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Fran�ois-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 ndash 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defence of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.
Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.
He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Catholic Church dogma and the French institutions of his day.
Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.
LifeEarly careerFran�ois Marie Arouet was born in Paris, the youngest of the five children (and the only one who survived) of Fran�ois Arouet (1650�1 January 1722), a notary who was a minor treasury official, and his wife, Marie Marguerite d'Aumart (ca. 1660�13 July 1701), from a noble family of the Poitou province. Voltaire was educated by Jesuits at the Coll�ge Louis-le-Grand (1704�11), where he learned Latin; later in life he became fluent in Spanish and English.
By the time he left college, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer � however, his father wanted him to become a lawyer
. Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a lawyer, spent much of his time writing satirical poetry. When his father found him out, he sent Voltaire to study law, this time in the provinces. Nevertheless, he continued to write, producing essays and historical studies not always noted for their accuracy, though most were. Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families he mixed with. Voltaire's father then obtained a job for him as a secretary to the French ambassador in the Netherlands, where Voltaire fell in love with a French refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer. Their scandalous elopement was foiled by Voltaire's father and he was forced to return to France.
Most of Voltaire's early life revolved around Paris. From early on, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for his energetic attacks on the government and the Catholic Church. These activities were to result in numerous imprisonments and exiles.
He allegedly wrote satirical verses about the aristocracy and one of his writings about the R�gent led to him being imprisoned in the Bastille for eleven months. While there, he wrote his debut play, �dipe. Its success established his reputation.
Adopting the name "Voltaire"The name "Voltaire," which the author adopted in 1718 both as a pen name and for daily use,
Richard Holmes supports this derivation of the name, but adds that a writer such as Voltaire would have intended it to also convey its connotations of speed and daring. These come from associations with words such as "voltige" (acrobatics on a trapeze or horse), "volte-face" (a spinning about to face one's enemies), and "volatile" (originally, any winged creature). "Arouet" was not a noble name fit for his growing reputation, especially given that name's resonance with "� rouer" ("for thrashing") and "rou�" (a "debauchee").
EnglandThe aptitude for quick, perceptive, cutting, witty and often scathingly critical repartee for which Voltaire is known today made him highly unpopular with many of his contemporaries, including much of the French aristocracy. These sharp-tongued retorts were responsible for Voltaire's exile from France, during which he resided in England.
After Voltaire offended the young French nobleman Chevalier de Rohan in late 1725, the aristocratic Rohan family obtained a royal lettre de cachet, an irrevocable and often arbitrary penal decree signed by the French King (Louis XV, in the time of Voltaire) that was often bought by members of the wealthy nobility to dispose of undesirables. They then used this warrant to force Voltaire first into imprisonment in the Bastille and then into exile without holding a trial or giving him an opportunity to defend himself.[The Life of Voltaire] The incident marked the beginning of Voltaire's attempts to improve the French judicial system.
Voltaire's exile in England lasted over two years, and his experiences there greatly influenced many of his ideas. The young man was impressed by Britain's constitutional monarchy in contrast to the French absolute monarchy, as well as the country's support of the freedoms of speech and religion. He was also influenced by several of the neoclassical writers of the age, and developed an interest in earlier English literature, especially the works of Shakespeare, still little known in continental Europe at the time. Despite pointing out his deviations from neoclassical standards, Voltaire saw Shakespeare as an example French writers might look up to, since drama in France, despite being more polished, lacked on-stage action. Later, however, as Shakespeare's influence was being increasingly felt in France, Voltaire would endeavour to set a contrary example with his own plays, decrying what he considered Shakespeare's barbarities.
After almost three years in exile, Voltaire returned to Paris and published his views on British attitudes towards government, literature and religion in a collection of essays in letter form entitled the Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (Philosophical Letters on the English). Because he regarded the British constitutional monarchy as more developed and more respectful of human rights (particularly religious tolerance) than its French counterpart, these letters met great controversy in France, to the point where copies of the document were burnt and Voltaire was again forced to leave France.
Ch�teau de CireyIn the frontispiece to their translation of Newton, du Ch�telet is depicted as the muse of Voltaire, reflecting Newton's heavenly insights down to Voltaire.
Voltaire's next destination was the Ch�teau de Cirey, located on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine. The building was renovated with his money, and here he began a relationship with the Marquise du Ch�telet, Gabrielle �milie le Tonnelier de Breteuil (famous in her own right as �milie du Ch�telet). Cirey was owned by the Marquise's husband, Marquis Florent-Claude du Chatelet, who sometimes visited his wife and her lover at the chateau. The relationship, which lasted for fifteen years, had a significant intellectual element. Voltaire and the Marquise collected over 21,000 books, an enormous number for the time. Together, they studied these books and performed experiments in the "natural sciences" in his laboratory. Voltaire's experiments included an attempt to determine the properties of fire.
Having learned from his previous brushes with the authorities, Voltaire began his future habit of keeping out of personal harm's way, and denying any awkward responsibility. He continued to write, publishing plays such as M�rope and some short stories. Again, a
Voltaire and the Marquise also studied history - particularly the people who had contributed to civilization up to that point. Voltaire's second essay in English had been Essay upon the Civil Wars in France. When he returned to France, he wrote a biographical essay of King Charles XII, which marks the beginning of Voltaire's criticism towards established religions. The essay won him the position of historian in the king's court. Voltaire and the Marquise also worked with philosophy, particularly with metaphysics, the branch of philosophy dealing with the distant, and what cannot be directly proven: why and what life is, whether or not there is a God, and so on. Voltaire and the Marquise analyzed the Bible, trying to find its validity in their current time. Voltaire's critical views on religion are reflected on his belief on the separation of church and state and religious freedom, ideas he formed after his stay in England.
Though deeply committed to the Marquise, Voltaire by 1744 felt life at the chateau confining. On a visit to Paris in that year, he found a new love: his niece. At first, his attraction to Marie Louise Mignot was clearly sexual; he wrote her letters (only discovered in 1957) that verged on pornography, such as "My soul kisses yours; my prick, my heart, are in love with you. I kiss your beautiful ass..." Much later, they lived together, perhaps platonically, and remained together until Voltaire's death. Meanwhile, the Marquise also took a lover, the Marquis de Saint-Lambert.
Sanssouci and Voltaire (seated, third from left).
After the death of the Marquise in childbirth in September 1749, Voltaire briefly returned to Paris and in 1751 moved to Potsdam to join Frederick the Great, a close friend and admirer of his. The king had repeatedly invited him to his palace, and now gave him a salary of 20,000 francs a year. Though life went well at first - in 1752 he wrote Microm�gas, perhaps the first piece of science fiction involving ambassadors from another planet witnessing the follies of humankind- his relationship with Frederick the Great began to deteriorate and he encountered other difficulties. Faced with a lawsuit and an argument with Maupertuis, then president of the Berlin Academy of Science, Voltaire wrote the Diatribe du docteur Akakia (Diatribe of Doctor Akakia) which satirised Maupertuis. This greatly angered Frederick, who had all copies of the document burned and arrested Voltaire at an inn where he was staying along his journey home.
Geneva and FerneyVoltaire headed toward Paris, but Louis XV banned him from the city, so instead he turned to Geneva, near which he bought a large estate (Les D�lices). Though he was received openly at first, the law in Geneva which banned theatrical performances and the publication of The Maid of Orleans against his will made him move at the end of 1758 out of Geneva across the French border to Ferney, where he had bought an even larger estate, and led to Voltaire's writing of ''Candide, ou l'Optimisme'' (Candide, or Optimism) in 1759. This satire on Leibniz's philosophy of optimistic determinism remains the work for which Voltaire is perhaps best known. He would stay in Ferney for most of the remaining 20 years of his life, frequently entertaining distinguished guests, like James Boswell, Giacomo Casanova, and Edward Gibbon. In 1764 he published his most important philosophical work, the Dictionnaire Philosophique, containing a series of articles, many of which were originally written for the Encyclop�die.
, France.
From 1762 he began to champion unjustly persecuted people, the case of Jean Calas being the most celebrated. This Huguenot merchant had been tortured to death in 1763, supposedly because he had murdered his son for wanting to convert to Catholicism. His possessions were confiscated and his remaining children were taken from his widow and were forced to become members of a monastery. Voltaire, seeing this as a clear case of religious persecution, managed to overturn the conviction in 1765.
Death and burialIn February 1778, Voltaire returned for the first time in 20 years to Paris, among other reasons to see the opening of his latest tragedy, Irene. The 5-day journey was too much for the 83-year old, and he believed he was about to die on February 28, writing "I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition." However, he recovered, and in March saw a performance of Irene where he was treated by the audience as a returning hero.
Because of his well-known criticism of the church, which he had refused to retract before his death, Voltaire was denied a Christian burial, but friends managed to bury his body secretly at the abbey of Scelli�res in Champagne before this prohibition had been announced. His heart and brain were embalmed separately. In July 1791, the National Assembly, which regarded him as a forerunner of the French revolution, had his remains brought back to Paris to enshrine him in the Panth�on. There was an elaborate ceremony, complete with an orchestra, and the music included a piece that Andr� Gr�try composed specially for the event, which included a part for the "tuba curva". This was an instrument that originated in Roman times as the cornu but had been recently revived under a new name.
A widely-repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 or 1821 during the Pantheon restoration and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumours resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present.
WritingsPoetryFrom an early age, Voltaire displayed a talent for writing verse and his first published work was poetry. He wrote two long poems, the Henriade and The Maid of Orleans, besides many other smaller pieces.
The Henriade was written in imitation of Virgil, using the Alexandrine couplet reformed and rendered monotonous for dramatic purposes. Voltaire lacked enthusiasm for and understanding of the subject, both of which negatively affected the poem's quality. La Pucelle, on the other hand, is a burlesque work attacking religion and history. Voltaire's minor poems are generally considered superior to either of these two works.
Prose.
Many of Voltaire's prose works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as polemics. Candide attacks religious and philosophical optimism; ''L'Homme aux quarante ecus, certain social and political ways of the time; Zadig and others, the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy; and some were written to deride the Bible''. In these works, Voltaire's ironic style, free of exaggeration, is apparent, particularly the restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment. Candide in particular is the best example of his style.
Voltaire also has, in common with Jonathan Swift, the distinction of paving the way for science fiction's philosophical irony, particularly in his Microm�gas.
In general criticism and miscellaneous writing, Voltaire's writing was comparable to his other works. Almost all of his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his caustic yet conversational tone. In a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings, he displays his skills at journalism. In pure literary criticism his principal work is the Commentaire sur Corneille, although he wrote many more similar worksndash sometimes (as in his Life and notices of Moli�re) independently and sometimes as part of his Si�cles.
Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently contain the word "''l'inf�me" and the expression "�crasez l'inf�me, or "crush the infamy". The phrase refers to abuses of the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him, and the superstition and intolerance that the clergy bred within the people. He had felt these effects in his own exiles, in the confiscations of his books, and the hideous sufferings of Calas and La Barre.
The most oft-cited Voltaire quotation is apocryphal. He is incorrectly credited with writing, �I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.� These were not his words, but rather those of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, written under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre in her 1906 biographical book The Friends of Voltaire. Hall intended to summarize in her own words Voltaire's attitude towards Claude Adrien Helv�tius and his controversial book ''De l'esprit'', but her first-person expression was mistaken for an actual quotation from Voltaire. Her interpretation does capture the spirit of Voltaire�s attitude towards Helvetius; it had been said Hall's summary was inspired by a quotation found in a 1770 Voltaire letter to an Abbot le Roche, in which he was reported to have said, �I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.� Nevertheless, scholars believe there must have again been misinterpretation, as the letter does not seem to contain any such quote.
Voltaire's largest philosophical work is the Dictionnaire philosophique, comprising articles contributed by him to the Encyclop�die and several minor pieces. It directed criticism at French political institutions, Voltaire's personal enemies, the Bible, and the Roman Catholic Church.
Amongst other targets, Voltaire criticized France's colonial policy in North America, dismissing the vast territory of New France as "a few acres of snow" ("quelques arpents de neige").
LettersVoltaire also engaged in an enormous amount of private correspondence during his life, totaling over 20,000 letters. His personality shows through in the letters that he wrote: his energy and versatility, his unhesitating flattery, his ruthless sarcasm, his unscrupulous business faculty, and his resolve to double and twist in any fashion so as to escape his enemies.
PhilosophyReligionVoltaire, though often mistaken for an atheist, did in fact take part in religious activities and even erected a chapel on his estate at Ferney. The chief source for the misconception is a line from one of his poems (called "Epistle to the author of the book, The Three Impostors") that translates to: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." The full body of the work, however, reveals his criticism was more focused towards the actions of organized religion, rather than on the concept of religion itself.
Like many other key figures during the European Enlightenment, Voltaire considered himself a deist. He did not believe that absolute faith, based upon any particular or singular religious text or tradition of revelation, was needed to believe in God. In fact, Voltaire's focus was instead on the idea of a universe based on reason and a respect for nature reflected the contemporary pantheism, increasingly popular throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and which continues in a form of deism today known as "Voltairean Pantheism."
He wrote, "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."
In terms of religious texts, Voltaire's opinion of the Bible has been summarized by a 21st century authorWho
Contradictory views of Islam and its prophet, Muhammad, can be found in Voltaire's writings. In a letter recommending his play Fanaticism, or Mahomet to Pope Benedict XIV, Voltaire described the prophet as "the founder of a false and barbarous sect" and "a false prophet." Elsewhere, however, his views were more favourable. In ''Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations'', he described Muhammad as the founder of "a wise, severe, chaste, and humane religion", and also said "The legislator of the Muslims, a terrible and powerful man, established his dogmas with his valor and arms; yet, his religion became benign and tolerant."
From translated works on Confucianism and Legalism, Voltaire drew on Chinese concepts of politics and philosophy (which were based on rational principles), to look critically at European organized religion and hereditary aristocracy.
There is an apocryphal story that his home at Ferney was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society and used for printing Bibles, but this appears to be due to a misunderstanding of the 1849 annual report of the American Bible Society. Voltaire's chateau is now owned and administered by the French Ministry of Culture.
FreemasonryVoltaire was initiated into Freemasonry one month before his death. On 4 April 1778 Voltaire accompanied Benjamin Franklin into Loge des Neuf Soeurs in Paris, France and became an Entered Apprentice Freemason, perhaps only to please Franklin.
LegacyVoltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static force useful only as a counterbalance since its "religious tax" or the tithe helped to create a strong backing for revolutionaries.
Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. To Voltaire, only an enlightened monarch or an enlightened absolutist, advised by philosophers like himself, could bring about change as it was in the king's rational interest to improve the power and wealth of his subjects and kingdom. Voltaire essentially believed enlightened despotism to be the key to progress and change.
The most enduring of Voltaire's written works is his novella, ''Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Candide, or Optimism, 1759), which satirized the philosophy of optimism. Candide was also subject to censorship and Voltaire jokingly claimed the actual author was a certain "Demad" in a letter, where he reaffirmed the
Voltaire is also known for many memorable aphorisms, such as: "''Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"), contained in a verse epistle from 1768, addressed to the anonymous author of a controversial work, The Three Impostors.
Voltaire is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rightsndash the right to a fair trial and freedom of religionndash and who denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the ancien r�gime. The ancien r�gime involved an unfair balance of power and taxes between the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobles), and the Third Estate (the commoners and middle class, who were burdened with most of the taxes).
Voltaire has had his detractors among his later colleague. The Scottish Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle argued that, while Voltaire was unsurpassed in literary form, not even the most elaborate of his works were of much value for matter and that he never uttered an original idea of his own.
While he often used China, Siam and Japan as examples of brilliant non-European civilizations and harshly criticized slavery, he also believed that Jews were "an ignorant and barbarous people."
The town of Ferney, where Voltaire lived out the last 20 years of his life, is now named Ferney-Voltaire in honor of its most famous resident. His ch�teau is a museum.
Voltaire's library is preserved intact in the National Library of Russia at St. Petersburg, Russia.
In Zurich 1916, the theater and performance group who would become the early avant-garde movement Dada named their theater The Cabaret Voltaire. A late 20th century industrial music group then named themselves after the theater.
A character based on Voltaire plays an important role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.
BibliographyMajor works- Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (1733), revised as Letters on the English (circa 1778)
- Le Mondain (1736)
- ''Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
- Zadig (1747)
- Microm�gas (1752)
- Candide (1759)
- Ce qui pla�t aux dames (1764)
- Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
- ''L'Ing�nu (1767)
- La Princesse de Babylone (1768)
- ''�p�tre � l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (1770)
PlaysVoltaire wrote between fifty and sixty plays, including a few unfinished ones. Among them are these:
- �dipe (1718)
- Za�re (1732)
- Eriphile (1732)
- Ir�ne
- ''Socrates
- Mahomet
- M�rope
- Nanine
- The Orphan of China (1755)
Historical- History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1731)
- The Age of Louis XIV (1751)
- The Age of Louis XV (1746 - 1752)
- Annals of the Empire - Charlemagne, A.D. 742 - Henry VII 1313, Vol. I (1754)
- Annals of the Empire - Louis of Bavaria, 1315 to Ferdinand II 1631 Vol. II (1754)
- History of the Russian Empire Under Peter the Great (Vol. I 1759; Vol. II 1763)
Chronology Voltaire timeline
Copyright Citations
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