Voltaire  

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Voltaire by Antoine Houdon.

François-Marie Arouet (1694 - 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion. He was one of several Enlightenment figures whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.

2.   Born in Paris to a noble family of Poitou province, Voltaire studied law from 1711 to 1713. After graduating, he set out on a career in literature. Voltaire's father, however, intended him to pursue a career in law. Pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a lawyer, he spent much of his time writing satirical poetry. When his father found him out, he again sent Voltaire to study law, this time in the provinces. Nevertheless, Voltaire continued to write, producing essays and historical studies not always noted for their accuracy.

3.   Most of Voltaire's early life revolved around Paris until his exile. From the beginning, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for his energetic attacks on the government and the Catholic Church. These activities were to result in numerous imprisonments and exiles. In his early twenties, while in imprisonment in the Bastille for eleven months, he wrote his debut play, Œdipe, and adopted the name Voltaire which came from his hometown in southern France . Œdipe's success began Voltaire's influence and brought him into the French Enlightenment.

4.   A prolific writer, Voltaire produced works in almost every literary form, authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, over 20,000 letters and over 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire, however, is best known today for his novel, Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Candide, or Optimism, 1759), which satirized the philosophy of optimism. Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy as parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static force useful only as a counterbalance. He distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. To Voltaire, only an enlightened monarch or an enlightened absolutist, advised by philosophers like himself, could bring about change and progress.

5.   Voltaire is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rights — the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion. He denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the ancien régime. The ancien régime involved an unfair balance of power and taxes between the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobles), and the Third Estate (the commoners and middle class). Thomas Carlyle argued that, while Voltaire was unsurpassed in literary form, not even the most elaborate of his works were of much value as he never uttered an original idea of his own. Voltaire died in Paris, aged 83. The town of Ferney, France, where Voltaire lived out the last 20 years of his life is now named Ferney-Voltaire in his honor.   more... at Wikipedia