Your views on Voltaire?

[greatest]

Recently I have started reading Philosophy & Classics, I was thinking of reading Voltaire's 'Candide'.

What are your views on Voltaire and do you recommend 'Candide' and his other works?

 

[Black Zero]

please tell us little about yourself and what have you already read so that we can provide informed recommendations.

 

[Nostalgic]

Voltaire would be a great name for a wind power company.

 

[Napa]

Recently I have started reading Philosophy & Classics, I was thinking of reading Voltaire's 'Candide'.

What are your views on Voltaire and do you recommend 'Candide' and his other works?

Highly recommended. As Voltaire said the purpose of Candide was to "bring amusement to a small number of men of wit".

One of the best anecdotes is about Voltaire on his death bed. The priest asked him "Do you renounce Satan?". Votaire replied calmly "Now is not the time to be making new enemies".

 

[Black Zero]

Voltaire would be a great name for a wind power company.

from net:
WIND TURBINE CONCEPT HARVESTS ENERGY ROADSIDE
The Voltaire Turbine system puts vertical axis turbines along busy roadways to harvest breezes produced by passing cars, powering streetlights and more.

 

[Robert]

One of the founders of Liberal Enlightenment.

 

[CricketCartoons]

One of the founders of Liberal Enlightenment.

So he is one of the fountainheads of liberal fascism that has ruined our country.

 

[Nostalgic]

from net:
WIND TURBINE CONCEPT HARVESTS ENERGY ROADSIDE
The Voltaire Turbine system puts vertical axis turbines along busy roadways to harvest breezes produced by passing cars, powering streetlights and more.

And there I was, all set to register the name... someone has beaten me to it.

 

[Napa]

So he is one of the fountainheads of liberal fascism that has ruined our country.

Indeed, your country was headed greatly prosperous and headed for even greater heights till Voltaire was born.

 

[greatest]

please tell us little about yourself and what have you already read so that we can provide informed recommendations.

Philosophy and Classics is something which I have discovered very late in life, wished I had explored it when I was in my teens. I have started reading them for the past two years (I'm 37).

I have read a bit of Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Dostoyevsky, Kafka. Also a few classics from Orwell, Huxley, Dickens etc.

 

[greatest]

What is worrying me is that after searching on the net I have found that Voltaire was anti-Islam and dishonored our Prophet (PBUH). His play 'Mahomet' is severely criticized by Muslim and other intellectuals.

I know many philosophers were anti-religion but no one seems as harsh specially on Islam as Voltaire.

This is the main reason why I have still not explored any of Voltaire's work. Through other books I have learned that his philosophy and works are really brilliant and enlightening. So please guide me should go ahead and read him.

 

[s28]

Sometime after 1745, however, he read Boulainvilliers’ Vie de Mahomed, and it seems to have had a lasting impact on his perception of Prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wa sallam). Later in life, particularly in his historical writings such as the Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756), Voltaire praised the Prophet as an effective and tolerant leader and a successful conqueror

http://www.ihistory.co/enlightened-french-disbelievers-on-prophet-muhammad/

 

[Black Zero]

What is worrying me is that after searching on the net I have found that Voltaire was anti-Islam and dishonored our Prophet (PBUH). His play 'Mahomet' is severely criticized by Muslim and other intellectuals.

I know many philosophers were anti-religion but no one seems as harsh specially on Islam as Voltaire.

This is the main reason why I have still not explored any of Voltaire's work. Through other books I have learned that his philosophy and works are really brilliant and enlightening. So please guide me should go ahead and read him.

IMO, every truth loving rational person ought to be anti religion.

And there is a reason, why a philosopher would be extra critical to islam, as Islam means submission.

His opinions about islam should have no bearing. If you find his work exciting/interesting, go ahead.

 

[Black Zero]

Sometime after 1745, however, he read Boulainvilliers’ Vie de Mahomed, and it seems to have had a lasting impact on his perception of Prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wa sallam). Later in life, particularly in his historical writings such as the Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756), Voltaire praised the Prophet as an effective and tolerant leader and a successful conqueror

http://www.ihistory.co/enlightened-french-disbelievers-on-prophet-muhammad/

This is hassam's (unfounded)opinion.
I read the actual essay, and volt was, though brief, pretty harsh.
Additionally, format of the the essay, did not allow him to expand much on the subject.

 

[Robert]

So he is one of the fountainheads of liberal fascism that has ruined our country.

'Liberal fascism' is an oxymoron.

 

[James]

'Liberal fascism' is an oxymoron.

Some Liberal thinkers seem to specialise in cross-cultural interventionism, either with the blood-spilling nation building "greater good" military activities, their hyperindividualistic need to make the state as tiny and unhelpful as possible, or forcing their opinions on others in the public sphere and being ultra-intolerant of different views - anti-tradition, anti-religion, but oddly and simultaneously pro-establishment - obsessively supportive of diversity & inclusion initiatives in the workplace, and yet no acknowledgment of the obvious class divide in any of their softly-capitalist discourse - ruling over the education system and curriculum - neometropolitan old boy's club politics - acting in a smug and superior fashion towards those without further education, seeing themselves as the torch-bearers of humanitarian progress, and more generally considering themselves on a higher plane to the invisible lower orders.

I emphasise SOME Liberal thinkers. Not all. But these types have an overbearing influence on the wider image of Liberalism because of their incredibly loud and faux-outraged voices.

Not Liberal Fascism perhaps. But certainly Liberal Bigotry.

 

[Slog]

What is worrying me is that after searching on the net I have found that Voltaire was anti-Islam and dishonored our Prophet (PBUH). His play 'Mahomet' is severely criticized by Muslim and other intellectuals.

I know many philosophers were anti-religion but no one seems as harsh specially on Islam as Voltaire.

This is the main reason why I have still not explored any of Voltaire's work. Through other books I have learned that his philosophy and works are really brilliant and enlightening. So please guide me should go ahead and read him.

That was an attack on the Church

It was not possible to attack the church so publicly at that point so attacking Islam was a front for Christianity

In face if you read his later works he has a grudging respect for Islam

 

[enkidu_]

I read him a lot in my teenager years (in French), and he's very overrated. Not only because he was unusually racist (unusual even for Western standards), but barely offers something comestible when it comes to his own : no real original and deep thinking, just resuming stuff in science, history, ..., his main good points : introducing Newton/Locke theories into continental Europe and two or three novels. He has been idolized in France for his criticism of religion though.

'Liberal fascism' is an oxymoron.

Alan Ryan, who's one of the leading British political philosophers and himself a liberal, coined the expression "liberal imperialism" in a recent book, because "liberalism is intrinsically imperialist" : after all, if you have an "universal set of values", these values are nominally meant to be "universalized", independently of the modalities, even if it means to drop napalm on civilians or to kill off something like 100s of thousands of Iraqi children through economic strangulation, basically "25 percent of their age group" (Ward Churchill).

 

[greatest]

So which of his books do you all highly recommend?

 

[enkidu_]

So which of his books do you all highly recommend?

Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) among his non fiction, and Zadig when it comes to philosophical novels.

 

[Robert]

Alan Ryan, who's one of the leading British political philosophers and himself a liberal, coined the expression "liberal imperialism" in a recent book, because "liberalism is intrinsically imperialist" : after all, if you have an "universal set of values", these values are nominally meant to be "universalized", independently of the modalities, even if it means to drop napalm on civilians or to kill off something like 100s of thousands of Iraqi children through economic strangulation, basically "25 percent of their age group" (Ward Churchill).

Hmmm. That reads more like American neoconservatism than Liberalism as I understand it. The British liberal party voted as a bloc against the Iraq intervention, as it was an intrinsically ilLiberal, authoritarian move.