Philosophical Dictionary Voltaire Pdf Download
Eliane Lebouf
The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) is an encyclopedic dictionary published by the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire in 1764. The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism, Islam, and other institutions. The first edition, released in June 1764, went by the name of Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. It was 344 pages and consisted of 73 articles. Later versions were expanded into two volumes consisting of 120 articles.[1]
It is only really by enlightened people that this book can be read; theordinary man is not made for such knowledge; philosophy will never behis lot. Those who say that there are truths which must be hidden fromthe people, need not be alarmed; the people do not read; they work sixdays of the week, and on the seventh go to the inn. In a word,philosophical works are made only for philosophers, and every honest manmust try to be a philosopher, without pluming himself on being one.
This Epicurus was a great man for his time; he saw what Descartesdenied, what Gassendi affirmed, what Newton demonstrated, that there isno movement without space. He conceived the necessity of atoms to serveas constituent parts of invariable species. Those are exceedinglyphilosophical ideas. Nothing was especially more worthy of respect thanthe moral system of the true Epicureans; it consisted in the removal toa distance of public matters incompatible with wisdom, and infriendship, without which life is a burden. But as regards the rest ofEpicurus' physics, they do not appear any more admissible thanDescartes' channelled matter. It is, it seems to me, to stop one's eyesand understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and ifthere is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God.
If philosophers want to probe to the bottom this barely philosophicalmatter, let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates,honourable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on themetaphysics of love.
It is good, however, to know, that in 1730 a philosopher[21] suffered asevere enough persecution for having confessed, with Locke, that hisunderstanding was not exercised at every moment of the day and night,just as he did not use his arms and his legs at all moments. Not onlydid court ignorance persecute him, but the malignant influence of a fewso-called men of letters was let loose against him. What in England hadproduced merely a few philosophical disputes, produced in France themost cowardly atrocities; a Frenchman suffered by Locke.
The only remedy for this epidemic malady is the philosophical spirit which, spread gradually, at last tames men's habits and prevents the disease from starting; for, once the disease has made any progress, one must flee and wait for the air to clear itself. Laws and religion are not strong enough against the spiritual pest; religion, far from being healthy food for infected brains, turns to poison in them. These miserable men have forever in their minds the example of Ehud, who assassinated king Eglon; of Judith, who cut off Holofernes' head while she was sleeping with him; of Samuel, who chopped king Agag in pieces. They cannot see that these examples which were respectable in antiquity are abominable in the present; they borrow their frenzies from the very religion that condemns them.
The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) is an encyclopedic dictionary published by Voltaire in 1764. It is alphabetically ordered. Although this order helps readers more easily find articles, this was not meant to be a dictionary or encyclopaedia. In this as in his other works, Voltaire is very concerned about the injustices of the Catholic Church, which he sees as intolerant and fanatical.
The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) is an encyclopedic dictionary published by Voltaire in 1764. The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism, Islam, and other institutions. The first edition, released in June 1764, went by the name of Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. It was 344 pages and consisted of 73 articles. Later versions were expanded into two volumes consisting of 120 articles. The first editions were published anonymously in Geneva by Gabriel Grasset. Due to the volatile content of the Dictionnaire, Voltaire chose Grasset over his usual publisher to ensure his own anonymity. There were many editions and reprints of the Dictionnaire during Voltaire's lifetime, but only four of them contained additions and modifications. Furthermore, another work published in 1770, Questions sur l'Encyclopedie, which contained reshaped and modified articles from the Encyclopedie always in alphabetical order, led many following editors to join this and the Dictionnaire (plus other minor works) in a unique opus. The Dictionnaire was a lifelong project for Voltaire. It represents the culmination of his views on Christianity, God, morality and other subjects. (from wikipedia.org)
To capture Voltaire's unconventional place in the history ofphilosophy, this article will be structured in a particularway. First, a full account of Voltaire's life is offered, not merelyas background context for his philosophical work, but as an argumentabout the way that his particular career produced his particularcontributions to European philosophy. Second, a survey of Voltaire'sphilosophical views is offered so as to attach the legacy of whatVoltaire did with the intellectual viewpoints that his activitiesreinforced.
Voltaire only began to identify himself with philosophy and thephilosophe identity during middle age. His work Lettresphilosophiques, published in 1734 when he was forty years old,was the key turning point in this transformation. Before this date,Voltaire's life in no way pointed him toward the philosophical destinythat he was later to assume. His early orientation towardliterature and libertine sociability, however, shaped his philosophical identityin crucial ways.
Before it appeared, Voltaire attempted to get official permission forthe book from the royal censors, a requirement in France at thetime. His publisher, however, ultimately released the book withoutthese approvals and without Voltaire's permission. This made the firstedition of the Lettres philosophiques illicit, a fact thatcontributed to the scandal that it triggered, but one that in no wayexplains the furor the book caused. Historians in fact still scratchtheir heads when trying to understand why Voltaire's Lettresphilosophiques proved to be so controversial. The only thing thatis clear is that the work did cause a sensation that subsequentlytriggered a rapid and overwhelming response on the part of the Frenchauthorities. The book was publicly burned by the royal hangman severalmonths after its release, and this act turned Voltaire into a widelyknown intellectual outlaw. Had it been executed, a royal lettre decachet would have sent Voltaire to the royal prison of theBastille as a result of his authorship of Lettresphilosophiques; instead, he was able to flee with DuChâtelet to Cirey where the couple used the sovereignty grantedby her aristocratic title to create a safe haven and base forVoltaire's new position as a philosophical rebel and writer inexile.
Had Voltaire been able to avoid the scandal triggered by theLettres philosophiques, it is highly likely that he would havechosen to do so. Yet once it was thrust upon him, he adopted theidentity of the philosophical exile and outlaw writer with conviction,using it to create a new identity for himself, one that was to have farreaching consequences for the history of Western philosophy. At first,Newtonian science served as the vehicle for this transformation. In thedecades before 1734, a series of controversies had erupted, especiallyin France, about the character and legitimacy of Newtonian science,especially the theory of universal gravitation and the physics ofgravitational attraction through empty space. Voltaire positioned hisLettres philosophiques as an intervention into thesecontroversies, drafting a famous and widely cited letter that used anopposition between Newton and Descartes to frame a set of fundamentaldifferences between English and French philosophy at the time. He alsoincluded other letters about Newtonian science in the work whilelinking (or so he claimed) the philosophies of Bacon, Locke, andNewton into an English philosophical complex that he championed as aremedy for the perceived errors and illusions perpetuated on theFrench by René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche. Voltaire didnot invent this framework, but he did use it to enflame a set ofdebates that were then raging, debates that placed him and a smallgroup of young members of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris intoapparent opposition to the older and more established members of thisbastion of official French science. Once installed at Cirey, bothVoltaire and Du Châtelet further exploited this apparentdivision by engaging in a campaign on behalf of Newtonianism, one thatcontinually targeted an imagined monolith called French AcademicCartesianism as the enemy against which they in the name ofNewtonianism were fighting.
This apparent victory in the Newton Wars of the 1730s and 1740sallowed Voltaire's new philosophical identity to solidify. Especiallycrucial was the way that it allowed Voltaire's outlaw status, which hehad never fully repudiated, to be rehabilitated in the public mind asa necessary and heroic defense of philosophical truth against theenemies of error and prejudice. From this perspective, Voltaire'scritical stance could be reintegrated into traditional Old Regimesociety as a new kind of legitimate intellectual martyrdom. SinceVoltaire also coupled his explicitly philosophical writings andpolemics during the 1730s and 1740s with an equally extensive streamof plays, poems, stories, and narrative histories, many of which wereorthogonal in both tone and content to the explicit campaigns of theNewton Wars, Voltaire was further able to reestablish his old identityas an Old Regime man of letters despite the scandals of theseyears. In 1745, Voltaire was named the Royal Historiographer ofFrance, a title bestowed upon him as a result of his histories ofLouis XIV and the Swedish King Charles II. This royal office alsotriggered the writing of arguably Voltaire's most widely read andinfluential book, at least in the eighteenth century, Essais surles moeurs et l'esprit des nations (1751), a pioneeringwork of universal history. The position also legitimated him as anofficially sanctioned savant. In 1749, after the death of duChâtelet, Voltaire reinforced this impression by accepting aninvitation to join the court of the young Frederick the Great inPrussia, a move that further assimilated him into the power structuresof Old Regime society.
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