Voltaire

Voltaire was born in Paris into a middle class family. Voltaire was educated by the

Jesuits. Voltaire’s writings did not gain approval of authorities, but he attacked the

government and the Catholic Church. This caused him many imprisonments and exiles.

Voltaire did not support the dogmatic theology of institutional religions. The doctrines

about the Trinity or the Incarnation he dismissed as foolish thinking. Voltaire wrote a

play of Muhammad as a blind and destructive barbarian. In 1716 he was arrested and

exiled from Paris. At this time he wrote the tragedy (EDIPE and started to use his

known name, Voltaire. Between 1726 and 1729 he lived in exile in England. There he

wrote in English his first essays, ESSAY UPON EPIC POETRY and ESSAY UPON

THE CIVIL WARS IN FRANCE. After his exile he wrote plays, poetry, historical and

scientific treatises and was a royal historiographer. In 1731 HISTOROIRE DE

CHARLES XII Voltaire used rejected the idea that divine intervention guides history. In

1734 his Philosophical Letters compared the French system of government with the

system he had seen in England.

Candide’s world is full of liars, traitors, ingrates, thieves, misers, killers, fanatics,

hypocrites, and fools. Voltaire’s outrage is not based on social criticism but on his ironic

view of human nature. “Well, said Martin, if hawks have always had the same character,