Thursday, March 28

Unknown Voltaire

Google+ Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr +

Francois Marie Arouet – aka Voltaire – born on November 21, 1694, was a famous French writer who fully expressed in his works the ideas of the XVIII century that made it the century of freedom of thought and enlightenment. His three-year stay in England, where he was exiled for denouncing the absolutist regime of France, had a great influence on his spiritual development. At that time – in 1723 – England was the center of the scientific and liberation movement, and after returning from there, Voltaire began to talk in his philosophical letters about things unknown to France at that time: about freedom of the press, about public legal proceedings, respect for property, personal freedom and other principles of the emerging third estate. Voltaire’s main merit lies in his merciless struggle against despotism and the Catholic Church against superstition, hypocrisy and hypocrisy in matters of religion and morality. His weapon in this struggle was an evil and brilliant irony, which created for him the fame of a genius of free-thinking and ridicule. Voltaire was an active participant in the French encyclopedia. All the articles he wrote for her were published in a separate book (“Philosophical Dictionary”), which is a set of liberation ideas of the XVIII century.

Childhood and youth

Francois Marie Arouet, the future Voltaire, was born into an educated and prosperous bourgeois family, which achieved this position slowly and gradually through the efforts of several generations. In the XVI century, Arouet’s ancestors were still simple tanners in Poitou. In the first half of the XVII century, Voltaire’s grandfather was already a major cloth merchant in Paris. He gave his son a solid education and liquidated his business in 1666. From the ranks of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, the Arue family moved into the ranks of the serving bourgeoisie, officials and legists, who were in close contact with the nobility. The son of a cloth merchant became a notary, and subsequently acquired a position in the state Treasury. He married a noblewoman who was not distinguished by the modest domestic virtues of the old bourgeoisie, but managed to make the notary’s house pleasant for his noble clients. He conducted the case of the Saint-Simons, Sully, Comartins and enjoyed their favor. The Duke of Richelieu baptized his eldest son. The younger, future writer, born in November 1694, fate sent Abbot Chateauneuf to be godfathers, who had a significant influence on his upbringing.

The cheerful and secular abbot, who had nothing in common with religion except income, was an old acquaintance of the notary’s wife and a friend of his house. He became interested in his lively godson and engaged in his spiritual upbringing in his own way. Even when he was very young, he forced him to memorize the “Moisiade”, a skeptical work of a certain Lourdes that was fashionable at that time. It is safe to say that the child got acquainted with the attacks on religion earlier than with its teachings. Even before entering the college, the boy pursued his older brother with epigrams on his piety. From the age of 10-12, he already represented a miniature “freethinker”, and Chateauneuf was not averse to bragging about his pupil in front of acquaintances. He took him to his old friend Ninon de Lanclos, who was peacefully ending her turbulent life at that time, taking advantage of the general sympathy of the oppositional society. The boy, who was never shy, recited the Moisiade to her, managed to show his brilliant abilities and liked the clever old woman so much that she left him two thousand francs for books in her will.

Voltaire was seven years old when his mother died. His father sent him to the College of Louis-le-Grand, where the children of aristocrats were brought up under the guidance of the Jesuits. The pupils, who belonged to the most noble families, lived there in a special position: each had a separate room, a special tutor and his own lackey for the services of his little person. The rest of the pupils were content with one room and one tutor for five. Voltaire, of course, did not enjoy any privileges, but this could not hurt his pride – he was different in another respect. Thanks to his abilities, and especially the ability to write poetry, the young schoolboy very soon became a little celebrity of the college. He wrote rhyming lines both on given topics and for his own pleasure, and from the age of twelve he had already translated Anacreon’s poems and even wrote a tragedy. One poem by a young author was even talked about in Paris and Versailles.

Voltaire, even in college, not only did not lose his reputation as a freethinker, but on the contrary, multiplied it, and his freethinking antics were apparently known to the educators themselves. At least, the first biographer of Voltaire, Condorcet, and others after him, cite the words of Father Lege, who predicted to his pupil that he would “become the head of the French deists.” It is impossible not to notice that such a prediction could encourage rather than frighten such a child, about whom his other tutor, Father Pallu, said that he was “devoured by the thirst for fame.”

Despite all this, Voltaire had a good life with the Jesuit fathers: they encouraged his poetic talent, and he always had good relations with some of them. He studied well in general and received the first awards in the exams. He also formed many strong friendships with his schoolmates. The brothers d’Argenson studied with him and remained his friends, both of whom later became ministers. He also maintained close relations with Sideville, who later became a parliamentary adviser in Rouen. But the closest, dearest friend of his whole life remained Count d’argentalus, the “guardian angel”, as Voltaire called him for the vigilant care with which he always treated the interests of his restless friend.

At the age of sixteen, Voltaire graduated from the course and again came under the predominant influence of Chateauneuf. The young man had already experienced something like the author’s fame, was confident in his poetic talent and firmly decided to devote himself to literature. His father considered such an occupation equal to utter idleness and a sure means of starving to death. He sent his son to law school, but the barbaric jargon of the old French laws offended Voltaire’s literary taste and inspired him with utter disgust for the career chosen for him by his father. He did not study at all and spent all his time in the society into which the Abbot Chateauneuf introduced him. It was a select secular society, distinguished by a special kind of oppositional spirit. Many titled persons belonged to him: the dukes of Sully, the Prince of Conti, the Marquis de la Fare, and the Duke of Vendome was considered the head of the society, who, however, had been exiled by the time Voltaire first entered the world. This society had its own certain coloring, which made it unpleasant to the king: the utter skepticism of its members in the field of religion and morality, ridicule of the hypocrisy that prevailed at court at that time, displeased Louis XIV.

Bayle’s dictionary, which had just appeared at that time, which, relying on the teaching of the church itself, proved a complete contradiction between reason and religious dogmas and, apparently resolving the dispute in favor of dogmas, left the readers themselves to draw the opposite conclusion, enjoyed great success with people among whom Voltaire moved. His vivacity, wit, and gift for writing poetry won him universal favor. Many of the members of this society were connoisseurs and lovers of literature and wrote verses themselves – mostly of a playful nature in praise of wine and women and in mockery of the assumed morality of the old court and especially the confessors of the court ladies.

Mature years

At the age of 30, Voltaire achieved a brilliant position. Both in his own opinion and in the opinion of a significant part of the public, he was already at the head of modern French literature, and he moved in the highest society and, considering titled persons as his friends, was his man in their salons. Not everyone, however, liked his position in these salons: the young king’s favorites did not like it, the Chevalier de Rohan, who had recently joined their circle, did not like it. The caste exclusivity of the nobility was already so shattered that it allowed non-noble poets to be accepted into its society – they were treated as equals. Secular courtesy, secular mores demanded this for each guest. But deep down, they were still not considered equal.

In addition, Voltaire did not fit the type of a modest poet who felt the mercy of high patrons. It wasn’t that he was cocky or arrogant–he had perfectly assimilated the refined manners of the society in which he moved. But quite sincerely, he felt himself not only an equal, but a superior being in every society in which he found himself. By his vivacity, resourcefulness, wit, he could not remain in the shadows, he occupied the first place everywhere and too often, in the opinion of de Rohan and people like him, who differed in nothing but titles, attracted everyone’s attention. De Rohan decided to throw him out of this society. He began to find fault with Voltaire and look for quarrels with him. Voltaire, quick to answer, did not remain in debt. Finding nothing more witty, de Rohan tried to make fun of Voltaire’s name, hinting at his too modest origin. “I do not drag a great name after me,” Voltaire retorts, “but I do honor to the one I bear.”

Philosophical and religious views

Voltaire was particularly struck by the freedom to study the Holy Scriptures. Upon arrival in England, he found the controversy raised by Collins’ book “On the Foundations of Christianity” still in full swing. At the same time, Woolston’s pamphlets were published one after another. These books withstood several editions in a very short time, caused a lot of objections that turned into a fierce controversy, but the matter went without any interference from the secular authorities.

This freedom was, however, not unlimited, and if it was possible to deny miracles with impunity, then it was impossible to assert without serious trouble the necessity of returning England to the bosom of the Catholic Church. Even Locke, in his treatise on tolerance, does not require its application to Catholics and atheists. But according to Voltaire, there were far fewer atheists in England than in France. He attributed this difference to the spread in the first country of the philosophy of Newton, “who proved the existence of God to the sages.” His stay in England had a decisive influence on the rest of his life .

Voltaire’s writing activity. Here, in general terms, his entire worldview was formed, which only changed in some particulars later during his long and active life. All his subsequent philosophical works are only combinations and modifications of ideas adapted to the needs of propaganda, taken by him from his English teachers. He outlined Newton’s discovery in general terms already in the “English Letters”, and then popularized his philosophy in a separate work. Locke also had a huge influence on him with his teaching on human cognition.

Of all the contents of his “English Letters,” Voltaire, by his own admission, most valued this “doctrine of the soul,” as he called Locke’s theory. Until then, the “reasoners” wrote, in his opinion, only “novels of the soul”, Locke the first “modestly outlined its history. He reveals a person’s mind the way a good anatomist explains the structure of the organs of the human body.” Having refuted the theory of innate ideas, having proved that all our ideas flow from the activity of our senses, having traced the mind in all its more and more complex operations, Locke, says Voltaire, “modestly ends with the assumption that, perhaps, we will never be able to know whether a purely material being is capable of thinking or not.”

Here, in England, Voltaire forged his weapon for the later struggle against Catholicism. He had not been a religious son of the church before, but it was only from the works of English rationalists that he became acquainted with the systematic criticism of Holy Scripture and church dogmas. The political institutions of England also attracted Voltaire’s attention, but his attitude towards these institutions has always remained ambivalent. He admired the religious tolerance and political freedom of the country that sheltered him, but for him the complete dependence of this freedom on the form of government of England was not always clear. He wavered in his sympathies between the Tory parties, who sought to strengthen the royal power, and the Whigs with their Republican tendencies. At first, he leans towards the latter. This is reflected even in the tragedies “Brutus” and “The Death of Caesar” that he brought from England. In the “English Letters” he treats with sympathy, or at least with complete impartiality, the English revolution and parliament. “The English,” he says, “like to compare themselves with the ancient Romans, but in vain. Neither in bad nor in good they are not like them. The Romans did not know religious wars. The British assiduously hanged each other and exterminated each other in the right battles because of issues of this kind…. Another significant difference between Rome and England is entirely in favor of the latter: the fruit of the civil wars in Rome was slavery, and the English unrest led to freedom.” But in Voltaire’s later works we no longer find such a favorable attitude towards the English Revolution and more than once we come across opposite reviews.

Having recognized for the English revolutionaries some significant merit before humanity, Voltaire fell into contradiction with one of the main provisions of his worldview. The progress of mankind consisted, in his opinion, almost exclusively in the successes of reason, philosophy, the arts and in the weakening of superstitions. In his opinion, only enlightened people could render services to humanity.

The wrestlers, who, as it seemed to him, were worried about things similar to the question of food for sacred chickens, were not engaged in science at all. Apart from Milton, there were no remarkable poets in the ranks of the Republicans. None of the great philosophers of England belonged to them. “In Cromwell’s time,” Voltaire says in his “Experience of Morals,” the place of all science and literature was occupied by searching for texts from the Old and New Testaments and applying them to political strife and the most violent revolutions.”

In the end, his political ideal remained the unlimited rule of a wise philosopher sovereign surrounded by equally wise ministers. Returning to France in the spring of 1729, Voltaire, in addition to the “English Letters” and two tragedies, also brought from England his first historical work, The History of Charles XII. He met one of Charles’s confidants in England and became interested in his stories about the extraordinary adventures of the Swedish king. It was these stories that served as the main material for a brilliant work, combining the whole interest of the novel with the desire for historical truthfulness, since it was possible with the one-sidedness of the information available to the author. The story had the significance of the first experience of a historical work written not for scientists alone and capable of interesting a wide range of readers. Even this harmless work had to be printed without “permission”. The refusal to allow the publication was caused by diplomatic considerations. It was suggested that the Polish king Augustus might be offended by the fact that a brilliant rival outshines him on the pages of history just as he outshone him in life.

Author of the article: Varvara Kartushina

Share.

About Author

Leave A Reply