Voltaire (1694-1778)

Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, a central figure in the seventeen-hundreds intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s writings are most famous for their advocacy of the autonomy of the individual and the State with respect to the church. Voltaire’s style is distinct for being lucid and witty. He was an extremely prolific writer: more than 20,000 letters and up to two thousand among books and pamphlets are attributed to him. He is the author of Candide and a contributor to the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert.

Probably the most famous work by Voltaire is the satire Candide, ou L’Optimisme (Candide: or, All for the Best). Published in 1759, the little volume is directed against Leibniz’s philosophical and theological doctrine according to which our own is the best of all possible worlds.

Responding to a challenge revived by Descartes in modern philosophy, Leibniz had argued that the world we live in is the best world that God could have created so to justify the fact that God’s benevolence is compatible with God’s all-powerfulness. In representation of the most genuine Enlightenment’s spirit, Voltaire showed by a sequel of examples that Leibniz’s argument did not stand the test of reason. At the beginning of the book, a simple-minded young man (Candide) is convinced by his mentor (Pangloss) that this is the best of all worlds; upon undertaking a voyage around the world and witnessing first-hand some of the most cruel and unfortunate events in recent history (e.g. Lisbon’s earthquake of 1755 and the Seven Years War), however, Candide will come to change his mind with respect to Pangloss’s lesson. In the end, Candide decides to withdraw any form of belief with respect to the benevolence of God and sets to take care of most immediate matters for survival: taking care of his farm. "We must cultivate our garden" are Candide’s words within which the book comes to a closure.

Candide remains to date one of the most brilliant works on theodicy - the problem of justifying the compatibility of God's benevolence and all-powerfulness. To the eyes of a contemporary reader Voltaire may come off as an atheist; but we have all reasons to believe that he was instead a deist, a position typical of the Enlightenment. Deism denies that any specific religious creed that has been developed so far is capable of adequately representing God's nature. The latter, indeed, is revealed in the marvelous order that is displayed in the universe; only once humans will fully capture the universal laws that govern the existence of all that there is will they understand God.

Thus, Voltaire seemed to be utterly certain of the existence of a God, but he denied that through any of the theological speculations that had characterized the recent theological and philosophical history humans could have gained more insight into divine matters.

Voltaire’s deism explains quite naturally also his positions with respect to the role of religion in the public sphere. Since no religion can really claim to have the truth, no specific religious creed can be associated with a State and religious beliefs cannot be used to discriminate among citizens. In other words, freedom of religion follows straight from deism.

Voltaire was not only influential in political philosophy, however, but also on two more counts. First, he contributed to show how old-school metaphysics (typical of Leibniz and even Descartes) could be set aside and replaced by a world-view inspired to the sciences, in particular Newtonian physics. Secondly, Voltaire supported a modern version of hedonism, encouraging especially sexual freedom; he even arrived at defending luxurious living as a force that drives society towards progress.

The entry on Voltaire at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

La Société Voltaire, an international society founded in 1901 to promote the study of Voltaire’s thought.

The Voltaire Foundation, based in Oxford, England.

The Institute and Museum Voltaire , based in Geneva, Switzerland.