François Marie Arouet known as Voltaire , born the November 21st 1694 with Paris where he died the May 30th 1778, is a writer and Philosophe French allowed with the French Academy in 1746.

Biography

Voltaire, whose life and work, indissolubly bound, narrowly married its century, is a complex character and contradictory: celebrated of his time like poet and tragic actor, one reads today primarily his philosophical writings in prose (the tales , the philosophical letters and the philosophical dictionary ). Often regarded (with its enemy eternal Rousseau) as one of the precursory thinkers of the French revolution, he attended the Large ones and courted the monarchs, without dissimulating his scorn for the people. Apostle of the tolerance, it entêta in aggressive polemics. Morbid and hypochondriac, it always shone by its energy and its quickness of mind.

Birth and origins

François-Marie Arouet the Young person, known as later Voltaire , was born officially the November 21st 1694 with Paris, and baptized the following day, in a family of the rich person Parisian middle-class. On several occasions he will earlier affirm being actually born nine months on February 20th 1694: the Baptême would have been delayed because of the little of hope of survival of the child. His/her parents are François Arouet, notary then receiver of spices at the Court of Auditors and Marie Marguerite d' Aumart, of a family close to the Noblesse de robe. His/her older brother will be a sympathizer Janséniste. Because of its critical spirit, of its relations libertines and especially of its vocation of poet, it will have difficult relations with his father. Cause or consequence of this enmity, Voltaire on several occasions said son of a Mister de Rochebrune, “ musketeer, officer, author”. His/her mother dies in 1701 at the 42 years age.

Studies

It begins its studies in 1704 with the Louis-the-Large college directed by the Jésuite S. It made there brilliant studies of Rhétorique and from Philosophie, first prices obtain. While being extremely critical Jesuits it kept all his life a great admiration for its professors and the large companies missionaries of the Society of Jesus, in China and in Paraguay. Received education initiates it with the pleasures of the conversation and the theater. He becomes the friend of the brothers of Argenson, Rene-Louis and Marc-Pierre, future Ministers for the king Louis XV.

Towards 1706 it composes a Tragédie Amulius and Numitor ; one will find of them later extracts which will be published in the 19th century. After its class of Philosophy, it leaves the college in 1711 to be registered with the school Droit of Paris.

Libertinage

In 1712 it tries the contest of the Academy with an ode, the Wish of Louis XIII , but fails.

Godson of the abbot of Châteauneuf, it is introduced into a company libertine, the Société of the Temple , and receives a legacy of Ninon de Lenclos. He likes to make display of his talents Littéraire S and of off-hand sound Esprit and slinger which is spread in epigram S.

In 1713, at 19 years, it leaves for Holland as secretary Mr. de Châteauneuf, brother of his godfather. It is made drive out Ambassade of France in Holland because of its connection with Miss of the Walnut tree, known as Pimpette, which it wanted to remove, following the complaint of Madam of the Walnut tree. Mr Arouet threatens his son to dispatch it in Saint-Domingue and to disinherit it.

In 1714, it writes a Pamphlet, Lettre with Mr. D *** , and a Satire, the Mud pit or the Parnassus , and begins its Tragédie Oedipus . Become clerk of notary, his trade hardly inspires it.

Exiles and prisons

In 1716 it is exiled for seditious worms that one lends to him and that it will be always defended to have written: the poem of “I saw”, of inspiration Jansenist. Meeting in the gardens of the Palais Royal the Regent Philippe of Orleans launches to him: “Mr Arouet, I guarantee to show to you a thing which you never saw. - What? - The Bastille. - Ah! Monseigneur, I hold it for sight. ” It is not with the Bastille that it will go but to the Sully-on-Loire where it will spend five months, far from Paris. In 1717, shown to have written Lampoons against the Regent, it escapes the deportation in the islands (the Antilles) but is imprisoned with the Bastille during nearly one year, between 1717 and 1718. It begins Henriade, ode with the King Henri IV. Released in April 1718, it is exiled with Châtenay-Malabry. It adopts the name of Voltaire and completes Oedipus , his first part of Théâtre, which met success in November, a few months after its exit of Prison.

The years of 1719 with 1724 are years of Mondanité.

In 1726, following a dispute with the Knight of Rohan, Voltaire is imprisoned again with the Bastille.

Several assumptions on the origin of the pseudonym “Voltaire” were formulated and made debate a long time:

  • It would be the Anagramme of AROUET L (E) J (eune) or rather of AROVET L (E) I (eune) in Latin capital letters where U.S. “writes V and J writes I. AROVETLI gives VOLTAIRE. It is the most serious assumption, and most often evoked in all the publications.

  • It would act of the phonetic anagram of Airvault, name of a borough poitevin from where its family is originating.
  • It can be also the verb phrase meaning in Former French that which one “want-make-to conceal” ( Voltaire ), because of its innovative thought.
  • It can act of the contraction of Vol one” taire' with syncope of the interior Syllabe one .
  • One also thinks of the syllabic and phonetic anagram of “revolted”: revolted becomes revolted , which gives Voltaire .

critical modern (in particular, and especially, the edition of the Pleiad and school handbooks) agrees today to admit the first assumption like most probable ''.

He exiles himself after his release, in Great Britain (following the order which was given to him to leave the French kingdom) 1726 with 1729, where he discover the Philosophie John Locke, scientific theories of Isaac Newton and the characteristic of the British monarchy, of which he will ensure popularization in France in the philosophical Lettres .

Life of court

Voltaire shares the life of Emilie of Chatelet to the Château of Cirey, then returns to Paris, where it carries out a career of courtier before falling in disgrace.

It is only in 1750 that it goes to the court Frederic II to Berlin, where awaits it a brilliant position, the key of Chambellan and a considerable treatment. The king and the philosopher bind friendship, the first practitioner perfectly French. But the two friends cannot dissimulate a long time their principal features, one his proud mood and its practice to be obeyed, the other its intellectual superiority and its prickly spirit. The estrangement is inevitable, and, in 1753, a quarrel of Voltaire with Maupertuis, which the king supports, precipitates the rupture, and Voltaire leaves the Prussia. The most important work that it publishes during its stay in Berlin east the Century of Louis XIV.

From Geneva with Ferney

In 1755, it settles with the “Delights”, close to Geneva. Lastly, in 1758, it buys a field with Ferney, in the Pays of Gex, and Tournay, in Territoire French, but on the free-Genevese border (Geneva is then an independent State). It will arrange the area, will build, plant, sow and develop the breeding. In company of M {{me}} Denis, his niece, controlling and partner, it makes live a thousand of people, is made farmer, architect, manufacturer of watches and silk stocking. With its direction of the formula, it summarizes the company: “A den of 40 savages became an opulent small town inhabited by 1200 useful people”. Voltaire is not only any more the most famous man of his time: he became a Mythe. From Saint-Pétersbourg to Philadelphia, one awaits his publications like oracle S. Artiste S, Savant S, princes, Ambassadeur S or simple curious go in Pèlerinage to Ferney in this “landlord of Europe”.

In 1778, it returns to Paris: the people of the capital accommodate it with such an enthusiasm that certain historians see in this day of the March 30th “the first of the revolutionary days ”.

Two months before its death, the April 7th 1778, it becomes Franc-maçon in the Parisian cabin of the “Last nine Sisters”. It is possible that Voltaire was Franc-maçon before this date, but there is not any formal evidence.

He dies in Paris the May 30th 1778. In February, 4 months before its death, he declared publicly: “ I die by adoring God, by loving my friends, by not hating my enemies, by hating the Superstition. ”

Its ashes are transferred to the the Pantheon from Paris the July 11th 1791 after a ceremony grandiose.
By a chance of the History, its tomb is opposite that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which he hardly did not like - and did not include/understand -.

Its work

Voltaire was before a whole writer of which the novel, dramatic, poetic, critical, philosophical, political and moral, as well as the correspondence (more than 23.000 known letters) are considerable.

Voltaire poet

Voltaire estimated his worms extremely and wanted to be poet. However, at the 18th century, the concept of poet gathers at the same time that who writes Poésie and that who is playwright. One thus should not undervalue, in the literary field, the position of the Voltaire poet at the 18th century; however, the posterity judged some differently.

His awkwardnesses were often ridiculed: “ Not, it is not only Nanine does not honor ” ( Nanine , III, 8)

But his many epigrams were also retained.

Extract of the part Fréron :

(…) the other day a large ex-Jesuit,
In the attic of a house,
Met very-educated girl
With a beautiful little boy.
the goat seized the giton.
One discovers it, it escapes.
All the district with its continuation
Shouted: “Fréron, Fréron, Fréron”

When with the drama of Mr Hume

One ridiculed certain rascal,
the floor, whose habit
Is to have the rather good nose,
was said high: “I suppose
That one wanted to paint Fréron”.

Voltaire playwright

Most improbable in the relation which Voltaire with the Théâtre had, it is that he thought that one would retain it only for his parts considered to be rather poor in comparison with his other writings. It of it was nothing and, among about sixty parts which it wrote, the history retained in particular Zaire (1732), Adélaïde of Guesclin (1734), Alzire or the Americans (1736), Mahomet or Fanaticism (1741), Mérope Frenchwoman (1743), Sémiramis (1748), Nanine, or the prejudice overcome (1749), the Duke of Foix (1752), the Orphan of China (1755), Coffee or Scottish the (1760), Tancrède (1760), the Scythians (1767), or Laws of Minos (1774). The exotic aspects of certain parts are inspired by the edifying and curious Lettres of which he was an avid reader. He was remainder considered, in his century, like the successor of Corneille and Racine, sometimes even their triumphant victor; its parts had an immense success, and the author knew the dedication in 1778 when, on the scene of the French Comédie, the Bugle (a famous actress of time) crowned its bust of bay-trees, in front of an enthusiastic floor.

Voltaire collaborated sometimes with Rameau for lyric works: the joint project most ambitious (the opera crowned Samson ) ends up being abandoned without being represented, condemned by the censure (1733-1736). There was then (1745) a comedy-ballet, the Princess of Navarre and a Opéra-ballet, the Temple of Glory of the time or Voltaire was still courtier.

Nowadays fallen in the lapse of memory quasi-general, the parts of Voltaire however belonged to the theatrical repertory lasting almost two centuries.

Its morals

Liberalism

In the thought of the English philosopher John Locke, Voltaire finds doctrines which adapt perfectly to its positive and utility ideal. John Locke appears as the defender of the liberalism by affirming that the social pact does not remove the natural Right individuals. Moreover, it is the Expérience only which informs us; all that exceeds it is only Hypothèse; the field of some coincides with that of useful and the verifiable one. Voltaire draws from these doctrines the guiding line of his moral: the task of the Homme is to take in hand its destiny, to improve its condition, to ensure, embellish its Vie by the Science, the Industrie, the Art S and by a good “police force” of the company S. Ainsi, the Vie jointly would not be possible without a convention where each one finds its account. Although being expressed by Law S particular to each country, the Justice, which ensures this convention, is Universelle. All the Homme S are able to conceive the idea of it, initially because all are to be S more or less Raison plug-holes, then because they are all able to understand that what is useful for the company is useful to each one. The Virtue, “trade of benefits”, their is dictated at the same time by the feeling and the Intérêt. The role of morals, according to Voltaire, is to teach us the principles of this “police force” and to accustom us to respect them.

Deism

Foreigner with any spirit Religious, Voltaire refuses however with the Athéisme of a Diderot or a of Holbach. He did not cease repeating his famous distich:

the universe embarrasses me, and I then to think

That this clock exists and do not have a clock and watch maker .

Thus, according to Voltaire, the order of the Univers can it make us accept a “ eternal geometrician ”. However, if there remains attached to the Déisme, he denounces like ridiculous the providentialism (in Candide for example) and rests this question formulated as of holy Augustin and that he leaves without answer: “ Pourquoi does there exist so much difficulty, all being formed by a God that all the theists agreed to name good? ”.

One in addition allots also this sentence to him: “ We can, if you wish it, speech of the existence of God, but as I do not want to be stolen nor cut the throat of in my sleep, suffer that I give as a preliminary leave to my servants ”.

Humanism

All the work of Voltaire is a combat against fanaticism and intolerance, and that as of Henriade in 1723. " One understands today by Fanatisme a religious, dark and cruel madness. It is a disease which is gained like small the vérole." philosophical Dictionary, 1764, article Fanaticism

He in any case fought against the Fanatisme, that of the Catholic church like that of Protestantism, Symbole S in his eyes of intolerance and injustice. Leaflets, Lampoon S, all were good to mobilize the Public opinion Européenne. It also put on the Rire to cause indignation: the Humor, the irony become weapons against the fatal madness which makes the men unhappy. The enemies of Voltaire had very to fear besides of its mockery, but sometimes the novel ideas too. When in 1755, it receives the Discours on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, who disapproves the work, answers in a letter as skilful as ironic:

“ I received, Sir, your new book against mankind, I thank you. One employed so many Spirit forever to be wanted to return animals to us; it takes desire for going to four legs when your work is read. However, as there is more than sixty years that I lost the practice of it, I feel unfortunately that it is impossible for me to take it again and I leave this natural pace to those which of it are worthier than you and me. ” ( Letter in Rousseau , August 30th 1755)

The “ patriarch of Ferney ” eminently represents the Humanisme militant of the 18th century. As Holy-Beuve wrote it: “ as long as a breath of life animated it, it had in him what I call the good demon: indignation and heat. Apostle of the Reason until the end, one can say that Voltaire died as a combatant. ”

Its correspondence counts more than 23.000 known letters while it leaves with the posterity gigantic a philosophical Dictionnaire which takes again the main axes of its work, about thirty philosophical tales and articles published in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D' Alembert. Nowadays, its Théâtre, which had propelled it to the first rank of the scene Littéraire ( Mérope , Zaire and others), like its Poésie ( Henriade , regarded as the only French epopee at the 18th century) is forgotten.

It is in Voltaire, before very other, that applies what Condorcet said of the Philosophe S of the 18th century, which they had “ for war cry: Reason, Tolerance, humanity ”.

Justice

Voltaire impassioned himself for several businesses and démené himself so that justice is returned.

  • the business Fixed (1762)

  • the business Sirven (1764)
  • the business of the knight of the Bar (1766)
  • the business Lally-Tollendal (1776)

This combat is illustrated by this famous quotation and yet apocryphal book:

“ I am not agreement with what you said, but I will fight until death so that you have the right to say it. ”

To believe certain commentators (Norbert Guterman, has off Book French Quotations , 1963), this quotation would put back on a letter of February 6th, 1770 to an abbot the Rich person where Voltaire would say: “Mister the abbot, I hate what you write, but I will give my life so that you can continue to write. ” Makes some, this letter exists but the sentence does not appear there, nor even the idea. (See the complete text of this letter to the article Tolerance.)

On the other hand, this pseudo-quotation has its source in the following passage:

" I loved the author of the book of the Spirit Helvétius. This man was better than all his enemies together; but I never approved neither the errors of his book, nor the commonplace truths which it outputs with emphase. I took his party highly, when absurd men condemned it for these truths mêmes." ( Questions about the Encyclopedia , article " Homme").

A precursor of the Returned citizen

The news of Voltaire the Man with the forty ecus share of the measurement in arpents of the kingdom and the rental median value of the Ground per arpent. If one distributed this sum between all the subjects of the kingdom, that would make with each one the revenue of forty ecus , with which it provides his hero. This principle is exactly that which is implicitly subjacent with the Revenu citizen, namely the inherent share of minimal revenue which each and everyone can hope for, because of the inheritance consisted the former generations. It can help to survive, but under very modest conditions only.

Controversies

Voltaire and money

Voltaire died in the head of immense a Fortune: " one of the first Returned S of France, says one! " (Jean Goldzink, Voltaire).

Its Revenu S would come:

It hardly tackled the subject, and it is considered that it kept the Secret in two fields: its Business S, and its loves with his/her niece.

Voltaire and slave system

Voltaire firmly condemned the slave system. The most famous text is the denunciation of the mutilations of the slave of Surinam in Candide but its corpus comprises several other interesting passages. In the “Comment on the Spirit of the laws” (1777), he congratulates Montesquieu to have thrown the opprobrium on this odious practical.

He was also filled with enthusiasm for the release of their slaves by the Quaker S of Pennsylvania in 1769.

In company of its lawyer and friendly Christin, he fought at the time of the last years of his life for the release of the “slaves” of the the Jura who constituted the last Serf S present in France and which, under the terms of the privilege of the mortmain, were submitted to the monks of the chapter of Saint-Claude (the Jura). It is one of the rare political combats which it lost; the serfs were freed only at the time of the French revolution, whose Voltaire inspired some of the principles.

Wrongly, it was often claimed that Voltaire had grown rich while having taken part in the Traite blacks. One calls upon in support of this thesis a letter which he would have written with a slave trader Nantes to thank it for having saved to him 600  000 pounds by this skew. This letter is Apocryphe.

  • Tests on manners and the spirit of the nations (1756)

“ We buy domestic slaves only among Negros; us this trade is reproached. People which adulterate his children are even more condemnable than the purchaser. This trade shows our superiority; that which gives itself a Master had been born to have some. ”.

Voltaire and anti-semitism

Among the modern authors, of aucuns designate Voltaire like “anti-semite”. They are based in particular on the fact that Voltaire writes in the article “Tolerance” of the philosophical Dictionnaire : “ It is with regret that I speak about the Jews: this nation is, with many regards, most hateful which ever soiled the ground. But any absurdity and atrocious that it was, the sect of the saducéens peaceful and was honoured, though it did not believe the immortality of the heart, while the pharisees believed it. ”.

The historian of the Shoah, Leon Poliakov, which entitled Of Voltaire with Wagner volume III of sound Histoire of the anti-semitism makes of Voltaire, “the worst French anti-semite of the 18th century”. In this Poliakov work establishes a bond between the famous writings anti-semites of Voltaire and cruelty Nazi. According to him this feeling would have worsened in the fifteen last years of the life of Voltaire. It then appears related to the combat of the philosopher against the Christian church.

However, for Bernard Lazare, “if Voltaire were burning a judéophobe, the ideas that him and the encyclopedists represented were not hostile to the Jews, since they was ideas of freedom and universal equality. ”

Others note that the existence of contradictory passages in the work of Voltaire does not make it possible to conclude peremptorily with racism or the anti-semitism from the philosopher: thus Roland Desné written: “It is not because certain sentences of Voltaire hurt us that we should confuse it in the peat of the persecutors”

According to Pierre-André Taguieff in her foreword of the republication of the work of Poliakov, diabolic Causality , " Unconditional admirors of the “philosophy of the Lights”, if they take the trouble of reading the third volume (“Of Voltaire with Wagner”) of the History of the anti-semitism, published in 1968, can only moderate their judgments on thinkers like Voltaire or the baron d' Holbach, who reformulated the antijudaïsme in the cultural code “progressist” of the fight against the prejudices and the superstitions".

Voltaire and the flood: an error of appreciation

The presence of Fossile S sailors at the top of the Montagne S was regarded at its time as a proof of their immersion and thus of the Déluge. Voltaire did not admit this Interprétation, nor even the idea that it could there have one day of sea-beds where mountains were. It gaussa of the idea in the philosophical Dictionary by being surprised that nobody thought of an explanation according to him much more simple: that crusaders or pilgrims gave up shells with which they had been provided like provisions for their voyage. With the discharge of Voltaire, one will not forget that the ideas were still fuzzy about the formation of the Montagne S: it was not imagined that their rocks could have been at one time below the level of the Mer and it is with the biblical Déluge that one allotted the discovery of shell S navy in the high mountains. He thus answered with an appearance of good sense which one did not include/understand then why this kind of shells everywhere was not discovered and he sought a reasonable explanation.

Voltaire and Islam

Voltaire considered until in 1745, Mahomet like a “impostor”, “false prophet”, “fanatic”, “hypocrite”, to become later “enthusiastic” and “great man” with the image of Alexandre the Large one.

If Volaire is hostile in Mahomet and Islam before its research for the historical documentation of the “Century of Louis XIV” and of the “Test on Manners”, it is that before 1745, its sources on Islamic civilization are works of “tradition hostile excessively pious woman to the founder of Islam” all in charge of a long story of hostility between Westerners and Eastern”.

Thereafter, when Voltaire is detached from the sources inherited the Middle Ages, in particular after having read Bougainvilleas and Salts, its prospect changes radically and he will refuse to see in Mahomet illiterate. Voltaire can imagine only one man who had been “trader, poet, legislator and sovereign, could not sign his name”, as it expresses it in the “Philosophical Dictionary”. Like Bougainvilleas and Salts, Voltaire preferred to use Islam like a subterfuge to tackle the Christianity, which he regarded as “most ridiculous, absurdest and the bloodiest religion which ever infected the world”. By contrast he praised the Moslem doctrines for his great simplicity: “There is only one God, and Mahomet is its prophet”.

The evolution of Voltaire on Islam arrives at its culminating point with “important Examination of milord Bolingbroke, or the tomb of fanaticism”. Jesus is caricatured there, “like an head of party”, “gueux”, a man “of the dregs of the people”, which wanted to train a sect. On the other hand Mahomet as for him establishes a worship which “was undoubtedly more judicious than Christianity. One did not adore a Jew there by detesting the Jews; a Jewish mother of God was not called there; one did not fall there into the extravagant blasphemy to say that three gods make a god; finally, one did not eat there this god whom one adored, and one was not going to return to the saddle his creator”. The religion which Mahomet brings was thus “simple theism, the religion natural and consequently the only true one”.

As much of other deists, Voltaire was attracted by the apparent rationality of Islam, religion without clergy, miracle and mysteries.

Thus between 1742, date on which Voltaire presented his play “Mahomet” and his last phase on the Islam which ranges between 1768 and 1772, the traversed way is long.

Additional details

  • the dispute with the knight of Rohan:
At the time of an exit in a Parisian Theater, Voltaire meets the knight of Rohan, a representative of one of the big families of the French nobility. Voltaire says to him then: “ Sir, I begin my name while you finish yours ”.
the noble one greets Voltaire politely.
A few days later, Voltaire is invited to lunch at the knight of Rohan. Once its hackney carriage stopped inside the residence, the servants bastonnent the Arouet young person, then do it embastiller.
  • One often qualified Voltaire of Franc-maçon without apron , because it had kept away from this brotherhood although it had close designs. At the evening of its life, it however agreed to enter the cabin of the Last nine Sisters (whom also Benjamin Franklin attended). One exempted it considering his age of usual the test S as well as rite of the stringcourse on the eyes removed, this one seeming moved on a man who had been regarded by much as one of most clear-sighted of his time. It covered on this single occasion the apron of Claude-Adrien Helvétius, which it embraced with respect.
  • Voltaire said in connection with Marivaux and others: “ Large type-setters of nothing, seriously weighing eggs of fly in balances of cobwebs ”.
  • Henriade was inspired to him by its mistress, the marshal's wife de Villars. After their rupture, Voltaire addressed this Madrigal to him:
“ When you liked me, my worms was pleasant,
I sang with dignity your graces, your virtues:
This work was born in these favorable times;
It had been perfect; but you do not like me any more ”.
(François-Antoine Chevrier, Almanac of people of spirit, London, Jean Nourse, 1762, p. 110)
  • In 2000, Frederic Lenormand publishes a novel, the Young girl and the philosopher , evoking the adoption by Voltaire of downward of the Corneille family. The anecdote is drawn from the account that made Voltaire in his correspondence of it. Haunted by the shade of Crow, it seemed to him extraordinary to become the adoptive father of one of his downward. It is to constitute a dowry with this young girl that it published a new edition of the parts of Crow, sold by subscription for all the princes of Europe. To note that the girl of its pupil was imprisoned in Paris under the Terreur, like Good Belle and, and the daughter-in-law of the beautiful Emilie, the duchess of Châtelet, which was even guillotinée.
  • the Paleontologist Pierre Teilhard of Chardin, promoter burning of the idea of Noosphère, has as a grandmother a sister of Voltaire.

Random links:Encausse-the-thermal baths | US Marseilles Endoume Catalans | Subway of New York | Melanocharacidium | Tournament of Antwerp 2006

© 2007-2008 speedlook.com; article text available under the terms of GFDL, from fr.wikipedia.org