Download Rousseau and Voltaire: The Lives of the Two Most Famous Intellectuals of the Enlightenment AudioBook Free
"To carry a pen is usually to be at conflict." (Voltaire) "Virtue is circumstances of war, and live in this means one always has some battle to wage against oneself." (Rousseau) The grand narrative of the Enlightenment, usually recounted and recognized in conditions of improvement and modernity, generally appears as a simplified progression from the trappings of superstition, feudalism, and everything "irrational" to a world more comparable to the modern world. Alongside the Renaissance, the Enlightenment is acknowledged with the changeover to an adherence to reason, secularism, and promotion of values including the value of the average person, collective liberty, and liberty. At the heart of the motion in France was François-Marie Arouet, better known by the pen name Voltaire, whose voluminous writings advocated for higher liberalism, including liberty of religion and parting of church and state. In addition to the basic Candide, Voltaire was a biting polemic whose satirical problems on the Catholic Church were one of the fiercest of his day. He also recognized the potential risks he was taking with these writings, at one point detailing, "It really is dangerous to be right in things where founded men are wrong." The Enlightenment is searched upon fondly, and it will serve to reinforce the notion that the present is superior to days gone by, but things did not change as swiftly or as completely as many believe. In fact, some recent historians have challenged the belief that the Enlightenment was accountable for the French Trend, which is a vital issue when it comes to Voltaire. After all, Voltaire, as both his contemporaries and most of his modern viewers know him, is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Enlightenment thought, the image of the era of reason.
