Loading
You are not signed in

Dinesh / Photos

Voltaire

A courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty, Voltaire is still recognized as one of the greatest French authors, and the embodiment of 18th-century enlightenment

plato.stanford.edu/entries/voltaire
Visible by: Everyone
(more information)

More information

Visible by: Everyone

All rights reserved

Report this photo as inappropriate

2 comments

Dinesh said:

Voltaire did more than any other writer to propagate the revolutionary implications of the new science and the new liberalism in Continental Europe

“Superstition sets the whole world in flame, Philosophy quenches them” ~ Voltaire
3 years ago

Dinesh said:

For Europeans, the first chapter of the Old Testament had for many centuries conclusively explained the origin of the world and humankind, including its achievement such as language, religion and civilization . . . . . . Voltaire’s theory of fossils, his rejection of the idea that the whole earth that was once covered by water, and his critique of the theory by Buffon and others that the earth had anciently been hot and luminous. Voltaire drew an overall picture that was diametrically opposed to the biblical scenario. His chapter on “The Savages” provides a glimpse of a chronology that pulverizes all biblical limits. Voltaire regarded the human race as immeasurably old, thought it “very likely that man has been rustic for thousands of centuries,” and was convinced that that all nations were one savages roaming the forests. “Without any doubt,” he stated, early man spoke “for a very long time no language,” and communicated only by “shouts and gestures” ~ Page 65

The Birth of Orientalism
2 years ago
You must sign in to add a comment.