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Voltaire, Philosopher of Human Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Virgil W. Topazio
Virgil W. Topazio*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester New York
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Extract

With the emergence of philosophy in the nineteenth century as a separate discipline which stressed primarily questions insoluble by empirical or formal methods, Voltaire's reputation as a philosopher has gone into gradual eclipse. It has become unfashionable and degrading for philosophers to concern themselves with the practical aspects of philosophical enquiry. In eighteenth-century France, on the other hand, the identification of philosophy with science, which by twentieth-century standards had vitiated philosophical thought, produced the “philosophes” or natural philosophers who were on the whole more interested in human progress than in the progress of the human mind. And Voltaire was by popular consent the leader of this “philosophe” group, the one who had unquestionably contributed the most in the struggle to make man a happier and freer member of society. Yet, ironically, despite a lifelong effort in behalf of humanity, Voltaire's reputation as a destructive thinker has steadily grown even as the critics have pejoratively classified him as a “practical” rather than a “real” philosopher. Typical of this criticism of Voltaire is Macaulay's statement: “Voltaire could not build: he could only pull down: he was the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock of our positive knowledge.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 4-Part1: Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America , September 1959 , pp. 356 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

1 Life and Works of Lord Macaulay (London: Longmans, Green, 1897), vi, 684.

2 Voltaire par lui-même (Paris: Seuil, 19S5), p. 51.

3 Fernand, Vial, Voltaire, sa vie et son œuvre (Paris: Didier, 1953), p. 352.

4 “Sur la liberté,” Œuvres complètes, Moland ed. (Paris: Gamier, 1877-85), xxxiv, 326. All references to Voltaire's works will be to the Moland edition and will, where possible, be incorporated in the text.

5 Romain Rolland, André Maurois, Edouard Herriot (Introd. Geoffrey Brereton), French Thought in the Eighteenth Century: Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot (London: Cassell, 1953), pp. 144-145.

6 Condorcet e l'idea di progressa (Florence, 1953), p. 72.

7 Voltaire et la société au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Didier, 1871-76), vii, 132.

8 Cesare Luporini, Voltaire e le “Lettres philosophiques” (Florence: Lansoni, 1955), p. 100.

9 Veltaire et l'affaire des natifs (Paris: Droz, 1956), p. 12.

10 Robert E. Fitch, Voltaire's Philosophic Procedure (Oregon: News-Times Pub. Co., 1935), p. S.

11 Before Louis XIV's great reign, only two monarchs measured up to Voltaire's requirements as defenders of human rights and contributors to human progress: Louis XII, “qui avait soin que la justice fût rendue partout avec promptitude, avec impartialité et presque sans frais” (xii, 203), and Henri IV, “le plus clément, le plus droit, le plus honnête homme” (xii, 55.0).

12 See Marcello T. Maestro, Voltaire and Beccaria as Reformers of Criminal Law (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1942), p. 153.

13 Brereton, In trod., p. xix, French Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

14 Some day, someone unintimidated by the admittedly massive weight of traditional opinion should re-examine with a sympathetic eye many of Voltaire's delightful poems (and in the case of many poems, I am afraid this would be a first examination). Must Voltaire always be judged on the basis of his ponderous alexandrine verse like La Henriade or the philosophical tracts like “Poème sur la loi naturelle” and “Traité sur la tolérance”? Who can fail to derive enjoyment from such poems as “Ce qui plait aux dames,” “Le mondain,” and sections of La pucelle? There are many poems of similar merit among his “gros bagages.”

15 Jean-François de la Harpe, Lycée ou cours de littérature (Paris; Didier, 1834), ii, 706.

16 Delattre's contention is that Voltaire started to write La pucelle as a serious work “dans le fort de son enthousiasme pour Shakespeare, afin de remédier aux insuffisances qu'il a reconnues, du genre pseudo-classique d'Œdipe et de La Benriade” (see Voltaire l'impétueux, p. 96). Voltaire was in all probability simply giving more open expression to the mental obscenity and pornography, common to most men, in compensation for his body's growing impotence.

17 Voltaire repeatedly attacked Rousseau with his most effective weapons precisely because he saw in him a real enemy of human progress.

18 Brereton, Introd., pp. xv, xvi, French Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

19 Constance Rowe, Voltaire and the State (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1955), p. 178.

20 J. R. Carré, Consistance de Voltaire le philosophe (Paris : Boivin, 1938), p. 104.

21 Raymond Naves, L'œuvre de Voltaire (Paris: Hachette, 1946), p. 111.

22 See Victor Hugo, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Hetzel-Quantin, 1880-89), xl, 72.