when he was briefly exiled from Paris for composing poems mocking the French regent’s family. The young writer was unable to bite his tongue, however, and only a year later he was arrested and confined to the Bastille for writing scandalous verse implying the regent had an incestuous relationship with his daughter.

Voltaire boasted that his cell gave him some quiet time to think, and he eventually did 11 months behind bars before winning a release. He later endured another short stint in the Bastille in April 1726, when he was arrested for planning to duel an aristocrat that had insulted and beaten him. To escape further jail time, he voluntarily exiled himself to England, where he remained for nearly three years.

3. He became hugely wealthy by exploiting a flaw in the French lottery.

In 1729, Voltaire teamed with mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine and others to exploit a lucrative loophole in the French national lottery. The government shelled out massive prizes for the contest each month, but an error in calculation meant that the payouts were larger than the value of all the tickets in circulation. With this in mind, Voltaire, La Condamine and a syndicate of other gamblers were able to repeatedly corner the market and rake in massive winnings.

The scheme left Voltaire with a windfall of nearly half a million francs, setting him up for life and allowing him to devote himself solely to his literary career.

4. He was an extraordinary prolific writer.

Voltaire wrote more than 50 plays, dozens of treatises on science, politics and philosophy, and several books of history on everything from the Russian Empire to the French Parliament. Along the way, he also managed to squeeze in heaps of verse and a voluminous correspondence amounting to some 20,000 letters to friends and contemporaries.

Voltaire supposedly kept up his prodigious output by spending up to 18 hours a day writing or dictating to secretaries, often while still in bed. He may have also been fueled by heroic amounts of caffeine—according to some sources, he drank as many as 40 cups a day.

5. Many of his most famous works were banned.

Since his writing denigrated everything from organized religion to the justice system, Voltaire ran up against frequent censorship from the French government. A good portion of his work was suppressed, and the authorities even ordered certain books to be burned by the state executioner.

To combat the censors, Voltaire had much of his output printed abroad, and he published under a veil of assumed names and pseudonyms. His famous novella “Candide” was originally attributed to a “Dr. Ralph,” and he actively tried to distance himself from it for several years after both the government and the church condemned it.

Despite his best attempts to remain anonymous, Voltaire lived in almost constant fear of arrest. He was forced to flee to the French countryside after his “Letters Concerning the English Nation” was released in 1734, and he went on to spend the majority of his later life in unofficial exile in Switzerland.

6. He helped popularize the famous tale about Sir Isaac Newton and the apple.

Though the two never met in person, Voltaire was an enthusiastic acolyte of the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Upon receiving a copy of Newton’s “Principia Mathematica,” he claimed he knelt down before it in reverence, “as was only right.”

Voltaire played a key role in popularizing Newton’s ideas, and he offered one of the first accounts of how the famed scientist developed his theories on gravity. In his 1727 “Essay on Epic Poetry,” Voltaire wrote that Newton “had the first thought of his System of Gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.”

Voltaire wasn’t the original source for the story of the “Eureka!” moment, as has often been claimed, but his account was instrumental in making it a fabled part of Newton’s biography.

7. He had a brief career as a spy for the French government.

Voltaire struck up a lively correspondence with Frederick the Great in the late 1730s, and he later made several journeys to meet the Prussian monarch in person. Before one of these visits in 1743, Voltaire concocted an ill-advised scheme to use his new position to repair his reputation with the French court. After hatching a deal to serve as a government informant, he wrote several letters to the French giving inside dope on Frederick’s foreign policy and finances.

Voltaire proved a lousy spy, however, and his plan quickly fell apart after Frederick grew suspicious of his motives. The two nevertheless remained close friends—some have even claimed they were lovers—and Voltaire later moved to Prussia in 1750 to take a permanent position in the Frederick’s court. Their relationship finally soured in 1752, after Voltaire made a series of scathing attacks on the head of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Frederick responded by lambasting Voltaire, and ordered that a satirical pamphlet he had written be publicly burned. Voltaire left the court for good in 1753, supposedly telling a friend, “I was enthusiastic about [Frederick] for 16 years, but he has cured me of this long illness.”

8. He never married or fathered children.

While Voltaire technically died a bachelor, his personal life was a revolving door of mistresses, paramours and long-term lovers. He carried out a famous 16-year affair with the brilliant—and very married—author and scientist Émilie du Châtelet, and later had a committed, though secretive, partnership with his own niece, Marie-Louise Mignot. The two lived as a married couple from the early 1750s until his death, and they even adopted a child in 1760, when they took in a destitute young woman named Marie- Françoise Corneille. Voltaire later paid the dowry for Corneille’s marriage, and often referred to Mignot and himself as her “parents.”

9. He set up a successful watchmaking business in his old age.

While living in Ferney, France, in the 1770s, Voltaire joined with a group of Swiss horologists in starting a watchmaking business at his estate. With the septuagenarian Voltaire acting as manager and financier, the endeavor soon grew into a village-wide industry, and Ferney watches came to rival some of the best in Europe.

“Our watches are very well made,” he once wrote to the French ambassador to the Vatican, “very handsome, very good and cheap.”

Voltaire saw the enterprise as a way to prop up the Ferney economy, and he used his vast network of upper class contacts to find prospective buyers. Among others, he eventually succeeded in peddling his wares to the likes of Catherine the Great of Russia and King Louis XV of France.

10. He continued causing controversy even in death.

Voltaire died in Paris in 1778, just a few months after returning to the city for the first time in 28 years to oversee the production of one of his plays. Over the last few days of his life, Catholic Church officials repeatedly visited Voltaire—a lifelong deist who was often critical of organized religion—in the hope of persuading him to retract his opinions and make a deathbed confession. The great writer was unmoved, and supposedly brushed off the priests by saying, “let me die in peace.”

His refusal meant that he was officially denied a Christian burial, but his friends and family managed to arrange a secret interment in the Champagne region of France before the order became official.

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Voltaire Biography

Francois Arouet, known as Voltaire, was a literary genius whose provocative writings stirred up immense controversy in his time. His relentless criticism of political institutions, religious beliefs, and societal norms led to his persecution, including imprisonment and exile. Despite facing opposition and having his books burned by the masses, Voltaire remained steadfast in his pursuit of civil rights and advocated for freedom of religion, fair trials, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech. His extensive body of work, which encompassed various genres and forms, including letters, books, novels, essays, poetry, plays, and scientific experiments, solidified his status as one of history’s greatest writers and philosophers.

Quick Facts

• Born Country: France
• Died At Age: 83
• Family: Spouse/Ex-: Émilie du Châtelet, father: François Arouet, mother: Marie Marguerite d’Aumart
• Died on: May 30, 1778
• Place of death: Paris, France
• Notable Alumni: Lycée Louis-le-Grand
• City: Paris
• Education: Lycée Louis-le-Grand

Childhood & Early Life

Voltaire, born as Francois Marie Arouet in Paris on November 21, 1694, had a comfortable middle-class upbringing. His father, a notary, provided for the family, and they benefited from political favor during the reign of Louis XIV. However, tragedy struck when Voltaire’s mother passed away when he was only seven years old. This event caused him to rebel against his father and older siblings. He found refuge with his godfather Abbe Chateauneuf, who was a freethinker. Voltaire received a first-class education at ‘Louis-le-Grand’, a Jesuit college in Paris, and developed a passion for literature. Although he aspired to become a playwright, his father opposed the idea and pushed him to become a public authority figure.

Voltaire’s early career was influenced by his father’s wishes. After completing his education, he was sent to work as a notary assistant in Paris, but he spent most of his time writing satirical poetry instead. Recognizing that Voltaire was not devoted to his legal assistant work, his father found him employment as the secretary of the French ambassador in the Netherlands. However, Voltaire fell in love with Catherine Dunoyer, a French refugee, and fearing scandal, both the French ambassador and Voltaire’s father forced him to return to Paris. In 1717, he published a satire of the French government that mocked the Duke of Orleans. As a result, he was banished from Paris and imprisoned in the Bastille for eleven months. It was during his time in prison that he wrote his debut play ‘Oedipe’. In 1726, after another clash with nobility, he was exiled without trial to England. During his three-year exile, he studied John Locke, Newton, and the British government. Upon his return to Paris, he gained financial independence through an inheritance from his father, which freed him from the need to please political patrons to make a living. In 1734, he published ‘Philosophical Letters on the English’, essays that defended the British system but faced extreme opposition in Paris. Book burnings were held, and he was eventually forced to flee the city. During his exile from 1734 to 1749, he spent most of his time studying and performing natural science experiments with Marquise Émilie du Châtelet. He continued his writing and often collaborated with her, expanding his subjects to include more philosophical and metaphysical topics. In 1749, Marquise passed away, and Voltaire traveled to Potsdam. However, he attacked the president of the ‘Berlin Academy of Science’ during his time there, leading to serious book burnings. He fled the city to avoid arrest, and Louis XV banned him from returning to Paris. He continued moving and eventually settled in Ferney near Switzerland.

Major Works

In 1717, Voltaire wrote his famous play ‘Oedipe’ while in prison. This work established his reputation and his pen name Voltaire. It was published upon his release from jail a year later and quickly became famous, with its first performance taking place at the home of the ‘Duchesse du Maine’ at Sceaux.

Personal Life & Legacy

During his second exile from Paris, Voltaire lived with Marquise Florent-Claude du Châtelet and had a 15-year affair with his wife, Marquise Émilie du Châtelet. Unfortunately, she passed away during childbirth, and it is unclear whether the child was her husband’s or Voltaire’s. Voltaire lived in Ferney for the last 20 years of his life, and the town has since been renamed “Ferney-Voltaire” in his honor. The National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg houses his vast and precious collection of books. He passed away on May 30, 1778, and due to his criticism of the church, he was denied burial in the church ground. In 1791, his remains were moved to the Pantheon in Paris from his cremation ground in Champagne.

The heart and brain of Voltaire have been removed from his body. His heart is kept in the ‘Bibliotheque Nationale’ in Paris, while his brain has been lost after being auctioned off.

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Voltaire was one of the great French writers and philosophers of the Enlightenment Age. Much of his writing was punctuated with a sharp sense of wit, which was one of the reasons he was popular during his time and beyond. Voltaire was also a very versatile writer having been able to produce works of poetry, history, long form fiction novels, nonfiction essays, and even scientific tomes.

Voltaire was also known for his controversies, particularly in areas related to religion. He was not a proponent of the Catholic Church and he routinely criticized it. Like many other philosophers of the Enlightenment, Voltaire professed a belief in the need for a separation of church and state.

There were very harsh censorship laws in existence at the time of Voltaire and he constantly challenged those laws in his writings. His iconoclastic writings have survived the test of time and he remains a philosopher many read and study in the modern era.

Voltaire’s Early Years

Voltaire was born on November 21, 1694, in Paris, France. His birth name was François-Marie Arouet. His father was a lawyer and his mother was from a family of nobles. Voltaire attended the Collège Louis-le-Grand where he was educated by Jesuits for seven years. His father wanted his son to become a lawyer, but Voltaire wanted to be a writer. As history shows us, he did become a writer and went on to publish upwards of 2,000 works.

He first started using the fictitious name Voltaire around 1718. The name was derived from an anagram of the Latin spelling of his real last name. It would seem he used the pen name as a means of hiding his identity from his family.

His Secret Writing Career

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. After publishing something satirical about Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Voltaire ended up spending 11 months in prison. Not to be deterred, Voltaire continued to write and even produce plays.

The Work of Voltaire

Voltaire wrote a great many philosophical treatises on religion. He attacked flaws he saw in modern religious theories. He was a deist who constantly questioned the role of faith. Voltaire did not like organized religion and he felt no particular faith was required to believe in God. As a proponent of natural law, he felt morality can derive from sources outside of religion.

Voltaire was most definitely not in favor of suppressing religion though. In reality, he was a great believer in tolerance towards religion.

Voltaire might be considered someone who believed in the notion of a philosopher king. Democracy was not something he was a huge fan of because he felt too many of the masses simply were not capable of making good decisions. He was not exactly a believer in monarchs or politicians as he saw them as routinely being too corrupt and self-serving to trust. Voltaire assumed that an enlightened monarch might be the one person best served to rule a nation.

Final Days of Voltaire

At the age of 83, Voltaire returned to Paris after a 20 year absence. He was returning home in order to see a play. The journey was too much for him and he passed away on May 30, 1778, after falling quite ill.

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Voltaire Foundation

for Enlightenment studies

About Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire, was a writer, philosopher, poet, dramatist, historian and polemicist of the French Enlightenment. The diversity of his literary output is rivalled only by its abundance: the edition of his complete works currently nearing completion will comprise over 200 volumes.

‘The age of Voltaire’ has become synonymous with ‘the Enlightenment’, but although Voltaire’s eminence as a philosophe is self-evident, the precise originality of his thought and writings is less easily defined.

Read about his life and legacy below, or watch this short animated video, School of Life: Voltaire , created by philosopher Alain de Botton and scripted by Nicholas Cronk:

About Voltaire’s writings

The Complete Works of Voltaire

Voltaire and life writing

Born in Paris into a wealthy bourgeois family, he was a brilliant pupil of the Jesuits. His rejection of his father’s attempts to guide him into a career in the law was sealed in 1718, when he invented a new name for himself: ‘de Voltaire’. Voltaire is an anagram of ‘Arouet l(e) j(eune)’ (in the 18th century, i and j , and u and v , were typographically interchangeable). The addition of the aristocratic preposition ‘de’ may be an early sign of his social ambition, but the play on the verb volter , to turn abruptly, evokes a playful or ‘volatile’ quality which foretells the quick style, pervasive humour and irony that make Voltaire such an important figure in the history of the Enlightenment.

In the same year that he coined his new name, Voltaire enjoyed his first major literary success when his tragedy Œdipe was staged by the Comédie Française. Meanwhile he was working on an epic poem which had as its protagonist Henri IV, the much-loved French monarch who brought France’s civil wars to a close, and who, in Voltaire’s treatment, becomes a forerunner of religious toleration: La Ligue (later enlarged to become La Henriade ) was first published in 1723.

Voltaire in England

His reputation as a poet and dramatist was now comfortably established, and he decided to travel to England to oversee the publishing of the definitive edition of La Henriade . His departure for London was precipitated when he unwisely became involved in a humiliating argument with an aristocrat, who had him briefly interned in the Bastille.

Voltaire arrived in London in the autumn of 1726, and what had begun partly as self-imposed exile became a crucially formative period for him. He learned English and mixed with a number of figures prominent in England’s political and cultural life. An old saw has it that Voltaire ‘came to England a poet and left it a philosopher’. In truth, he was a philosopher before coming to England, and it would be more accurate to say that Voltaire came to England a poet and left it a prose writer. Voltaire thought of himself first and foremost as a poet, and during his long life he would never abandon the writing of verse, for which he had a remarkable facility (many of his letters are sprinkled with seemingly spontaneous passages of verse). In England, however, he came into contact with models of prose unlike those to which he was accustomed in France: Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels , for example, which Voltaire read on first publication, or Addison’s Spectator , a periodical he used in order to learn to read English. It is hardly coincidental, therefore, that before returning to France in 1728, Voltaire began writing his first two major essays in prose: a history, the Histoire de Charles XII , and a book about the English, which is now best known under the title Lettres philosophiques , but was first published in English translation (London 1733) as the Letters Concerning the English Nation .

Cirey and Berlin

The furore created by the publication in France in 1734 of the Lettres philosophiques led Voltaire to leave Paris and take refuge in the château of his mistress, Mme du Châtelet, at Cirey-en-Champagne. From 1734 until Mme du Châtelet’s death in 1749, this was his haven from the world. During this period, he studied and wrote intensively in a wide variety of areas, including science ( Eléments de la philosophie de Newton , 1738), poetry ( Le Mondain , 1736), drama ( Mahomet , 1741), and fiction ( Zadig , 1747). In the 1740s, Voltaire was briefly on better terms with the court: he was made royal historiographer in 1745, and the following year, after several failed attempts, he was finally elected to the Académie Française. He had turned fifty and was now the leading poet and dramatist of his day; perhaps even Voltaire did not imagine that the works which would make him even more celebrated still lay in the future.

An initially idyllic interlude was provided by Voltaire’s stay at the court of Potsdam (1750-1753), and in 1752 he published both Le Siècle de Louis XIV and Micromégas . Throughout his career, however, Voltaire was prone to involvement in literary quarrels, and his time in Berlin was no exception; his attack on Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis, president of the Berlin Academy, caused Frederick II to lose patience with him. Voltaire left Berlin in a flurry of mutual recriminations, and although these were later forgotten, Voltaire’s dream of having found the ideal enlightened monarch were definitively shattered. His correspondence with Frederick, which had begun in 1736 when the latter was still crown prince, survived, and, after a hiatus, it continued until Voltaire’s death. They corresponded on literary and philosophical matters, and Voltaire sent Frederick many of his works in manuscript. Their exchange of more than seven hundred letters remains as an extraordinary literary achievement in its own right.

Geneva and Ferney

In January 1755, after a period of wandering, Voltaire acquired a property in Geneva which he called ‘Les Délices’. A new and more settled phase now began as, at the age of sixty-one, he became master of his own house for the first time: in a letter of March that year, he wrote that ‘I am finally leading the life of a patriarch’. The Lisbon earthquake of November 1755 may have disturbed his philosophical certainties and caused him to doubt the Leibnizian Optimism which Alexander Pope had helped to popularize, but it did not disturb his new-found personal happiness. His Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne appeared within weeks of the earthquake, and it is revealing that his instant literary response should have been in verse. His prose response to the catastrophe, in Candide , took longer to mature and was published in 1759. In the meantime, he had written articles for the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, and in 1756 he published his universal history, the Essai sur les mœurs .

In 1757, d’Alembert’s critical article ‘Genève’ in the Encyclopédie had provoked a scandal in that city. Geneva turned out not to be the model republic that Voltaire had imagined or hoped it was, and after a number of tussles with clerical authority, he resolved to leave the city. A return to Paris would not have been welcomed by the government, so he purchased a house and estate at Ferney, where he installed himself in 1760 – on French soil now, but within striking distance of the border. It was in this symbolically marginal position that Voltaire was to live for the rest of his life. Henceforth he would play the part of the seigneur , caring for his estate and even building a church for the villagers: it bears the deist (and immodest) inscription Deo erexit Voltaire (‘Voltaire erected [this] to God’). But this new-found role did not mean that, like Candide, Voltaire had found happiness in cultivating his garden and in ignoring the world beyond. On the contrary, it was in 1760 that Voltaire first issued the rallying cry with which he would henceforth sign many of his letters: Ecrasons l’Infâme (‘Let’s crush the despicable’). The stability of his base at Ferney seems to have given Voltaire the opportunity over the following years to launch and encourage the campaigns which soon made him the most famous writer in Europe.

The Calas affair was a defining moment in this crusade for tolerance. The Huguenot Jean Calas was tortured and broken on the wheel in 1762 after being found guilty, on the basis of dubious evidence, of murdering his son. Voltaire successfully led a determined campaign to clear Calas’s name, writing many letters and publishing a number of works, including Traité sur la tolérance (1763). Other campaigns followed – a successful one to obtain the rehabilitation of another Huguenot family, the Sirvens, accused of having murdered a daughter recently converted to Catholicism, and an unsuccessful one to achieve a pardon for a nineteen-year-old man, La Barre, condemned to be burned at the stake for having committed certain trivial acts of sacrilege (and for having in his possession a copy of Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique ). These struggles brought Voltaire to even greater public prominence, and it in no way diminishes his undoubted determination and courage to say that he obviously relished his new role: in a letter of 1766, he wrote to a friend ‘Oh how I love this philosophy of action and goodwill’.

Although many of Voltaire’s later writings concerned his crusade for tolerance and justice, he continued, to write in a wide variety of forms, from tragedy to biblical criticism, and from satire to short fiction ( L’Ingénu , 1767; Le Taureau blanc , 1773). In February 1778, Voltaire was persuaded by his friends to make a symbolic return to Paris, ostensibly to oversee preparations to stage his latest tragedy, Irène . It was the first time he had set foot in the capital since 1750, and he was received in triumph. A succession of friends called on him, and despite his deteriorating health, he attended a performance of his new play at the Comédie Française, in the course of which his bust was crowned on stage with a laurel wreath. His health did not permit his return to Ferney, and he died in Paris two months later. Even in death, Voltaire, a celebrated amateur actor, seemed to have stage-managed his departure from the scene so as to gain maximum publicity.

Voltaire and Enlightenment

In terms of the history of ideas, Voltaire’s single most important achievement was to have helped in the 1730s to introduce the thought of Newton and Locke to France (and so to the rest of the Continent). This achievement is, as Jonathan Israel has shown, hardly as radical as has sometimes been thought: the English thinkers in question served essentially as a deistic bulwark against the more radical (atheistic) currents of thought in the Spinozist tradition. Voltaire’s deist beliefs, reiterated throughout his life, came to appear increasingly outmoded and defensive as he grew older and as he became more and more exercised by the spread of atheism. Voltaire’s failure to produce an original philosophy was, in a sense, counterbalanced by his deliberate cultivation of a philosophy of action; his ‘common sense’ crusade against superstition and prejudice and in favour of religious toleration was his single greatest contribution to the progress of Enlightenment. ‘Rousseau writes for writing’s sake’, he declared in a letter of 1767, ‘I write to act.’

It was therefore Voltaire’s literary and rhetorical contributions to the Enlightenment which were truly unique. Interested neither in music (like Rousseau) nor in art (like Diderot), Voltaire was fundamentally a man of language. Through force of style, through skilful choice of literary genre, and through the accomplished manipulation of the book market, he found means of popularizing and promulgating ideas which until then had generally been clandestine. The range of his writing is immense, embracing virtually every genre. In verse, he wrote in every form – epic poetry, ode, satire and epistle, and even occasional and light verse; his drama, also written in verse, includes both comedies and tragedies (although the tragedies have not survived in the modern theatre, many live on in the opera, as, for example, Rossini’s Semiramide and Tancredi ).

It is above all the prose works with which modern readers are familiar, and again the writings cover a wide spectrum: histories, polemical satires, pamphlets of all types, dialogues, short fictions or contes , and letters both real and fictive. The conspicuous absentee from this list is the novel, a genre which, like the prose drame , Voltaire thought base and trivial. To understand the strength of his dislike for these ‘new’ genres, we need to remember that Voltaire was a product of the late seventeenth century, the moment of the Quarrel between Ancients and Moderns, and this literary debate continued to influence his aesthetic views all through his life. Controversial religious and political views were often expressed in the literary forms (classical tragedy, the verse satire) perfected in the seventeenth century; the ‘conservatism’ of these forms seems, to modern readers at least, to compromise the content, though this apparent traditionalism may in fact have helped Voltaire mask the originality of his enterprise: it is at least arguable that in a work such as Zaïre (1732), the form of the classical tragedy made its ideas of religious toleration more palatable.

Yet this would also be a simplification, for notwithstanding his apparent literary conservatism, Voltaire was in fact a relentless reformer and experimenter with literary genres, innovative almost despite himself, particularly in the domain of prose. Although he never turned his back on verse drama and philosophical poetry, he experimented with different forms of historical writing and tried his hand at different styles of prose fiction. Above all, he seems to have discovered late in his career the satirical and polemical uses of the fragment, notably in his alphabetic works, the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764), containing 73 articles in its first edition, and the Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (1770-1772). The latter work, whose first edition contained 423 articles in nine octavo volumes, is a vast and challenging compendium of his thought and ranks among Voltaire’s unrecognized masterpieces.

He used something like 175 different pseudonyms in the course of his career

Voltaire’s ironic, fast-moving, deceptively simple style makes him one of the greatest stylists of the French language. All his life, Voltaire loved to act in his own plays, and this fondness for role-playing carried through into all his writings. He used something like 175 different pseudonyms in the course of his career, and his writing is characterized by a proliferation of different personae and voices. The reader is constantly drawn into dialogue – by a footnote which contradicts the text, or by one voice in the text which argues against another. The use of the mask is so relentless and the presence of humour, irony, and satire so pervasive that the reader has finally no idea of where the ‘real’ Voltaire is. His autobiographical writings are few and entirely unrevealing: as the title of his Commentaire historique sur les Œuvres de l’auteur de la Henriade suggests, it is his writings alone which constitute their author’s identity.

In fact we rarely know with certainty what Voltaire truly thought or believed; what mattered to him was the impact of what he wrote. The great crusades of the 1760s taught him to appreciate the importance of public opinion, and in popularizing the clandestine ideas of the early part of the century he played the role of the journalist. He may have been old-fashioned in his nostalgia for the classicism of the previous century, but he was wholly of his day in his consummate understanding of the medium of publishing. He manipulated the book trade to achieve maximum publicity for his ideas, and he well understood the importance of what he called ‘the portable’. In 1766, Voltaire wrote to d’Alembert: ‘Twenty in-folio volumes will never cause a revolution; it’s the little portable books at thirty sous which are to be feared.’

Voltaire was also modern in the way he invented himself by fashioning a public image out of his adopted name. As the patriarch of Ferney, he turned himself into an institution whose fame reached across Europe. As an engaged and militant intellectual, he stood at the beginning of a French tradition which looked forward to Emile Zola and to Jean-Paul Sartre, and in modern republican France his name stands as a cultural icon, a symbol of rationalism and the defence of tolerance. Voltaire was a man of paradoxes: the bourgeois who as de Voltaire gave himself aristocratic pretensions, but who as plain Voltaire later became a hero of the Revolution; the conservative in aesthetic matters who appeared as a radical in religious and political issues. He was, above all, the master ironist, who, perhaps more than any other writer, gave to the Enlightenment its characteristic and defining tone of voice.

– N. E. Cronk

Start of Voltaire an outline biography