Voltaire believed above all in the efficacy of reason. He believed social progress could be achieved through reason and that no authority—religious or political or otherwise—should be immune to challenge by reason. He emphasized in his work the importance of tolerance, especially religious tolerance.
What did Voltaire believe in religion?
Voltaire was a Christian and thought that everyone had a right to religious freedom. He was not a fan of the Bible and was vigorously against the Catholic Church – The Church were gaining from being involved in politics by pocketing a religious tax, which is why Voltaire thought they had no place in politics.
What did Voltaire believe about human rights?
Voltaire believed government must protect people's basic rights. This included freedom of speech and religion. He believed that no religion or religious groups should be favored by the government.
Who was Voltaire and why does he matter to Christians?
Written by Paul D. Race for School Of The Rock. French playwright, satirist, and philosopher Voltaire (given name: Francois Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) wrote at a time when a corrupt state church and totalitarian government exercised brutal control over nearly every aspect of French life. Among other causes, Voltaire wrote to free his fellow Frenchmen from the early 18th-century church’s doctrine of “the divine right of kings” - the notion that the monarchy was ordained of God and ...
What did Voltaire think of the role of government?
Voltaire, or Francois-Marie Arouet which was his real name, had definite views about government and its role. Voltaire believed government must protect people's basic rights.
See more
What did Voltaire believe about human rights?
Voltaire believed everyone had the right to liberty and hedonism. He believed people had the right to question everything to find truth. This made...
What did Voltaire fight for?
Voltaire fought for free will. He believed free will was enabled through one's freedom of liberty, hedonism, empirical science, and skepticism.
What were Voltaire's economic beliefs?
Voltaire was against traditional economics because he believed the rich benefited from keeping the poor down. He was a strong supporter of meritocr...
What did Voltaire believe about organized religion?
Voltaire was against organized religion; he believed it was corrupt. He was a strong advocate for the 'tolerance' of all religions, believing every...
What did Voltaire believe about democracy?
Voltaire agreed with many democratic beliefs, such as the government's duty being to protect the liberties and rights of those they govern.
Who Was Voltaire?
Voltaire, pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet (born November 21, 1694 and died May 30, 1778 at 83), was a French writer and philosopher best known for his involvement in the Enlightenment.
Voltaire's Philosophy
Voltaire was a strong proponent of Enlightenment philosophy, which can be broken down into four main ideas:
Voltaire's Beliefs
At the core of Voltaire's beliefs was the importance of skepticism. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, he believed in questioning everything because truth would be found through examining rational evidence. This led him to criticize areas of society that didn't follow a strict empirical thought process, including:
What was Voltaire's background?
Voltaire’s background was middle class. According to his birth certificate he was born on November 21, 1694, but the hypothesis that his birth was kept secret cannot be dismissed, for he stated on several occasions that in fact it took place on February 20. He believed that he was the son of an officer named Rochebrune, who was also a songwriter. He had no love for either his putative father, François Arouet, a onetime notary who later became receiver in the Cour des Comptes (audit office), or his elder brother Armand. Almost nothing is known about his mother, of whom he hardly said anything. Having lost her when he was seven, he seems to have become an early rebel against family authority. He attached himself to his godfather, the abbé de Châteauneuf, a freethinker and an epicurean who presented the boy to the famous courtesan Ninon de Lenclos when she was in her 84th year. It is doubtless that he owed his positive outlook and his sense of reality to his bourgeois origins.
Why was Voltaire so controversial?
Voltaire was quite controversial in his day, in no small part because of the critical nature of his work. His books and pamphlets contained scores of assaults on church authority and clerical power. They criticized French political institutions too, and many incorporated elaborate defenses of civil liberty.
What did Voltaire do after he left college?
He decided against the study of law after he left college. Employed as secretary at the French embassy in The Hague, he became infatuated with the daughter of an adventurer. Fearing scandal, the French ambassador sent him back to Paris. Despite his father’s wishes, he wanted to devote himself wholly to literature, and he frequented the Temple, then the centre of freethinking society. After the death of Louis XIV, under the morally relaxed Regency, Voltaire became the wit of Parisian society, and his epigrams were widely quoted. But when he dared to mock the dissolute regent, the duc d’Orléans, he was banished from Paris and then imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year (1717). Behind his cheerful facade, he was fundamentally serious and set himself to learn the accepted literary forms. In 1718, after the success of Oedipe, the first of his tragedies, he was acclaimed as the successor of the great classical dramatist Jean Racine and thenceforward adopted the name of Voltaire. The origin of this pen name remains doubtful. It is not certain that it is the anagram of Arouet le jeune (i.e., the younger). Above all he desired to be the Virgil that France had never known. He worked at an epic poem whose hero was Henry IV, the king beloved by the French people for having put an end to the wars of religion. This Henriade is spoiled by its pedantic imitation of Virgil ’s Aeneid, but his contemporaries saw only the generous ideal of tolerance that inspired the poem. These literary triumphs earned him a pension from the regent and the warm approval of the young queen, Marie. He thus began his career of court poet.
What happened to Voltaire after Louis XIV?
But when he dared to mock the dissolute regent, the duc d’Orléans, he was banished from Paris and then imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year (1717).
What was Voltaire's main theme?
Voltaire wrote on subjects as distinct as metaphysics and politics, and he circulated nearly as many books of history as he did books of political theory. Common themes pervade his work: liberty, progress, and equality are discussed at length and in depth in many of Voltaire’s books and pamphlets. In short, Voltaire greatly influenced the direction of European thought in the 18th century. Although he died in 1778, he is often credited as being an architect of the Revolution of 1789.
What happened to the chevalier de Rohan?
His intellectual development was furthered by an accident: as the result of a quarrel with a member of one of the leading French families, the chevalier de Rohan, who had made fun of his adopted name, he was beaten up, taken to the Bastille, and then conducted to Calais on May 5, 1726, whence he set out for London.
What is Voltaire's most famous novel?
Read more about Voltaire’s most famous novel, Candide.
Who was Voltaire?
François-Marie Arouet ( French: [fʁɑ̃swa maʁi aʁwɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire ( / vɒlˈtɛər, voʊl -/; also US: / vɔːl -/; French: [vɔltɛːʁ] ), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity —especially the Roman Catholic Church —as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state .
How did Voltaire influence historiography?
Voltaire had an enormous influence on the development of historiography through his demonstration of fresh new ways to look at the past. Guillaume de Syon argues:
What happened to Voltaire in 1726?
In early 1726, the aristocratic chevalier de Rohan-Chabot taunted Voltaire about his change of name, and Voltaire retorted that his name would win the esteem of the world, while de Rohan would sully his own. The furious de Rohan arranged for his thugs to beat up Voltaire a few days later. Seeking redress, Voltaire challenged de Rohan to a duel, but the powerful de Rohan family arranged for Voltaire to be arrested and imprisoned without trial in the Bastille on 17 April 1726. Fearing indefinite imprisonment, Voltaire asked to be exiled to England as an alternative punishment, which the French authorities accepted. On 2 May, he was escorted from the Bastille to Calais and embarked for Britain.
What did Voltaire do when he left school?
By the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer. Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, spent much of his time writing poetry. When his father found out, he sent Voltaire to study law, this time in Caen, Normandy. But the young man continued to write, producing essays and historical studies. Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf [ fr], the brother of Voltaire's godfather. At The Hague, Voltaire fell in love with a French Protestant refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer (known as 'Pimpette'). Their affair, considered scandalous, was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire was forced to return to France by the end of the year.
How did Voltaire return to France?
After two and a half years in exile , Voltaire returned to France, and after a few months in Dieppe, the authorities permitted him to return to Paris. At a dinner, French mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine proposed buying up the lottery that was organized by the French government to pay off its debts, and Voltaire joined the consortium, earning perhaps a million livres. He invested the money cleverly and on this basis managed to convince the Court of Finances of his responsible conduct, allowing him to take control of a trust fund inherited from his father. He was now indisputably rich.
How many books did Voltaire write?
He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets.
Why did Voltaire reject the Adam and Eve story?
According to William Cohen, like most other polygenists, Voltaire believed that because of their different origins, blacks did not entirely share the natural humanity of whites. According to David Allen Harvey, Voltaire often invoked racial differences as a means to attack religious orthodoxy, and the Biblical account of creation.
What did Voltaire believe?
Voltaire believed that those individuals who were capable of determining the correctness of their actions through their own powers of reasoning would find the proper course to take and would do so based on free will.
What were Voltaire's principles?
What Were Some of the Principles Voltaire Believed In? The 18th-century French writer and Enlightenment thinker, whose pen name was Voltaire, believed in free will, the power of empirical science and a separation of church and state.
What did Voltaire support?
Voltaire's writings often took the form of polemical satires and displayed his support for civil rights such as freedom of expression, the right to a trial and the right of religious freedom. He denounced what he saw as the hypocrisies and injustices of his time and often wrote of the abuses enacted upon the common people by royalty and ...
What did Voltaire do to understand the world?
A great admirer of Isaac Newton's scientific approach to understanding the workings of nature, Voltaire often grappled with understanding the place and relationship of ethics and human existence within a universe governed by rational laws.
Who came before Voltaire?
The idea of liberty was a central issue of debate and discussion among the writers and philosophers of the Enlightenment, and Voltaire's writings often drew from the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and Gottfried Leibniz who came before him.
