Context:
The piece was written during the Enlightenment which was characterized
by new reasoning, free thought, and going against tradition. All around
there are scientific innovations, new branches of political thought, and
interactions with the church.
Author:
Voltaire was a talented poet, playwright, and other things. He is
originally French but his deism and political satires force him to leave
and go to London, where he fell in love with the political structure of
England. He is a deist and strongly opposes organized religion, but
supports toleration of all religions.
Summary:
Voltaire starts out by stating the obvious: Christians ought to be able
to tolerate one another. He basically compares us to ants and and
satirically implies that it is wrong to say “my ant-hill is alone
cherished by god.” His basic and most important message is that all men
are brothers made by a Deity and we should all join together in peace,
worship, and praise as opposed to hatred.
Quotes:
“And if the scourge of war is not to be avoided, let us not mutually
hate and destroy each other in the midst of peace; but rather make use
of the few moments of our existence to join in praising, in a thousand
different languages, from one extremity of the world to the other, Thy
goodness, O all-merciful Creator, to whom we are indebted for that
existence!”
Francois-Marie Arouet (better known by is nom-de-plume, Voltaire) used satire to draw attention to the injustices and irrationalities of society. He was also a great proponent of Deism.
ReplyDeleteCaroline, great job with your post. The quote you chose is the exact same one I would have picked...it jumped out at me immediately when I read it. Your summary includes all the necessities of the document and covers it all. I personally enjoyed reading this because my PDP was on Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws" so I went from an Enlightenment philosopher focusing on government and political structure to a fellow Enlightenment philosopher focusing on religion. I valued his preaching of tolerance and believe that Voltaire addressed an issue that many criticize Christianity (especially Catholicism) for still to this day, that being that they preach tolerance while we witness many instances where tolerance is not necessarily shown.
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