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Voltaire and the Enlightenment
• Voltaire was the most
influential author of the 18th
century, an epochal period
that changed the thinking and
culture of Western Europe.
Voltaire
(1694-1778)
pseudonym of
Francois Marie Arouet
• Voltaire’s published works
range from light verse to epic
poetry, drama, narrative
fiction, essays, a dictionary,
philosophical treatises,
scientific popularizations to
the genre he created, the
“philosophical tale” (Kors 1, 452).
Voltaire grew up during the
Reign of Louis XIV of France
• Although orthodoxy and
censorship limited candor,
France under Louis XIV was
in a state of intellectual
ferment.
• Because of his wars, the last
15-20 years of Louis XIV’s
reign had led to widespread
suffering, crippling taxation,
agricultural crises and famine.
• Indirect criticism of Louis’
reign took the form of
idealized portrait of great
rulers of the past, but moral
and political criticism of the
monarchy was widespread
(Kors 2, 452).
Louis XIV
Voltaire’s Jesuit Education
• Jesuits gave their students a deep
grounding in logic, disputation and
rhetoric, including the categories of
logic, the analysis of argument and
the study of debate.
• Students were encouraged to look
for possible objections to what they
were being taught or were trying to
prove. This way of thinking became
a habit of mind for the students.
• Classics and modern analysis of the
classics were stressed.
• Thus,Voltaire and his fellow students
studied the finest pre-Christian
models of learning, which were
themselves heterodoxical, antireligious, and satirical (Kors 2, 452).
Imprisonment in the Bastille
• “In 1718, Voltaire enjoyed a
first and stunning literary
success with his tragedy
Oedipe (0edipus), changed his
name from Arouet to Voltaire
and enjoyed literary triumph,
fame and wealth.
• He inherited his father’s wealth
in 1724 and invested it
extremely well.
• However, at the height of his
fame and influence, Voltaire
experienced humiliation,
imprisonment and exile to
England” (Kors 2, 452).
Philosophical Letters
• Voltaire’s influential work
was based on his
observations while he
was exiled in England.
• In it, Voltaire describes
and implicitly praises
English religious
toleration.
• Most importantly, he
celebrates Newtonian
(English) over Cartesian
(French) physics (Kors 34, 452)
Rene
Descartes
• Many in France celebrated the 17th
century revolutions in science and
philosophy chauvinistically. French
readers favored French authors,
especially Descartes.
• Descartes’ philosophy was based
on accepted generalizations,
rationally certain, clear and distinct
ideas that he felt that we find
innate in our minds. From these,
we may deduce by logic our
knowledge of the world.
• To Voltaire, Cartesian philosophy
relied upon, for its premises, ideas
that had no empirical basis other
than being generally accepted.
(Kors 3, 452).
• Unlike Descartes, Locke avoided theorizing about the
substance or nature of the mind, an issue at the time.
For Locke, this question is beyond human
experience.
•Voltaire defended Locke’s argument that philosophical
skepticism is the only honest conclusion in metaphysical
matter. He felt that the only honest conclusion in
metaphysical matters is to admit ignorance (Kors 3, 452).
Isaac Newton
• To Voltaire, the culminating
achievement of Bacon’s
method and Locke’s
epistemology was Newton’s
empiricism.
• Empiricism is moving from the
particulars of our experience
to generalizations which are
derived from these particulars
and can be tested against
them.
• Voltaire’s Philosophical
Letters praises Newton’s
physics over abstract
metaphysical speculation (Kors
447).
Return to France
• On his return to France, Voltaire proudly
published the Philosophical Letters (1734). He
believed them to be moderate and noncontroversial.
• Vehement critics cried that Voltaire was
advocating Quakerism, undermining the
Christian religion, fomenting rebellion in France
and attacking Divine Providence.
• The clergy and secular authorities were furious
and demanded his arrest.
Facing both prosecution and persecution,
Voltaire was exiled from Paris until 1778, the
year of his death (Kors 5,452).
1749-59, a Dark Decade
• The death of Emilie du Chatelet in 1749 devastated
Voltaire. Depressed and homeless, he could not go to
Paris or remain in France because of the deep animosity
of the clergy to his influence and his writings.
• For a brief period, he lived at the court of Frederick II. It
didn’t go well.
• In 1755, he gained permission to live in Protestant
Geneva, where he purchased an estate, Ferney, in
1759.
• In 1756, his protégé Frederick plunged Europe into war.
• Famine threatened, lovers died, war spread…and
philosophers were saying that this is the best of all
possible worlds.
Leibniz and Theodicy
• Emilie du Chatelet had introduced Voltaire to Essays on
Theodicy, in which Gottfried Leibniz addressed the question
of why evil exists in a world created by God. “Theodicy” is
that branch of philosophy that addresses the problem of evil.
Leibniz’s optimistic philosophy initially appealed to Voltaire’s
deism.
• In Theodicy, Leibniz argues that God, who is infinitely wise,
powerful and good, would not create a perfect world,
because He is the only perfect being. As God will create,
therefore, an imperfect world, it logically follows, “the best of
all possible worlds.”
• It further follows that God chose everything in the creation
as necessary to the existence of the best of all possible
worlds. Therefore, nothing is truly “evil.” God has a
sufficient reason for all things, and if we had God’s
knowledge, we would understand the good of what we might
think, from our limited perspective, to be evil (Kors 6, 452).
Voltaire and Optimism
• Voltaire had always felt a tension about this
philosophical optimism; in the 1750s, he came to
reject it.
• The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 raised the
question, “How can the evil and suffering of the
world be reconciled with the goodness of God?”
• Voltaire addressed this question in his Poem on
the Lisbon Earthquake, describing the suffering
caused by the earthquake and asking why an
omnipotent God could not have created a world
without such catastrophes (Kors 6, 452).
Lisbon Earthquake
• The Lisbon earthquake of November 1,1755
seared Voltaire’s consciousness and deeply
affected Europe’s intellectual life.
• Voltaire questioned how the evil produced by
nature’s general laws could be reconciled with
the providence of God.
• In his “Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake,” Voltaire
argued that evil is real and incomprehensible.
Rather than attempt to understand God, we
should devote our love and attention to suffering
humanity.
• The arbitrariness of survival motivated Candide.
To Voltaire, philosophical optimism equals
fatalism: if “whatever is, is right,” then one’s
attempts to mitigate suffering do not matter.
Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake
•
•
•
•
For Voltaire, one must choose between a
Leibnizian optimism that denies the existence of
evil and a cry of humanistic anguish that admits
it.
Philosophical explanations of suffering add insult
to injury.
Evil is real and incomprehensible.
God exists, but we cannot understand his
providence.
Humanity, not God, requires our love and
attention (Kors 6, 452).
In Rousseau’s Stinging Reply to the Poem on the
Lisbon Earthquake, he asserts that:
• Voltaire has written against
God and denied humans
their solace,
• Our rational knowledge of
God’s nature and necessary
creation of the best of all
possible worlds wholly
outweighs the appearances
of things, and
• Cities are centers of
corruption; humans were
meant to live simply in the
countryside.
• According to Rousseau, God
put earthquakes in nature so
we would know how to live
(Kors 6, 452).
Candide or Optimism
• The word optimism was coined in the 18th century
for a philosophical position which has only a distant
relationship with our modern notion of optimism,
which everyone now considers to be a positive
attitude.
• Leibniz, who believed the world was created by a
perfect God, has to justify the presence of evil by
saying that evil is necessary and is rather like the
shadows in a painting which serve to highlight the
principal figures and objects in the painting. Since
the world is created by God it is necessarily not just
good, but the best of all possible worlds. (optimum –
the Latin word from which optimism is derived –
means "best")
• Voltaire, originally an admirer of Leibniz, soon
realized that such a position justifies the presence of
evil and provides no incentive to improve the lot of
those who suffer evil and injustice in this life (Walsh).
Candide and Pangloss
• Voltaire wrote Candide in
anguish as a reply to
Rousseau.
• In the philosophical tale,
Candide is the student of
Pangloss, whose
Leibnizian philosophy
appears futile, irrelevant,
and absurd in the midst of
human pain and suffering
(Kors 447).
Pangloss
•Philosophical optimism denies the human
reality of irredeemable pain, injustice, and
cruelty.
•Candide voyages through a world of war,
arrogance, abuses of power, religious
persecutions and disease.
•Voltaire argues that evil is real, and we
cannot understand God’s providence.
•In Candide, the only way to avoid despair
is to labor to satisfy human needs. We
must pay attention to the real sources of
well-being and the causes of human
suffering (Kors 6, 452).
• Candide’s conclusion is: “Let us cultivate our
garden.” The only antidote to pain and despair
is to work in the earthly garden, to stave off
what suffering and vice we can.
• Candide marked a crucial turn from
theological or metaphysical concerns to practial
attention to the human condition, from abstract
philosophy to humanistic activism (Kors 20).
Voltaire’s Contribution
• This “shift from theological or
metaphysical concerns to the
human condition” is one of
Voltaire’s main contributions to
the Enlightenment.
• As a result of Voltaire’s assault
of philosophical optimism, it
became legitimate for
intellectuals to refute formal
thought by appeal to human
experience.
• Theology was displaced from the
center of intellectual activity, a
movement that encouraged both
investigation into the causes of
human misery and reform of the
conditions that perpetuated
suffering and injustice (Kors
447).
Sources
Birkenstock, Jane M. “A Love Story—Voltaire and Emilie,”
Chateau de Cirey-Residence of Voltaire (2009). Web. 14
June 2010.
Kors, Alan Charles. “The Assault Upon Philosophical
Optimism: Voltaire,” The Birth of the Modern Mind: An
Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
Course 447. The Teaching Company, n.d. CD.
Kors, Alan Charles, Voltaire and the Triumph of the
Enlightenment, Course 452. The Teaching Company,
n.d. CD.
Walsh, Thomas Readings on Candide. Literary Companion
to World Literature. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press,
2001.