Voltaire

Voltaire (pen name of François-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778) was a leading philosopher in the Enlightenment, advocating freedom everywhere and emphasizing his form of reason. He was a deist who rejected Christianity and criticized organized religion. Voltaire is sometimes called the "Father of the Enlightenment."

A Frenchman, he wrote "Candide," in which Voltaire described many bad things that happen to Candide in order to make the point that the world could be a better place. Increased freedom was Voltaire's way of improving things.

The late historian Kenneth Clarke described him as possibly the most intelligent man to have ever lived.

Voltaire on Religion

Voltaire was very critical of religion, and has been variously categorized as an atheist or deist. In his Philosophical Dictionary, he fantasizes a conversation in which he asks a spirit "Tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties." The spirit replies "Yes, the Mohammedans were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them, and offered them tribute, they pardoned.As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war."

Regarding Islam, he said, "I TELL you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so many others.

Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of July, when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at any game of chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you under the same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning desert; if it were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per cent. of your income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of eighteen women, the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly, would you dare call that religion sensual?

The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the Greek Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is not worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam.

Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is easier to calumniate them.

I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of the arts.

I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does not say a word about it; we have proved it.

One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is always someone who resuscitates it."

Voltaire on Democracy

Voltaire was a strong proponent of democracy in an age when republican government was practically nonexistent and kings ruled. In a dialogue between men of all the lands of his day, they lament "that there is not one republic in all this vast part of the world", and that they long to live in "The state where only the laws are obeyed". When the Brahmin is asked where that country is, he answers, 'We must look for it'.

Voltaire believed that any excesses or wrongs wrought by democracies were inherently less evil or harmful than those than could be inflicted by tyrannies. "The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature. The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything."