Voltaire

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In prison, Randall Lawrence Waterhouse creates a fake site of WWII Japanese gold called El Dorado. British apologist Volataire clearly has a position on the Priority Dispute.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

François-Marie Arouet (November 21,1694 -May 30,1778 ), better known by the pen-name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, man of letters, historian, dramatist and wit.

Biography

He was born in Paris and his father was François Arouet, a notary; his mother was Marie-Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard. Both father and mother were of Poitevin extraction, but the Arouets were long established in Paris, the grandfather being a prosperous tradesman. The family appear to have always belonged to the yeoman-tradesman class; their special home was the town of Saint-Loup.

Changing his name

Voltaire was sent home, and for a time pretended to work in a Parisian lawyer's office; but he again manifested a faculty for getting into trouble—this time in the still more dangerous way of writing libellous poems—so that his father was glad to send him to stay for nearly a year (1714-15) with Louis de Caumartin, marquis de Saint-Ange, in the country. Here he was still supposed to study law, but devoted himself in part to literary essays, in part to storing up his immense treasure of gossiping history. Almost exactly at the time of the death of Louis XIV he returned to Paris, to fall once more into literary and Templar society, and to make the tragedy of Oedipe, which he had already written, privately known. He was introduced to a less questionable and even more distinguished coterie than Vendôme's, to the famous "court of Sceaux", the circle of the beautiful and ambitious duchesse du Maine. It seems that Voltaire lent himself to the duchess's frantic hatred of the regent, Philippe II of Orléans, and helped compose lampoons on him. In May 1716 he was exiled, first to Tulle, then to Sully. Allowed to return, he was suspected of having been concerned in the composition of two violent libels—one in Latin and one in French—called from their first words the Puero Regnante and the J'ai vu. Inveigled by a spy named Beauregard into a real or burlesque confession, he was sent to the Bastille on May 16, 1717. He there recast Oedipe, began the Henriade, and decided to change his name.

Ever after his exit from the Bastille in April 1718 he was known as Arouet de Voltaire, or simply Voltaire, though legally he never abandoned his patronymic. The origin of the name has been much debated, and attempts have been made to show that it existed in the Daumart pedigree or in some territorial designation. Some maintain that it was an abbreviation of a childish nickname, "le petit volontaire". The balance of opinion has, however, always inclined to the hypothesis of an anagram on the name "Arouet le jeune" or "Arouet l.j.", 'u' being changed to 'v' and 'j' to 'i' according to the ordinary rules of the game

Arouet AKA Voltaire

Complete Wikipedia entry

This article incorporates text from PD 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Please update as needed.

Voltaire was exiled to England 1726-1729. Voltaire greatly admired English religious toleration and freedom of speech, and saw these as necessary prerequisites for social and political progress. He saw England as a useful model for what he considered to be a backward France.

Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static force only useful as a counterbalance since its "religious tax", or the tithe, helped to cement a powerbase against the monarchy.

Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. To Voltaire only an enlightened monarch, advised by philosophers like himself, could bring about change as it was in the king's rational interest to improve the power and wealth of France in the world. Voltaire is quoted as saying that he "would rather obey one lion, than 200 rats of (his own) species". Voltaire essentially believed monarchy to be the key to progress and change.

He is best known in this day and age for his novel, Candide (ou de l'Optimisme ), (1759) which satirizes the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Candide was subject to censorship and Voltaire did not openly claim it as his own work. Voltaire returned to a hero's welcome in Paris at age 83 in time to see his last play produced. The excitement of the trip was too much for him and he died in Paris. Because of his criticism of the church Voltaire was denied burial in church ground. He was finally buried at an abbey in Champagne. In 1791 his remains were moved to a resting place at The Panthéon in Paris. Candide features a visit to El Dorado -- lost city of gold.

The town of Ferney (Switzerland) where he lived his last 20 years of life, is now named Ferney-Voltaire. His Château is now a museum (L'Auberge de l'Europe).

Researching his relationship with the Jews

French poet, historian, and essayist; born at Paris Nov. 21, 1694; died there May 30, 1778. His name was originally François Marie Arouet; but about 1718 he assumed the name of Voltaire. He is known to the world as one of the most active and popular champions of free thought and as an ardent advocate of religious as well as political liberty. It is the more surprising that he who, in his "Traité sur la Tolerance" (1766), vindicated Jean Calas, the victim of Catholic fanaticism, and who, in his "Lettres Chinoises," bitterly attacked religious bigotry, should have fostered anti-Jewish sentiments. His personal experiences with Jews would hardly suffice to explain such inconsistency. He alleges that, while an exile in London (1726), he had a letter of credit drawn on a Jewish banker, whom he refers to once as "Medina" and another time as "Acosta," and through whose bankruptcy he lost the greater part of 20,000 francs. In Potsdam, where he was the guest of Frederick the Great, he had a disagreeable experience with a Jew named Abraham Hirsch. In his treaty of peace with Saxony (1745) Frederick had stipulated that Saxon bonds ("Steuerscheine") held by his subjects should be redeemed at their face value, although they were then listed at 35 per cent below par.

At the same time it was ordered that no Prussian subject might purchase any of these bonds after the declaration of peace. Voltaire nevertheless ordered Hirsch to buy such bonds for him, giving him notes for the amount, while Hirsch deposited with Voltaire jewelry as security. Subsequently Veitel-Heine Ephraim offered Voltaire more favorable conditions, and he therefore withdrew his order from Hirsch. The last-named, who had already discounted Voltaire's notes, was arrested; but the enemies of the poet used the whole unsavory transaction as a means of attacking him. The king himself wrote a satire against Voltaire in the form of a drama entitled "Tantale en Procès"; and Hirsch was discharged after having paid a comparatively small fine. Voltaire himself refers to this incident in his humorous way, naturally presenting himself as having been duped. While it hardly had the effect of filling him with anti-Jewish sentiments, it inspired him, in his "Dictionnaire Philosophique Portatif" (1764), to make some unfavorable remarks about the Jews. He charges them with greed and selfishness, saying that their only ideals are children and money.

It seems that, aside from his desire to select any subject apt to furnish an opportunity to display his humorous satire and give him a chance to attack the Bible, Voltaire had no intention of antagonizing the Jews. In his reply to Isaac de Pinto, who wrote an apology for the Jews entitled "Apologie pour la Nation Juive," Voltaire admitted as much. He recognized the fact that there were respectable Jews, and he did not wish to wound the feelings of his opponent by references to the people of Israel as represented in the Bible. Antoine Guené, who defended the Bible against the attacks of Voltaire, embodied in his "Lettres de Quelques Juifs" De Pinto's apology together with the correspondence to which it gave rise. Voltaire replied in a pamphlet, "Un Chrétien Contre Six Juifs" (1776), without taking up the Jewish question.

In the end, the Enlightenment would turn on the Jews. What was originally, in the mid seventeenth-century, ambivalence and tension among gentile scholars who were engaged in the intense study of rabbinic and other Jewish texts — “eagerly scouring the Jewish tradition for guiding insights into fundamental questions of history, theology, hermeneutics and politics” — and especially in the radical stream of the Enlightenment, becomes, by the early eighteenth-century, only tension, mainly between the moderate wing’s ideal of toleration and the intolerant invective often hurled against Judaism. Voltaire was willing to argue for the toleration of contemporary Jews, but he had nothing but contempt for Judaism itself. His was a rationalistic hostility, that stemmed not from rhetorical enthusiasm or unfortunate personal relations with particular Jews, as has been suggested, but from what he saw as Judaism’s resistance to fitting into the Enlightenment schema. It is an emblematic attitude. “Voltaire’s persistent hostility towards Judaism in a sense draws into unique focus the problems underlying the general Enlightenment stance towards a minority that appeared profoundly unassimilable to its logic”

Looking backward

Voltaire, the most famous and influential of the "philosophes" of the Enlightenment, described Jews as a people "who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched." [1] For this type of existence, according to Voltaire, Jews "deserve to be punished." [2] As Arthur Hertzberg has written, Voltaire was the "vital link . . . who provided a new international, secular anti-Jewish rhetoric in the name of European culture." [3]

Related entry

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau - a rival
• John Locke

External links

• Voltaire
• History of Philosophy
• Historical Survey
• Bibliography: Grätz, Voltaire und die Juden, in Monatsschrift, 1868, pp. 161-174, 201, 223; idem, Gesch. xi. 48-54;
• Becker, Voltaire et les Juifs, in Archives, xliii. 85 et seq.;
• Mathias Kahn, ib. xxxviii. 436 et seq.;
• Lazard, Voltaire et les Juifs, in Univ. Isr. xli. 1, 126;
• Bluemner, Voltaire im Prozesse mit Abraham Hirsch, in Deutsches Museum, 1863, No. 43.