Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [249]
Although he touched on all of the themes of importance to the philosophes, Voltaire was especially well known for his criticism of traditional religion and his strong attachment to the ideal of religious toleration. He lent his prestige and skills as a polemicist to fighting cases of intolerance in France. The most famous incident was the Calas affair. Jean Calas (ZHAHNH ka-LAH) was a Protestant from Toulouse who was accused of murdering his own son to stop him from becoming a Catholic. Tortured to confess his guilt, Calas died shortly thereafter. An angry and indignant Voltaire published devastating broadsides that aroused public opinion and forced a retrial in which Calas was exonerated when it was proved that his son had actually committed suicide. The family was paid an indemnity, and Voltaire’s appeals for toleration appeared all the more reasonable. In 1763, he penned his Treatise on Toleration, in which he argued that religious toleration had created no problems for England and Holland and reminded governments that “all men are brothers under God.” As he grew older, Voltaire became ever more strident in his denunciations. “Crush the infamous thing,” he thundered repeatedly—the infamous thing being religious fanaticism, intolerance, and superstition.
Throughout his life, Voltaire championed not only religious tolerance but also deism, a religious outlook shared by most other philosophes. Deism was built on the Newtonian world-machine, which suggested the existence of a mechanic (God) who had created the universe. Voltaire said, “In the opinion that there is a God, there are difficulties, but in the contrary opinion there are absurdities.” To Voltaire and most other philosophes, God had no direct involvement in the world he had created and allowed it to run according to its own natural laws. God did not extend grace or answer prayers as Christians liked to believe. Jesus might be a “good fellow,” as Voltaire called him, but he was not divine, as Christianity claimed.
DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA Denis Diderot (duh-NEE DEE-droh) (1713–1784), the son of a skilled craftsman from eastern France, became a freelance writer so that he could study many subjects and read in many languages. One of his favorite topics was Christianity, which he condemned as fanatical and unreasonable. As he grew older, his literary attacks on Christianity grew more vicious. Of all religions, he maintained, Christianity was the worst, “the most absurd and the most atrocious in its dogma”. Near the end of his life, he argued for an essentially materialistic conception of life: “This world is only a mass of molecules.”
Denis Diderot. Editor of the monumental Encyclopedia, Diderot was a major figure in propagating the ideas of the French philosophes. He had diverse interests and penned an incredible variety of literary works. He is shown here in a portrait by Jean-Honor e Fragonard.
Louvre, Paris//© Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
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The Attack on Religious Intolerance
Voltaire’s lucid prose, biting satire, and clever wit caused his works to be widely read and all the more influential. These two selections present different sides of Voltaire’s attack on religious intolerance. The first is from a straightforward treatise, The Ignorant Philosopher, and the second is from his only real literary masterpiece, the novel Candide, where he used humor to make the same fundamental point about religious intolerance.
Voltaire, The Ignorant Philosopher
The contagion of fanaticism then still subsists…. The author of the Treatise upon Toleration has not mentioned the shocking executions wherein so many unhappy victims perished in the valleys of Piedmont. He has passed over in silence the massacre of six hundred inhabitants of Valtelina, men, women, and children, who were murdered by the Catholics in the month of September, 1620. I