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Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. [7] Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally.
The Essai is a work of Enlightenment philosophy as much as of history. It urges the active rejection of superstition and fable , and the need to replace them with knowledge based on reason. [ 3 ] Voltaire traced common themes across various human cultures and languages, explained by a shared reality but also by shared human failings, such as ...
Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie provides a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a chronological list of developments in the realm of knowledge—of which the Encyclopédie forms the pinnacle. [153] In 1783, Mendelssohn referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of ...
Roman Catholic priest, philosopher and first atheist writer since ancient times. Author of Testament, a book length essay, which supplied arguments and rhetoric used by other enlightenment authors such as Denis Diderot, Baron d'Holbach and Voltaire. La Mettrie: 1709–1751: French: Physician and early French materialist philosopher.
Voltaire first addresses religion in Letters 1–7. He specifically talks about Quakers (1–4), Anglicans (5), Presbyterians (6) and Socinians (7). In the Letters 1–4, Voltaire describes the Quakers, their customs, their beliefs, and their history. He appreciates the simplicity of their rituals.
In the 1720s, Voltaire exiled himself in England, where he absorbed Locke's ideas. The philosophers were, in general, less hostile to monarchical rule than they were to that of the clergy and the nobility. [19] In his defence of Jean Calas, Voltaire defended Royal justice against the excesses of fantastical provincial courts. [20]
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 ...
Zadig; or, The Book of Fate (French: Zadig ou la Destinée; 1747) is a novella and work of philosophical fiction by the Enlightenment writer Voltaire. It tells the story of Zadig, a Zoroastrian philosopher in ancient Babylonia. The story of Zadig is a fictional story. Voltaire does not attempt any historical accuracy.