Fransua-Mari Arouet was born in Paris in 1694.
His father, a well-known lawyer, sent him to the best school in the capital,
and from all aspects, he was a great student.
The young Arouet, set at an early age to make his name as a writer,
or better to rename his name,
since the first thing he did was to change his name in Volter.
The 18th century is often referred to as the Age of Reason,
or the Age of Enlightenment,
but sometimes, more simply, as the Volcano Age.
So changing his name was a good decision.
Epoka e Arouet, does not sound so good.
Voltaire was extremely talented as a poet.
At the age of just 24,
he had his first tragedy performed in Comédie-Française.
Since then, he had started working on an epic poem
about the 16th-century French religious civil wars,
praising Henry IV as the king who brought peace
from the pragmatic conversion of Protestantism to Catholicism.
This would be a loving theme for Volter’s heart,
Since under the guise of writing a national epic,
he was criticizing the bloody consequences of religious intolerance.
From the outset, Voltaire’s views on religion were vigorously expressed.
He was not an atheist.
Partly because he thought a minimal belief in a deity
was useful for social cohesion.
Voltaire God created the world,
brought to us a good and bad feeling and then sat down in the last ranks.
This was known as a rational religion,
or in the 18th century called the natural religion, or deity.
And there was no relation to metaphysics in any aspect.
Voltaire was basically a man of reason,
which is urrent fanaticism, idolatry and superstition.
Since men can kill each other to protect certain points of religious doctrine,
which they hardly understand, is something he saw as abominable.
And he reserved his greatest hatred for the clergy,
who used the faith of believers to preserve their power base.
Voltar wanted religion, but not in the Church.
For obvious reasons, Catholic authorities
were not pro Voltaire’s poem about Henri IV,
La Henriade, to be published in France.
So Volter decided to go and publish it in London,
and in 1726, he went and traveled to England.
What started as a business trip quickly turned, into something quite different.
And Volter ended up staying in England for two and a half years.
He learned to speak fluent English, acquainted with writers and politicians,
and became a great admirer of the English Protestant culture.
He decided to write a book about his experience in England.
And the papers concerning the English nation appeared first in English in 1733.
French authorities were terrified.
The book was censored and Volta could barely escape the prison.
That’s because the book depicted an informal portrayal of English culture,
in a sharp and ironic style, taking religion, politics, science and literature in turn,
in ways that were implicitly critical of French culture and politics.
Here, for example, is how Royal Volunteering is presented,
a beautiful building in the heart of London City,
where traders from all over the world would meet to do business.
“Look at the Royal Exchange,” Volta wrote,
“where representatives of all nations meet for the good of humanity.
There are Hebrews, Muhammadans, and one Christian who share together
if they all share the same religion, and give the name of the disbeliever to anyone other than the bankrupt.
There the Presbyterian trusts Anabaptist, and the Man of the Church depends on the word of Priest
In the separation of this peaceful and free assembly,
some will be thrown into the synagogue, and others to take a glass.
This man goes and is baptized into a large tub in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost:
that man awaits the foreskin of his son,
while a group of Hebrew words (quite incomprehensible to him) have been said about his child.
If only one religion would be allowed in England, the government would become very arbitrary;
if there are only two, people would expect one another’s palate;
but, as such a crowd, everyone is happy and in peace. “
The message of Volter is clear.
Religious differences are irrelevant and to divide people,
while trade is important and unites them.
His conclusion, that the plurality of religions in England leads to a more peaceful society,
is, of course, a secret critique of France, where the Catholic church was dominant.
‘Letters Relating to English Nationality’,
also discuss Lokus and Newton, thinkers little known in France.
The subject may seem challenging, but Voltaire is a master who popularizes a hard material.
Ask each student today about what they know about Newton,
and they will tell you apples that fall on his head,
and the survival of this anecdote is entirely due to Volter.
He heard it from the granddaughter of Newton and immediately realized that this simple image
was the perfect way of following the simplicity of Newton’s explanation for the force of gravity.
After Voltery used the story in the ‘Letters about the English Kombin’
all remembered him and Voltaire left his mark in popular English culture.
Voltaire fought with the question of good and evil,
the problem in the heart of his most famous work, ‘Candide’,
which was published in 1759
and was a best-seller from the moment that appeared.
Translated into any available language,
it remains the most widely read work of European enlightenment.
It has even left a sign in our language.
Expression as ‘pour encourager les autres’ – to encourage others
or ‘il faut cultiver le jardin’, – we must cultivate our garden
have entered into common use.
‘To the benefit of all possible worlds’, yes, this is another,
an expression quoted by ‘Candide’, without realizing it.
And this is a sure sign of a classic.
‘Candide’ is an eternal work, as a satir of the human condition,
but it is also the work of Enlightenment and its philosophical subject is proclaimed in the title:
“Candid” or “Optimism”.
The hero of ‘Candide’, as his name tells us, is an innocent anti-hero.
He is in defense of his teacher, Pangloss, who preaches the philosophy of Optimism.
This is not ‘optimism’ in the modern sense to look at the good side.
Optimism, written in capital letters O and as explained by the German philosopher Leibniz,
was an attempt to respond to the aging problem of evil.
Why, if God is good, does he allow the existence of evil in the world?
For which the 18th-century Leibnizian Optimist answers,
evil is part of a larger model of good:
‘All the partial evils, the universal goods’ as the English poet “Pope” says.
In other words, evil does not exist at all.
It’s just something man imagines because of his limited appearance of the world.
You might think it sounds like a trick of self-confidence, certainly Volta so thought,
but this idea has found widespread acceptance in the 18th century.
The great mission of ‘Candide’ was to put this philosophy into the test.
Bring out of his comfortable home a dark German castle,
after trying to seduce Baron’s beautiful daughter, Cunégonde,
The hero of Volter, Candide, is subjected to many trials and tribulations:
being recruited into the army, he fights in a war,
then detached, just to find himself a witness during an earthquake in Lisbon.
Candide is repeatedly brought face to face with evil in its most extreme forms:
moral evil, in the case of a earthquake, where one should not be blamed;
and above all human evil, such as the war, where man is very guilty.
Pangloss’s cold optimism is clear, insufficient answer, to the magnitudes of evil on this scale.
Over time, Candide begins to realize this:
to quote from the book, ‘And sometimes Pangloss would tell Candidate:
‘All events form a better chain of all possible worlds.
For the end, if you did not give a good kick on the back
and being evicted from a beautiful castle for Miss Cunégonde’s love,
and if you were not subject to the Inquisition,
and if you were not wandering around America standing,
and if you had not treated Baron with a good blow with your sword,
and if you had not lost all your sheep from the beautiful place of El Dorado,
you would not be here now by eating lice towels and pistachio nuts. ‘
“That is plain,” answered Candide, “but we must cultivate our garden.”
After 1760, Voltery settled in the wooden cottage in Ferney, outside Geneva.
Already, he was the most famous writer, still living in Europe,
and he became widely known as Ferney’s Patriarch.
He received some public affairs.
In 1761, a Protestant merchant Xhan Kala,
who was charged with killing his son and was convicted by Tuzu’s judges
to be tortured and then to be killed at the wheel of torture.
Legal proceedings were, in short, irregular,
and doubts grew that judges in his Catholic city
had acted exaggeratedly by religious fanaticism.
Voltar was involved in this case
and set up an energetic campaign to rehabilitate Kalas memory
and help the members of his family, who were set aside.
He wrote letters to those in authority and published a pamphlet stream,
culminating in 1763 in Traité sur la tolérance,
which begins with the historical facts of the Kalas case
and expands into a history of religious intolerance in European culture.
Volter’s writings had a great impact on public opinion,
and eventually judges in Paris were dismissed Tuzla’s verdict.
Too late to save Kalas, but a big win for Volter,
who had learned an important lesson
about how change can be brought about through the pressure of public opinion.
‘Opinion controls the world,’ he wrote in 1764,
‘but in the long run are the philosophers who form this opinion’.
Volter said for himself that he ‘wrote to act’,
and he wanted his writings to change the way people thought and behaved.
Leading his crusades against fanaticism, he even invented a campaign slogan,
Ecrasez l’Infâme !, which translates roughly as ‘Print the Gnomes!’.
L’Infâme stands in this case for everything Voltaire hated,
all that he had devoted his life to fighting:
prejudice, intolerance, irrational behavior of any kind.
We must never forget that Volter was also a great writer,
one of the greatest stylists that French has ever known.
The power of his ideas had much to do with the power of his expression.
Many writers mocked the miracles.
Nobody did as ridiculous as Voltaire.
Always, Voltaire had in his ear the phrase saying:
‘If God had not existed, it would be necessary to invent it.’
It’s a good line, even in English, and better still in the original French
where it is most unforgettable because it is a classic Alexandrian line with 12 syllables:
If you’ve been there, the faudrait will inventer you.
Volter’s legacy in our current debates about religious tolerance remains extremely powerful.
Hardly one week passes without an article in print citing:
‘I do not accept what you say, but I will defend your right to death.’
This caveat of multiculturalist tolerance is so powerful
if Volta had not said it, we would have wanted to invent it ourselves,
that is exactly what happened.
The phrase was invented by an English woman in 1906.
No matter, it expresses a truth that is fundamentally important to our culture,
so we have adopted this phrase and decide that Volter was the one who said it.
Volter, his name has become synonymous with a group of liberal values:
freedom of speech, refusal of fanaticism and superstition,
confidence in reason and tolerance.
It is unique, and nowadays, an extremely precious heritage.
His father, a well-known lawyer, sent him to the best school in the capital,
and from all aspects, he was a great student.
The young Arouet, set at an early age to make his name as a writer,
or better to rename his name,
since the first thing he did was to change his name in Volter.
The 18th century is often referred to as the Age of Reason,
or the Age of Enlightenment,
but sometimes, more simply, as the Volcano Age.
So changing his name was a good decision.
Epoka e Arouet, does not sound so good.
Voltaire was extremely talented as a poet.
At the age of just 24,
he had his first tragedy performed in Comédie-Française.
Since then, he had started working on an epic poem
about the 16th-century French religious civil wars,
praising Henry IV as the king who brought peace
from the pragmatic conversion of Protestantism to Catholicism.
This would be a loving theme for Volter’s heart,
Since under the guise of writing a national epic,
he was criticizing the bloody consequences of religious intolerance.
From the outset, Voltaire’s views on religion were vigorously expressed.
He was not an atheist.
Partly because he thought a minimal belief in a deity
was useful for social cohesion.
Voltaire God created the world,
brought to us a good and bad feeling and then sat down in the last ranks.
This was known as a rational religion,
or in the 18th century called the natural religion, or deity.
And there was no relation to metaphysics in any aspect.
Voltaire was basically a man of reason,
which is urrent fanaticism, idolatry and superstition.
Since men can kill each other to protect certain points of religious doctrine,
which they hardly understand, is something he saw as abominable.
And he reserved his greatest hatred for the clergy,
who used the faith of believers to preserve their power base.
Voltar wanted religion, but not in the Church.
For obvious reasons, Catholic authorities
were not pro Voltaire’s poem about Henri IV,
La Henriade, to be published in France.
So Volter decided to go and publish it in London,
and in 1726, he went and traveled to England.
What started as a business trip quickly turned, into something quite different.
And Volter ended up staying in England for two and a half years.
He learned to speak fluent English, acquainted with writers and politicians,
and became a great admirer of the English Protestant culture.
He decided to write a book about his experience in England.
And the papers concerning the English nation appeared first in English in 1733.
French authorities were terrified.
The book was censored and Volta could barely escape the prison.
That’s because the book depicted an informal portrayal of English culture,
in a sharp and ironic style, taking religion, politics, science and literature in turn,
in ways that were implicitly critical of French culture and politics.
Here, for example, is how Royal Volunteering is presented,
a beautiful building in the heart of London City,
where traders from all over the world would meet to do business.
“Look at the Royal Exchange,” Volta wrote,
“where representatives of all nations meet for the good of humanity.
There are Hebrews, Muhammadans, and one Christian who share together
if they all share the same religion, and give the name of the disbeliever to anyone other than the bankrupt.
There the Presbyterian trusts Anabaptist, and the Man of the Church depends on the word of Priest
In the separation of this peaceful and free assembly,
some will be thrown into the synagogue, and others to take a glass.
This man goes and is baptized into a large tub in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost:
that man awaits the foreskin of his son,
while a group of Hebrew words (quite incomprehensible to him) have been said about his child.
If only one religion would be allowed in England, the government would become very arbitrary;
if there are only two, people would expect one another’s palate;
but, as such a crowd, everyone is happy and in peace. “
The message of Volter is clear.
Religious differences are irrelevant and to divide people,
while trade is important and unites them.
His conclusion, that the plurality of religions in England leads to a more peaceful society,
is, of course, a secret critique of France, where the Catholic church was dominant.
‘Letters Relating to English Nationality’,
also discuss Lokus and Newton, thinkers little known in France.
The subject may seem challenging, but Voltaire is a master who popularizes a hard material.
Ask each student today about what they know about Newton,
and they will tell you apples that fall on his head,
and the survival of this anecdote is entirely due to Volter.
He heard it from the granddaughter of Newton and immediately realized that this simple image
was the perfect way of following the simplicity of Newton’s explanation for the force of gravity.
After Voltery used the story in the ‘Letters about the English Kombin’
all remembered him and Voltaire left his mark in popular English culture.
Voltaire fought with the question of good and evil,
the problem in the heart of his most famous work, ‘Candide’,
which was published in 1759
and was a best-seller from the moment that appeared.
Translated into any available language,
it remains the most widely read work of European enlightenment.
It has even left a sign in our language.
Expression as ‘pour encourager les autres’ – to encourage others
or ‘il faut cultiver le jardin’, – we must cultivate our garden
have entered into common use.
‘To the benefit of all possible worlds’, yes, this is another,
an expression quoted by ‘Candide’, without realizing it.
And this is a sure sign of a classic.
‘Candide’ is an eternal work, as a satir of the human condition,
but it is also the work of Enlightenment and its philosophical subject is proclaimed in the title:
“Candid” or “Optimism”.
The hero of ‘Candide’, as his name tells us, is an innocent anti-hero.
He is in defense of his teacher, Pangloss, who preaches the philosophy of Optimism.
This is not ‘optimism’ in the modern sense to look at the good side.
Optimism, written in capital letters O and as explained by the German philosopher Leibniz,
was an attempt to respond to the aging problem of evil.
Why, if God is good, does he allow the existence of evil in the world?
For which the 18th-century Leibnizian Optimist answers,
evil is part of a larger model of good:
‘All the partial evils, the universal goods’ as the English poet “Pope” says.
In other words, evil does not exist at all.
It’s just something man imagines because of his limited appearance of the world.
You might think it sounds like a trick of self-confidence, certainly Volta so thought,
but this idea has found widespread acceptance in the 18th century.
The great mission of ‘Candide’ was to put this philosophy into the test.
Bring out of his comfortable home a dark German castle,
after trying to seduce Baron’s beautiful daughter, Cunégonde,
The hero of Volter, Candide, is subjected to many trials and tribulations:
being recruited into the army, he fights in a war,
then detached, just to find himself a witness during an earthquake in Lisbon.
Candide is repeatedly brought face to face with evil in its most extreme forms:
moral evil, in the case of a earthquake, where one should not be blamed;
and above all human evil, such as the war, where man is very guilty.
Pangloss’s cold optimism is clear, insufficient answer, to the magnitudes of evil on this scale.
Over time, Candide begins to realize this:
to quote from the book, ‘And sometimes Pangloss would tell Candidate:
‘All events form a better chain of all possible worlds.
For the end, if you did not give a good kick on the back
and being evicted from a beautiful castle for Miss Cunégonde’s love,
and if you were not subject to the Inquisition,
and if you were not wandering around America standing,
and if you had not treated Baron with a good blow with your sword,
and if you had not lost all your sheep from the beautiful place of El Dorado,
you would not be here now by eating lice towels and pistachio nuts. ‘
“That is plain,” answered Candide, “but we must cultivate our garden.”
After 1760, Voltery settled in the wooden cottage in Ferney, outside Geneva.
Already, he was the most famous writer, still living in Europe,
and he became widely known as Ferney’s Patriarch.
He received some public affairs.
In 1761, a Protestant merchant Xhan Kala,
who was charged with killing his son and was convicted by Tuzu’s judges
to be tortured and then to be killed at the wheel of torture.
Legal proceedings were, in short, irregular,
and doubts grew that judges in his Catholic city
had acted exaggeratedly by religious fanaticism.
Voltar was involved in this case
and set up an energetic campaign to rehabilitate Kalas memory
and help the members of his family, who were set aside.
He wrote letters to those in authority and published a pamphlet stream,
culminating in 1763 in Traité sur la tolérance,
which begins with the historical facts of the Kalas case
and expands into a history of religious intolerance in European culture.
Volter’s writings had a great impact on public opinion,
and eventually judges in Paris were dismissed Tuzla’s verdict.
Too late to save Kalas, but a big win for Volter,
who had learned an important lesson
about how change can be brought about through the pressure of public opinion.
‘Opinion controls the world,’ he wrote in 1764,
‘but in the long run are the philosophers who form this opinion’.
Volter said for himself that he ‘wrote to act’,
and he wanted his writings to change the way people thought and behaved.
Leading his crusades against fanaticism, he even invented a campaign slogan,
Ecrasez l’Infâme !, which translates roughly as ‘Print the Gnomes!’.
L’Infâme stands in this case for everything Voltaire hated,
all that he had devoted his life to fighting:
prejudice, intolerance, irrational behavior of any kind.
We must never forget that Volter was also a great writer,
one of the greatest stylists that French has ever known.
The power of his ideas had much to do with the power of his expression.
Many writers mocked the miracles.
Nobody did as ridiculous as Voltaire.
Always, Voltaire had in his ear the phrase saying:
‘If God had not existed, it would be necessary to invent it.’
It’s a good line, even in English, and better still in the original French
where it is most unforgettable because it is a classic Alexandrian line with 12 syllables:
If you’ve been there, the faudrait will inventer you.
Volter’s legacy in our current debates about religious tolerance remains extremely powerful.
Hardly one week passes without an article in print citing:
‘I do not accept what you say, but I will defend your right to death.’
This caveat of multiculturalist tolerance is so powerful
if Volta had not said it, we would have wanted to invent it ourselves,
that is exactly what happened.
The phrase was invented by an English woman in 1906.
No matter, it expresses a truth that is fundamentally important to our culture,
so we have adopted this phrase and decide that Volter was the one who said it.
Volter, his name has become synonymous with a group of liberal values:
freedom of speech, refusal of fanaticism and superstition,
confidence in reason and tolerance.
It is unique, and nowadays, an extremely precious heritage.
Please follow and like us: