Voltaire—Bringing England to France
source credit: Alan Charles Kors, Ph.D. Professor of History University of Pennsylvania
Few works had greater impact in popularizing the intellectual revolution of the 17th century and in inaugurating debates that would shape the 18th century in France than Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques (Philosophical Letters) from England, published in 1734. Voltaire celebrates English religious, political, commercial, and intellectual liberty, and he popularizes the systems of Locke and Newton.
His Philosophical Letters are a celebration of English thought and political life and an assault upon orthodox, absolute, and aristocratic France. Many historians have seen them as the first essential work of the French Enlightenment.
He uses England as a foil to criticize what he sees as the despotism and unenlightened government of France. Voltaire idealizes English life. He identifies the following factors as sources of England’s success. It has a government of laws, not of arbitrary individual wills. Government power is limited by civil liberties and legal equality. Civil strife, fanaticism, and persecution are limited by means of religious tolerance. Commercial freedom produces a commercial prosperity that allows the individual to serve his own interest in a way that enriches the society at large. In English society, the arts and sciences are free, respected, and flourishing. For Voltaire, all of these positive qualities are interrelated, each reinforcing the other.
France—intolerant, anti-commercial, aristocratic and despotic—looks especially unappealing when contrasted with Voltaire’s idealized picture of England—tolerant, secular, governed by law and liberty, and engaged in productive commerce.
Voltaire introduces his readers to (and popularizes) English empiricism, and especially the thought of Bacon, Locke, and Newton. In his letter on inoculation against smallpox, Voltaire expresses the philosophy of the Enlightenment in outline: reason and experience allow us to employ a method which saves lives and reduces suffering. Voltaire urges the French to recognize the superiority of Locke to Descartes. He asserts the superiority of empiricism over rationalism as a means of acquiring knowledge of the world from the world. He argues on behalf of Locke’s sensationalism and against Descartes’s notion of innate ideas.
He defends Locke’s argument that philosophical skepticism is the only honest conclusion, since it would be impious to assume that an omnipotent God could not have created matter capable of thought. This is not materialism, but an appropriate recognition of the limits of human knowledge. Avoiding metaphysical hypotheses and irresolvable arguments, let us study ourselves and the world through our limited natural faculties. Voltaire criticizes theologians who claim that Locke and other philosophers threaten morality and society. He holds that the theologians themselves have bred discord and war. Voltaire lauds Newton’s application of Lockean empiricism to the study of nature
source credit: Alan Charles Kors, Ph.D. Professor of History University of Pennsylvania
Few works had greater impact in popularizing the intellectual revolution of the 17th century and in inaugurating debates that would shape the 18th century in France than Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques (Philosophical Letters) from England, published in 1734. Voltaire celebrates English religious, political, commercial, and intellectual liberty, and he popularizes the systems of Locke and Newton.
His Philosophical Letters are a celebration of English thought and political life and an assault upon orthodox, absolute, and aristocratic France. Many historians have seen them as the first essential work of the French Enlightenment.
He uses England as a foil to criticize what he sees as the despotism and unenlightened government of France. Voltaire idealizes English life. He identifies the following factors as sources of England’s success. It has a government of laws, not of arbitrary individual wills. Government power is limited by civil liberties and legal equality. Civil strife, fanaticism, and persecution are limited by means of religious tolerance. Commercial freedom produces a commercial prosperity that allows the individual to serve his own interest in a way that enriches the society at large. In English society, the arts and sciences are free, respected, and flourishing. For Voltaire, all of these positive qualities are interrelated, each reinforcing the other.
France—intolerant, anti-commercial, aristocratic and despotic—looks especially unappealing when contrasted with Voltaire’s idealized picture of England—tolerant, secular, governed by law and liberty, and engaged in productive commerce.
Voltaire introduces his readers to (and popularizes) English empiricism, and especially the thought of Bacon, Locke, and Newton. In his letter on inoculation against smallpox, Voltaire expresses the philosophy of the Enlightenment in outline: reason and experience allow us to employ a method which saves lives and reduces suffering. Voltaire urges the French to recognize the superiority of Locke to Descartes. He asserts the superiority of empiricism over rationalism as a means of acquiring knowledge of the world from the world. He argues on behalf of Locke’s sensationalism and against Descartes’s notion of innate ideas.
He defends Locke’s argument that philosophical skepticism is the only honest conclusion, since it would be impious to assume that an omnipotent God could not have created matter capable of thought. This is not materialism, but an appropriate recognition of the limits of human knowledge. Avoiding metaphysical hypotheses and irresolvable arguments, let us study ourselves and the world through our limited natural faculties. Voltaire criticizes theologians who claim that Locke and other philosophers threaten morality and society. He holds that the theologians themselves have bred discord and war. Voltaire lauds Newton’s application of Lockean empiricism to the study of nature