Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
On the other hand, Peter Gay, a contemporary authority on the Enlightenment, [152] points to Voltaire's remarks (for instance, that the Jews were more tolerant than the Christians) in the Traité sur la tolérance and surmises that "Voltaire struck at the Jews to strike at Christianity". Whatever anti-semitism Voltaire may have felt, Gay ...
In some ways, the book can be compared with Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, in how it flatteringly explains a nation to itself from the perspective of an outsider, as Voltaire's depictions of aspects of English culture, society and government are often given favourable treatment in comparison to their French equivalents.
The leaders of the Enlightenment were not especially democratic, as they more often look to absolute monarchs as the key to imposing reforms designed by the intellectuals. Voltaire despised democracy and said the absolute monarch must be enlightened and must act as dictated by reason and justice—in other words, be a "philosopher-king." [63]
Previously the series was called Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (SVEC).In 2013, the name was changed to reflect the publication's global and interdisciplinary scope, which includes the Age of Enlightenment in the long Eighteenth Century and growing scholarly move to see the Enlightenment as a movement with worldwide impact and implications.
In common with other Enlightenment philosophers, Voltaire saw the age of Alexander the Great and Pericles, the age of Caesar and Augustus, and the Italian Renaissance as "great ages" or "ages of light". He presented the age of Louis XIV as the fourth and greatest.
The author, Voltaire. 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.
It publishes the definitive edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Œuvres complètes de Voltaire), as well as Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (previously SVEC, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), a monograph series devoted to the eighteenth century, and the correspondences (letters) of several key French ...
Voltaire writes that a perfect government is impossible, but that a republic is the closest to achieving natural equality. [ 4 ] There are many textual similarities between Idées républicaines and Voltaire's private memorandum on the struggle in Geneva, Propositions à examiner pour apaiser les divisions de Genève .