Voltaire

Voltaire

Francois Marie rouet (21 November 1694-30 may 1778), with a pen name of Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment thinker, writer and philosopher in the 18th century.

Voltaire is the leader of the 18th century French bourgeois enlightenment movement, known as "the king of French Thought", "the best poet of France", "the conscience of Europe". He advocated enlightened monarchy and emphasized freedom and equality. His representative works are philosophical correspondence, the age of Louis XIV, honest man, etc. He died on May 30, 1778, at the age of 83.

Life of the characters

family background

Voltaire was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Paris. He was the youngest of his five children (only three survived in the end). His father, Fran? OIS arue, was a legal notary and later the director of the court of audit. Her mother, Mary Marguerite Duma, came from an aristocratic family in the province of puwatu. Voltaire was educated in the Jesuits of Paris and Louis the great high school.

After Voltaire graduated from middle school, his father sent him to law school, hoping that he would become a judge in the future. However, Voltaire wanted to be a poet and "face everything and fight against everything" to defend the truth. Therefore, he seldom attended school, but often wrote some satirical impromptu poems. He is good at attacking social evils with witty satire. He said: "laughter, can overcome everything, this is the most powerful weapon."

Growth experience

In high school, Voltaire mastered Latin and Greek, and later became more proficient in Italian, Spanish and English.

He studied law from 1711 to 1713. Before joining literature, Voltaire worked as a Secretary for the French ambassador to the Netherlands and fell in love with a French woman. Their elopement plan was discovered by Voltaire's father and forced to return home.

In 1715, Voltaire was exiled to Suri for satirizing the Regent Duke of Orleans.

Creative experience

In 1717, he was put into the Bastille for 11 months for writing satirical poems alluding to the court's promiscuous life. While in prison, Voltaire completed his first play, the tragedy of Oedipus, Prince Philip II (Duke of Orleans), the Regent of Louis XV. In this work, he first used "Voltaire" as a pseudonym, which comes from the name of a castle in his southern French hometown.

In the autumn of 1718, the king of Oedipus caused a sensation in Paris, and Voltaire won the title of "the best French poet".

In 1726, Voltaire was insulted and falsely accused by the noble de Roan, and was put into the Bastille prison again for one year. After his release from prison, Voltaire was deported and exiled to Britain.

From 1726 to 1728, Voltaire's exile in England was a new period in his life. During his three-year residence in England, he studied the political system of constitutional monarchy and the local social customs in detail, studied the British materialist empiricism and Newton's new achievements in physics, and formed the political proposition against feudal autocracy and the philosophy of deism. Philosophical correspondence is a summary of his impressions and experiences in England, and also his first monograph on philosophy and politics.

In 1729, with the acquiescence of Louis XV, the king of France, Voltaire returned to France. In the following years, he successively completed and published the tragedies "brute", "Zaire", and historical works "the twelfth history of Charles".

In 1734, Voltaire officially published his philosophical correspondence, which publicized the achievements of the British bourgeois revolution and attacked the French autocracy. The collection of letters was banned after publication, and the Paris court ordered the arrest of the author. He fled to his mistress, the Marquis of chateleine, and lived in seclusion for 15 years.

During this period, he was appointed historian by the court, and was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1743 and a member of the French Academy in 1746. He wrote many epic, tragedy, history and philosophy works. For example, philosophical and scientific works such as metaphysics and the principles of Newton's philosophy, dramas such as the death of Caesar, Muhammad, the dissolute son, herop, philosophical novel chadige, etc. The publication of these works made Voltaire gain a great reputation.

In 1749, the Marquis de Chateau died of dystocia. Voltaire returned to Paris briefly.

In 1750, Voltaire came to Berlin at the invitation of King Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the great) and was treated as a literary servant of the court.

In 1753, Voltaire had a dispute with another scientist, mauperti, who was appreciated by the king. Voltaire wrote an article satirizing mauperti's absurd thesis. But the latter was supported by the king. This incident led to the breakdown of Voltaire's relationship with the king and prompted him to leave Prussia. His most important publication during his stay in Berlin was "the century of Louis XIV".

After leaving Prussia, Voltaire bought and settled in a place called Verne on the French Swiss border. After that, he devoted himself to the hot enlightenment. On the one hand, he wrote and printed a large number of pamphlets under his pseudonym, criticizing the religious persecution of the Catholic Church and Protestant church, the autocratic government's negligence of human life and other crimes; on the other hand, he supported the struggle of the young generation of Enlightenment thinkers, especially the encyclopedia school, and actively wrote entries for them. The dictionary of philosophy is a collection of philosophical entries he wrote for the encyclopedia.

At the same time, in addition to continuing to create dramatic works, he also completed historical works such as Russia under Peter the great, history of Parliament, and philosophical novels such as honest man and innocent man. Voltaire's tireless struggle promoted the development of the enlightenment movement, and he himself was also known as "Pope Verne".

depart from the world for ever

On February 10, 1778, when Voltaire, 84, returned to Paris after 29 years of absence, he was warmly welcomed by the people. This is the most brilliant summit of Voltaire's life development. Soon he fell ill and died the same year. On his deathbed, Voltaire told him what to do: bury the coffin half in the church and half outside. It means that if God wants him to go to heaven, he will go to heaven from this side of the church; if God wants him to go to hell, he can slip away from the other end of the coffin.

After his death, Voltaire was still persecuted by the church, so that his body had to be secretly transported to Champaign province. In a chapel. It was not until 1791, during the French Revolution, that the people transported his body to the capital and wrote on his coffin, "he taught us to go to freedom.". Since then, his ashes have been buried in the pantheon in Paris, and have always been cherished and respected by people all over the world. People affectionately call him "the prince of spirit".

Voltaire was a fighter of enlightenment. He fought for freedom of thought and speech all his life and lived an independent life by his own pen.

Creative style

Voltaire's literary views and tastes basically follow the afterwind of classicism in the 17th century, which is mainly reflected in his poetry and tragedy creation. His epic, henryard (1728), takes the religious war in France in the 16th century as the theme, and describes the Bourbon Dynasty Henry IV's accession to the throne after winning the civil war and promulgating Nantes' amnesty to protect the freedom of belief of Protestants. Henry IV in the epic is praised as an example of an enlightened monarch. Voltaire's philosophical poems are full of reasoning and satirical poems are witty and unique.

Voltaire wrote more than 50 plays, most of which were tragedies. Among his literary works, philosophical novels are the most valuable. This is a new genre created by him, which tells absurd stories in a playful style, insinuates and satirizes reality, and clarifies profound philosophy.

Main ideas

Anti Sociology

Voltaire was a supporter of the theory of natural law. From the standpoint of natural law, he exposed and criticized feudal autocracy and church rule. He believes that: natural law is in line with human nature or human instinct, applicable to all people, and people all over the world think it is just natural law.

He divided the law into two categories: natural law and statute law.

The natural law is applicable to all people and is good for all people. It does not steal, does not kill, does not commit adultery, does not lie, respects parents and attaches importance to mutual assistance. These are laws promulgated by nature.

The statute law includes the law made by the state and the church law. Law is a political law. It is an arbitrary and purely civil law. Sometimes there are five supervisors, sometimes there are consuls, sometimes there are meetings of a hundred people group or a meeting of civilians, sometimes there are Athenian criminal court or Senate, and aristocracy, democracy or monarchy are implemented. If we think that a secular legislator may formulate even such a political law on behalf of the gods rather than out of his own interests, it is that he does not understand the will of mankind. People cheat others for their own interests.

Voltaire believed that the natural law is the foundation of the statute law, which is to lay the legal foundation on the concept of justice.

Rationalist historiography

Voltaire initiated the rationalist historiography, taking the criticism of feudal autocracy and the superstructure and ideology as the theme of his rationalist historiography.

Voltaire thinks that reason is the motive force of historical progress, that is, "man understands nature according to his reason, and transforms society according to his reason

Chinese PinYin : Fu Er Tai