Voltaire and the Letters of English

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Title of Subject : Voltaire and the Letters concerning the English Nation

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In 1733 , Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire published Letters concerning the English Nation . The material was considered too politically dangerous for the author or any French printer to have the work to appear in France . Voltaire wanted to show the continentals that English had superceded the religious question and were already set on a path of progress that embodied the principles of the French Enlightenment

What the French termed philosophe came

to mean more than just philosopher . A philosophe is distinctly not concerned with metaphysics He oversteps the question of what is , but concentrates instead on what should be . He is thoroughly infused with the notion of progress and that of the infinite perfectibility of man . This is the attitude that characterized the Age of Enlightenment , of which the philosophes formed the vanguard . The Marquis de Condorcet speaks on behalf of this group when he says

[T]he perfectibility of man is absolutely indefinite that the progress of this perfectibility , henceforth above the controul of every power that would impede it , has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us

In short , an unbounded optimism in the powers of man to control destiny through the pursuit of rationalism and empirical science , such characterized the philosophe

Voltaire became a leading light among the philosophes . Edmund Burke , in a subsequent age , described the Enlightenment as a destructive movement of the human intellect ' Criticism was its modus operandi They were against the Church and all forms of tradition , and championed the deterministic science of Galileo and Newton as basis of which to build society anew . But to build anew required a new metaphysic , to replace the Christian one that has served European society thus far Because the philosophes shunned metaphysics completely they were reduced to the role of opposition , a role that they carried out with the utmost fervor and efficiency . Nietzsche was not amiss when he blamed the philosophes for the worst excesses of the French Revolution . The metaphysical dearth was finally met by the Scottish philosophe David Hume , who tackled empirical skepticism squarely , and proposed that Newtonian science be replaced by a new science of man , where Newton 's methodology is re-applied to the humanities . Hume 's approach was the beginning of the social sciences , which superceded mere optimism , the attitude held by the French philosophes , and put the cart of progress on a constructive path , ending criticism for criticism 's sake

Voltaire can be said to be anticipating Hume , for his optimism for Newtonian science was tempered by a profound empathy for the human . As a philosophe he was a wise man among brats , and thus commanded respect . He didn 't support the general cry for the overthrow of monarchy , but instead appealed for enlightened monarchy . He thought democracy would turn out to be the worst calamity , and would propagate the idiocies of the rabble . Even...