History of the Origins of World Philosophy, French Enlightenment Iii: Voltaire 3

French Enlightenment III: Voltaire 3

Throughout Voltaire's life, he helped and supported many figures in the Enlightenment, especially for the encyclopedic school, and he was not afraid of risks and supported. The compilation of the French Encyclopedia is arguably one of the most important activities of the French Enlightenment. However, good things must be more grinding. By 1758, there was a worse situation in which internal contradictions intensified, and several pillar-like figures withdrew. As one of the editors-in-chief, Dharambert was also shaken and finally left. The situation was so treacherous that the encyclopedia was on the verge of dying. The burden on Diderot's body suddenly weighed a thousand tons. At this time, Voltaire, although he was 64 years old, he was not old, his ambition was still the same, and he immediately stepped forward to show his attitude. He strongly supported the greatest cultural project ever undertaken. The ancient Chinese people had clouds: "The wind knows the grass, and the day sees the hearts of the people", which is also said.

　　During his lifetime, Voltaire helped Diderot, Beaumarchais, Aier and many other major cultural figures of the time. To his predecessor Meiye, he also offered a piece of affection. Meiye died in 1664, and 65 years after his death, his posthumous works were finally passed on and passed on to Voltaire. So Fu Weng published it under the title of "Abstract of Meiye's Testament".

　　Voltaire's life can be described as a single-minded struggle for the Enlightenment. He does not have prejudices, does not have selfish feelings, and if he is in harmony, he helps, and if he opposes, he is angry. Although he had conflicts and quarrels with many people, these contradictions and quarrels had almost all nothing to do with his personal interests. Even for Rousseau, this offspring boy had hurt his self-esteem, and the two sides were very distant in temperament and used very fierce language, but when Rousseau was wanted by the authorities in Paris and Geneva, running around and desperate, he still sent letters inviting Rousseau to his residence.

　　As a great man of a generation, Voltaire did have tenacious faith and a broad mind. His tenacious convictions kept him alive for 60 years, bowing down to the end of his life, devoting himself only to the Enlightenment; his broad mind gave him a broad vision, concerned not only for his studies, but especially for the future of France and the triumph of reason.

　　Voltaire was born in Paris in 1694. His parents had 6 children, but only he and his brother and sister grew up. His real name is François-Marley. Arue, Voltaire is his pen name. His father was a notary, later a national treasury tax collector, in the third class, with a low status and a good income, as the context of the times and sufficient ability to ensure their life and study, but his mother died when he was 7 years old. His adolescent life can be said to be lucky and unfortunate.

　　Voltaire is intelligent and studious, knowledgeable and knowledgeable. At the age of 10, he entered the then aristocratic school of the Lycée Saint-Louis, and was excellent in his studies, talented, and very authoritative among the children of the nobility. He entered school at the age of 10 and was able to write poetry at the age of 10. After entering the hall, he was like a fish in the water, and soon revealed his unique artistic talent. He is quick-witted and insightful, and although he is a student, his new thinking is often unique and has begun to show his sharp edge. He graduated at the age of 17, and his father wanted him to study law, but he had a special love for literature and art, and was writing his first tragic play, "King Oedipus", and with his dealings with so many literati who refused to settle down, his father was deeply disturbed, and in 1713 he decided to send him to the French envoy to the Netherlands and a friend of his secretaries. But he was young and talented, and everywhere he went, there was news. In France, he fell in love with the daughter of an exiled writer and was sent home and imprisoned once. Back in China, he participated in a poetry competition, and because he did not have a paddle, he wrote poems to satirize the judges in order to vent his anger.

　　But these things certainly bother ordinary people, but for him, they are just small troubles that are not worth mentioning. In 1715, when he was 21 years old, he finally angered the regent of the time with a satirical poem, so he was expelled from the capital. In 1717, the regent was again angered by the song "Under the Rule of the Yellow-Haired Child"; he was arrested in May of the same year and imprisoned in the Bastille prison for several months. But the next year, good luck came, and his first tragedy was staged and greatly successful. According to reports, the play was performed 45 times in a row, and the scene was full, and he was rewarded by the king with 4,000 francs. In 1722, his father died, and he received a considerable inheritance.

　　Over the years, his screenwriting has been in full swing, and almost every book has been a success. But bad luck finally struck him. Because he had inadvertently offended a nobleman, he himself was beaten with a stick. He demanded a duel, which the other side ignored, believing that he was not qualified—the nobles did not duel with the commoners, he sued, no one was in charge of him, and later the plaintiff became the defendant, first imprisoned, then escorted out of the country.

　　These experiences of Voltaire proved that in France, the third class had no status. Although he was talented, in the eyes of the nobility, talent was only equal to a plaything. Although he did absolutely nothing wrong, the corrupt society was to tolerate corruption and frame good people, and he was forced into exile in England. The situation in England was in stark contrast to that of France, and after a brief period of discomfort, he was soon drawn to British culture. He opened his eyes and met new people. When these new friends, especially he read and understood the doctrines of Newton and Locke, he was suddenly enlightened and overjoyed. England was a new capitalist country, and almost all of Britain was what he was after, and his thinking soon underwent major changes. For example, he originally admired Leibniz's philosophy, but once he came into contact with Locke's writings, he felt that it was the best philosophy. Locke was his husband, and he had always had great respect for his gentleman, whom he had never met, throughout his life.

　　His philosophical thought, roughly out of the macroscopic norms of Locke's philosophy, although in terms of expression, is often more concise and elegant than Locke himself. It was not until 1729 that he was dredged and returned to China under a pseudonym.

　　In 1728 he began writing Philosophical Correspondence, and in 1733 he published an English version of the book, followed by a French edition the following year. The book was influential in the intellectual world, but it also caused him great trouble, and the Paris court not only banned the book, but also ordered the author to be wanted, and even his publisher was not spared. However, woe and blessing depend on it! He became acquainted with the Marquise de Châtelet in 1733. He was in a state of embattlement, and Madame Chatley invited him to take refuge in one of her couple's palace forts on the border. Voltaire used his savings to repair the palace fort and then took up residence here. Madame Chatley was intelligent and studious, and he was like-minded, and they formed a deep friendship between them, and this friendship stimulated his creative passion. Because Mrs. Schalder was keen to study Newton, he wrote the Principles of Newtonian Philosophy; Madame Chatley was so interested in metaphysics that he wrote for her another of his philosophical masterpieces, Introduction to Metaphysics. He had been intimate with the Marquise of Chatley for 15 years, and she gave him great spiritual support and emotional comfort, and he, with her encouragement, was especially excited and could not keep his pen, until Madame De Châtelet died tragically in 1749. During this period, he also traveled to Germany and had contacts with the German royal family; his situation at home deteriorated day by day, and he almost became a court poet. However, Voltaire was neither a thing in the pool nor a court object, and although he became famous, he was not pleased by King Louis. Coupled with the fact that Madame De Châtelet's death was a blow to him, he was no longer willing to stay in France, so in June 1750 he accepted the invitation of King Frederick II of Prussia to settle in Berlin.

　　However, Germany was not England, not even France, and Frederick II was not Locke and Newton, and his true evaluation of Voltaire was only that Voon was a somewhat sweet citrus. He said: "Once the citrus is squeezed into the juice, the orange peel can be thrown away." By 1753, Voltaire had finally held his breath and left Germany, at the age of 59.

He began settling in Geneva from 1754 until 1774, at the age of 80, when he left his settlement and returned to his native capital, Paris. During these 20 years, he worked tirelessly, writing, revising, and publishing many of his important works, especially for the Encyclopedia. His philosophical novels also originated at this time. Moreover, in 1764, he also published his "Pocket Philosophical Dictionary", which was later supplemented and revised on this basis, and completed his philosophical masterpiece "Philosophical Dictionary".

　　When Voltaire returned to China in 1774, the top of his head was bald, his hair was white, his teeth had fallen out, and his body was weak, but the cultural cause he had worked for all his life had become a success, and when he entered his hometown of Paris, he was greatly welcomed. After returning to China for four years, he died in Paris at the age of 84.

Voltaire's writings left to mankind are not only large in number, but also have immortal value as a historical document with a unique style. His life's work was in the Enlightenment, and his main ideological achievements were also in the Enlightenment. The opponents of the Enlightenment were traditional religions, medieval theology, and authoritarian regimes.

　　The theme of the Enlightenment was to promote human values and reason, and to advocate freedom, property and equality. In these fundamental aspects, Voltaire has a unique and magnificent French style of brilliant performance.

　　Voltaire's critique of the ecclesiastical tradition since the Middle Ages can be described as peeling the skin and cutting the bones, and entering the wood into three points. He advocated religious tolerance; he believed that religion must be in keeping with Enlightenment ideas in order to be recognized. He said: "If there is only one religion in England, I am afraid that there may be despotism; if there are two religions there, they may kill each other; but there are more than thirty religions, and they can all live peacefully and happily." He added: "The superstitious people in society are like the cowards in the army: they terrorize for no reason, and they want to spread this fear." Some people shout that Locke wants to overthrow religion, but this matter has nothing to do with religion, it is purely a philosophical question, completely incompatible with religious belief and revelation; only to consider calmly whether there is a contradiction in statements like this: material energy can think, whether God can pour thought into matter. But those theologians, when someone disagreed with them, always opened their mouths to say that God was insulted. This is similar to the crooked poets who shout and say that Debleou said bad things about the king, because Debleo satirized them. And his most famous quote is from his Philosophical Dictionary. Religion" in this entry. He wrote with a stroke of his pen: "The first God was created by the first rogue who met the first fool. Which of these words, if not Von, could have been written?

　　Throughout his life, Voltaire preached freedom, the sanctity of personal property, and, in addition, equality, which he regarded as three basic principles. In his conception of freedom, first of all, individual freedom, then freedom of speech and the press, then freedom of belief, and finally freedom of labor. He argued that everyone had the right to "sell his labour to the most paid man, for labour is the property of those who have no property." His definition of freedom was: "Not dependent on anything other than the law, this is a free man." Voltaire's concept of property is much different from Locke's ideas, and his concept of equality, in addition to the distinctive cultural characteristics of the Enlightenment, has a distinct middle-class color, which is what distinguishes him from Rousseau. On the one hand, he believes that "all those who enjoy all natural abilities are obviously equal." On the other hand, he argues: "Equality is both the most natural thing and the most absurd thing." He even ridiculed Rousseau's On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality, saying that it was "a philosophy that wants to make the poor plunder the rich." "

Voltaire, like Locke, is the two representatives of the capitalist middle class. They want revolution, but not violent revolution, preferably a glorious revolution. They value personal property, but they are prejudiced against the poor and the rich, and their general emotional tendency is more partial to the rich. They speak philosophically, but they don't like storms. Their style is often between grace and generosity and arbitrary swing, but its basic tendency is still not left or right, more similar to the middle way. England, however, is France. Voltaire was greatly known for his conservatism in France, and was forgotten by the French Revolution because of the rise of the revolutionary storm.

　　Throughout Voltaire's life, as the teacher of French Enlightenment, he was indeed highly respected and deserved. But as a thinker, and especially as a philosopher, he was still some distance from the most accomplished philosophical figures in Europe at the time. Although he has sharp irony and criticism of traditional religion, his criticism, although like electricity, does not necessarily hit the point, and he himself is not an atheist. He lived his life for freedom, property, and equality, but he lacked a complete set of ideas in political theory, nor did he write a theoretical work with strong operability like Locke and Montesquieu. He longs for democracy, but he doesn't seem to have a very deep understanding of democracy.

He hated despotism, but was inextricably linked to the most famous autocratic king of the time. Although he suffered a lot of despotism and aristocratic privileges in his life, he was very willing to serve them, find them as a patron, and make friends with them. In this sense, his critique of the old world can be described as wounding the skin and flesh, but it cannot hurt the bones.

He advocated the three principles of liberty, property and equality, but he discriminated against the poor. Emotionally and theoretically inclined to the rich, he even argued: "In our unfortunate world, it is impossible for people living in society not to be divided into two classes: the rich class that dominates people, and the poor class who serve people." "

He loves equality, but he doesn't want to be equal with the poor, because although he has suffered many setbacks, he has never really been poor. He had a soft spot for constitutional monarchy and fantasies about kings. He believed: "When the king becomes a philosopher, the people will be the happiest." Although it is playful, it is really nothing new. Plato mentioned this meaning almost 2,000 years ago.

　　In summing up Voltaire's life, he was not so much a philosopher as a thinker; he was not so much a thinker as a social activist; he was not so much a social activist as a teacher of enlightenment for a new culture. However, the teacher's ideas were often inferior to those of the students, so when the French Revolution arrived, Rousseau's prestige easily surpassed him.

　　However, this is not surprising, just as the so-called "teacher does not have to be stronger than the disciple, and the disciple does not have to be inferior to the teacher." "

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