Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet

VOLTAIRE, FRANÇOIS-MARIE AROUET. - Man of letters, b. in Paris on 21 Nov. 1694 and d. there on 30 May 1778. At the age of 24 he assumed the name of Monsieur de V.

At the age of ten he entered the Collège Louis-le-Grand, run by the Jesuits, where he received an excellent classical education and formed connections important for his future, distinguishing himself by his precocious talent and very pronounced impertinence. His father would have wished to make him a king's advocate: but he preferred letters and a brilliant and frivolous existence. His mordant wit and his poetic gifts made him welcome in fashionable society, to which the abbé de Châteauneuf had opened the doors for him. At 23 he entered the Bastille for the first time, on account of an ode against the Regent falsely attributed to him; freed shortly afterward, he was introduced at Court. In 1718 with Oedipe, begun three years earlier, he had his first dramatic success. Meanwhile he was maturing the Henriade: but the poem, besides Henry IV, exalted certain Huguenot figures and bore a dedication to Louis XV that seemed disrespectful; it was printed clandestinely in 1723. The year before, an epistle in verse, which some identified with the Epître à Uranie (printed and circulated in 1738), gave V. the reputation of a denier of all revealed religion.

In Apr. 1726 an anonymous person denounced him to the police for having «openly preached deism» and attacked Christianity. V. found himself once again, at that moment, in the Bastille: beaten by the servants of the chevalier de Rohan, with whom he had exchanged insults at the theatre, he had challenged the man to a duel: but the nobleman, disdaining to fight with a commoner, had arranged to have him locked up. He left after a month, promising to go to England for some time. The three years spent there were decisive for his formation: he had the opportunity to know at close hand the country of Locke, of Newton, of deism and of free thought. Having quickly learned the language, he was able to assimilate its culture, of whose knowledge he would become the mediator in the rest of Europe. Thanks to good recommendations he was received favourably by both the tories and the whigs, and protected by the Court; he was a guest of Pope and of Swift, who strongly influenced his satirical style. His financial position, despite temporary difficulties, already gave him complete independence, since in 1722, on his father's death, he had inherited a not inconsiderable fortune which he later increased, so as to be able to lead a life suited to the circles he frequented.

Having returned to France in 1729, V. gathered his English experiences in the Lettres sur les anglais (or Lettres philosophiques), published in 1733 in English and the following year in French. A decree of the Parliament of Paris ordered the book to be burned and its author sought out; this helped to increase the fame and the circulation of the work, which within a year reached its 5th ed. Later the addition of a XXVth letter, containing 57 not very benevolent observations on Pascal's Pensées (completed in 1742) was a further cause of scandal. Having prudently withdrawn from Paris, V. settled at Cirey-sur-Blaise, in the castle of the cultured and vivacious marquise du Châtelet, with whom he carried out experiments in physics, not too successful, and studies in metaphysics. V.'s fame, in this period, is above all that of a dramatic poet: Artémire and Marianne had failed, but Brutus (1731), La mort de César (1735) and above all Zaïre (1732) and Alzire (1736) were successful. From 1742 dates the Parisian scandal of Mahomet ou le Fanatisme; there followed Mérope (1743), Sémiramis (1748), L'orphelin de la Chine (1755), Tancrède (1760), Olympie (1763).

V., meanwhile, had been travelling. In 1740 he was at Cleves, with Frederick II, and in 1743 at Berlin, to convince the King of Prussia to resume the alliance with France; from 1744 to 1750 he is at Versailles. But after 1746, the year in which he is received into the Académie de France, his favour begins to decline: V., having sold his court office for 60,000 livres, enters the service of Frederick II. The friendship between the two does not last long; after three years' stay in Berlin, V. departs in a fury, not without launching against Maupertuis, president of the Prussian Academy and his enemy at court, the shafts of the Diatribe du docteur Akakia. He understands that the most advantageous thing for him is the independent position that fame and wealth assure him: he first acquires an estate on the lake of Geneva, which he christens «Les délices», then settles in the land of Fernex (V. will write Ferney), at the foot of the Jura, on the border between France and Switzerland. Here V. administers his property, receives visits from all over Europe, has his dramas performed and tirelessly continues his literary activity, protected by a very thin veil of anonymity or of pseudonyms, which hides the author from the eyes of the censors but not from those of the readers. In Feb. 1778, he leaves for Paris, invited to the performance of Irène, is received there triumphantly, but dies after a few months of intense and tiring life. The body, buried at first secretly in the abbey of Scellière, in Champagne, in July 1791 was interred in the Panthéon in Paris.

1. V. and religion

The whole of V.'s work has its root in a fundamental, positive and sincere trait of his personality: the opposition to fanaticism, which however manifests itself in the gravest errors. V. also works in practice in favour of victims or presumed victims of fanaticism, as in the episode of Jean Calas, a Calvinist merchant of Toulouse, accused of having killed his son in order to prevent him from converting to Catholicism; V. obtained, after the sentence had been carried out, his rehabilitation by the magistracy. Episodes of this kind, frequent in V.'s last years, caused the less beautiful sides of his moral figure to pass into the background. But, above all, V. wished to fight against fanaticism with his pen, which wit and stylistic perfection made a formidable weapon. It was an error to have too simplistically identified the source of fanaticism with positive religion; and the struggle that should have developed against the former is waged against the latter, and above all against Christianity. V. did not lack a certain core of religiosity. There is a God, and «we are his work» says Le philosophe ignorant (ch. 19), which can be considered V.'s spiritual testament. The true philosophers are for him «apostles of the divinity»: «A catechist tells children that there is a God, Newton demonstrates it to the wise» (Dictionnaire, s. v. Athée). V. also admits a Providence and final causes, while excluding Grace; he speaks of rewards and punishments according to merits (ibid., s. v. Théisme), without its being clear on what foundation, given his doubts about the immortality of the soul. But he goes no further: the dogmas appear to him a tissue of absurdities. Rejecting the concept of Revelation and, on the other hand, not having the philosophical capacity to grasp a profound meaning in dogma, V. considers any statement about the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, transubstantiation, etc. as absolutely devoid of sense; but history shows that, in the name of these dogmas, wars have been fought, human blood has been shed; therefore V. considers it a duty to combat them. Incapable of distinguishing religion from fanaticism, he cannot realize that what drives to violence is something different from religion, even if humanly (in good or in bad faith) it may happen that it becomes mixed with it. Moreover, it is typical in him to hold the prejudice that it is religion that makes political power intolerant even when it is clear that political power simply cloaks itself, for its own ends, in religious garb.

This explains why, while he regards positive religion as a mere fable, he speaks of it by preference in all his works. Decisive for him, on this point as well, was his stay in England, where, amid the flourishing of sects, discussions on questions of religion were not restricted to a relatively small number of individuals but occupied all cultured persons, even those of superficial religiosity. The doctrine and the arguments that V. displays derive in large part from the English deists, particularly from Bolingbroke, to whom the Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke of 1767 is dedicated; and for biblical criticism, from Bayle, Spinoza, Levesque de Burgin, Fréret, etc. V. added nothing of his own but the agility and the satirical tone of the exposition. Besides the Examen cited above, mention should be made of: Le Tombeau du Fanatisme (1767), La défense de mon oncle (1769), La Bible enfin expliquée (1776), Un chrétien contre six Juifs (1777), the articles of the Dictionnaire, etc. Many of these writings follow the same scheme: they begin with the biblical narrative, which V. never tires of ridiculing, quoting passages and episodes torn from their context so as to bring out only their human aspect, shown in a light now grotesque, now cruel. Contradictions, difficulties of dating, etc., which V., following his authors, points out, were able at that time to make an impression. The irreverence softens before the figure of Jesus; but Jesus is for him no more than a Jew of upright intentions and of a mentality more open than the common run, who gathers the humble around himself and does not hide his antipathy for the priests of his time, who slander him and have him executed. Jesus is a sort of "rustic Socrates" (Oeuvres, ed. Moland [cf. bibl.], XXVI, p. 353, and XXVII, p. 69). The spread of Christianity has, moreover, for V. no connection with the preaching of Jesus: dogmas, sacraments, miracles are all inventions of the leaders of the sects that swarmed in the Roman Empire, one of which, after having enabled Constantine, with its money, to usurp the throne, would succeed in prevailing by means of political power. The establishment of the Church is explained by V. by the credulity of the many and the bad faith of the few who, for purposes of wealth and power, cultivated that credulity with fables. With these explanations, V. was convinced that he was treating religious history rationally, on the level of profane history.

2. V. and history

Historical research is not, for V., an end in itself: it must enlighten minds about the errors and values of the past, so as to allow a better organization of present life. V.'s first historical work, still rather novelistic, is the Histoire de Charles XII (1731), where the vicissitudes of the rash king of Sweden serve to show the vanity of a glory pursued through war and conquest. The Siècle de Louis XIV (1751) examines the most splendid period of French history, in which the politics of conquest, which plants the seeds of future difficulties, is matched by the flourishing of the sciences, letters and arts. V. has the merit, unusual at the time, of giving a large place to the activities of the spirit, within the general framework of civilization, relegating political history to second place (cf. Oeuvres, ed. cit., XXXIII, p. 506). This is evident in the title of the Essai sur les moeurs, undertaken in 1740 as a continuation of Bossuet's Discours sur l'histoire universelle, from Charlemagne to Louis XIV. The definitive text, of 1769, is preceded by a summary survey of the preceding epochs, under the title Philosophie de l'histoire (1765). Other historical works by V. are the Histoire de Russie (1759), the Précis du siècle de Louis XV (completed in 1768), the Histoire du Parlement de Paris (1769).

V., although lacking a true historical sense, is a popularizer endowed, when his passion does not blind him, with some critical sense. His conception of history, although still pragmatic (so that accidental causes are placed on the same level as profound reasons), is superior to that of the generality of his contemporaries.

3. V. as philosopher and writer

In philosophy V. does not prove original; he takes from Bayle, Clarke, Shaftesbury, Newton and, above all, from Locke the theories that seem to him most reasonable: it is enough to look at the Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (1727), the Traité de métaphysique (1734), Le philosophe ignorant (1766), the Lettres de Memmias à Cicléron (1771). But most important for the history of philosophy is the "rationalist" polemic conducted by V. in the religious, historical, political fields, etc. The weapon of this polemic is the Dictionnaire philosophique, an instrument of struggle more agile than the thick tomes of the Encyclopédie and, at the same time, more explicit and less concerned about censorship. To the Dictionnaire portatif, finished in 1764, the editors of Kehl (v. bibl.) added the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, the articles for Diderot's encyclopedia itself, the Opinion par alphabet and other works (7 vols. in all).

Philosophical in the sense of that time are also the Contes or thesis romans, to which today V.'s literary fame is largely linked. Many of them have a constant pattern: the travels of the protagonist serve V., on the example of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, to satirically depict contemporary European life, to which is opposed, as a rule, the example of a wise State, sometimes imaginary, sometimes identified with China, a common usage at the time. On this line are Zadig, ou la destinée (1748), where the concept is developed that one can never know whether an event comes to harm or to benefit, Candide ou l'optimisme (1759), which mocks the Leibnizian concept of the "best of all possible worlds," and La princesse de Babylone (1768): the wisdom of Zadig, the candor of Candide, in contact with the malice of men become sources of trouble; but the conclusion is happy also, at bottom, in Candide ("Il faut cultiver notre jardin"). The art of storytelling is great, even if certain motifs are insisted upon too much (every ship, in Candide, is attacked by pirates, etc.); particularly effective is the satire of military glory. To be mentioned still: Micromégas (1752), the Ingénu (1767), the homme aux quarante écus (1767), the latter on an economic subject.

Far less lively than these tales, the pamphlets and the "facéties" appear today the tragedies, although V. did not lack theatrical talent. Here too the motif that recurs most is the fatal consequences of fanaticism. The few comedies (Les originaux, 1732; Nanine, 1749, etc.), of a pathetic tone, always had little success.

As for the Pucelle d'Orléans (1775), the mock-heroic poem on Joan of Arc that so amused the libertines and scandalized the right-thinking, it proves today simply boring.

4. The politics and influence of V

The whole production of V. has also a practical purpose. He advocates progressive social reforms and without violent upheavals, coordinated to individual needs: he would want, in France, an enlightened monarchy, whose limitations of power would leave it "free to do good, powerless to do evil," as in England (cf. Lettres sur les anglais, ed. cit., VIII, 67); he would want respect for the pairing "liberty and property"; the Church should be subordinate to the State, the ecclesiastics limited in number and subject to taxes. Economic development is seen by V. more in agriculture and the rapid circulation of money than in industry; particularly important is the reorganization of justice.

Many of the reforms advocated by V. were carried out by the Revolution and by the Napoleonic Empire, although the Revolution as such drew far more on the spirit of Rousseau than on that of V. or of the Encyclopedists. V.'s work influenced the events that followed his death, above all by undermining the will to resist of the ruling classes, who, skeptical about everything and in particular about their own political function, allowed themselves to be overtaken by events. With the emigration, the aristocracy ceased to be Voltairian, and under the Restoration Voltairianism was the preserve of the liberal and anticlerical circles of the bourgeoisie. A direct Voltairian influence was renewed at the end of the century: typical, for example, in Anatole France, and not merely as a man of letters; and if one examines the mentality of anticlerical circles, it is not difficult to discover in them a substratum, often unconscious, of Voltairianism.

Vittorio Mathieu