This series letters written while in exile — on the sometimes-shocking English way of doing religion, politics, science, morals, and philosophy — were hugely influential upon a French audience still in the grip of l’ancien regime.
Related: The full Philosophers, Explained series, including classics from Kant, Nietzsche, Rand, Camus, Aristotle, Plato, and other important thinkers.
Not to be forgotten
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Voltaire was an anti-Semite. What he wrote about the Jews is simply monstrous. With anti-Semitism as a system. It’s not just an obsession. Anti-Semitism often passed over in silence. He directly participated in spreading this scourge. I have rarely read such abominable things. What contempt, hatred and fanaticism. He deplored that the Jews “were punished, but less than they deserved, since they still exist.” (in Concerning conspiracies against peoples, or proscriptions – 1766). As for his hatred against the church and Christianity…
— “It is with regret that I speak of the Jews: this nation is, in many respects, the most detestable that has ever defiled the earth.”
“Finally, you will find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have for a long time combined the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition, and the most invincible hatred for all the peoples who tolerate them and enrich them.”
Voltaire – Philosophical Dictionary – TOLERANCE. SECTION ONE
— The Jews “…this abominable people…” – Voltaire, Melanges, op. cit., p. 257
—”Their glory is to set fire to and destroy the small villages they can take over. They slaughter the old and the children; they only reserve the marriageable girls…No politeness, no science, no art perfected at any time, among this atrocious nation. …” – Voltaire, Essay on morals, op. cit., p. 209 (chapter VI)
— “”This is the inevitable consequence of their [Jewish] legislation”; “they were therefore, with reason, treated as a nation opposed in everything to the others”; “they were punished, but less than they deserved, since they still exist” – Voltaire, Essay on morals.
Voltaire also approved the Jewish massacres of the Crusades.
— Louis XI “believes he can revive the remains [of his life] by drinking the blood drawn from children… It was one of those excesses of the ignorant medicine of those times, a medicine introduced by the Jews” – Voltaire, Essay on morals
— “Voltaire’s insult against the Jews would reappear in certain works of the 19th century: “foreskinned and beggars”, infamous, lepers, lousy, stinking, a collection of brigands who fell under the sword of the Romans and “sold in the markets of Roman cities, each Jewish head being valued at the price of a pig, an animal less impure than that nation itself.” – Letters – 14/13/1773
— “We should not therefore expect to see Voltaire among the defenders of the Jews. He concedes that they should not be burned, 12 after having incited the reader to hate them, but he explains in 1722 to Cardinal Dubois), the Jew cannot have a homeland; sings:
“They are an obscure, imbecile, fickle people,
Insane lovers of superstitions,
Defeated by their neighbors, crawling into slavery,
And the eternal contempt of other nations” ”
Voltaire – The Pros and Cons (quoted by Fadiey Lovsky in Rationalist Anti-Semitism).
— “It is with good reason, however, in a fairly objective book, that the anti-Semite Labroue wrote: “Our state anti-Judaism is so little inspired by confessional proselytism that it finds its most decisive reference in the Voltairean tradition.” Hitler could claim it through Frederick II. This rationalist prince, on this point in agreement with Voltaire, promulgated in 1750 a Regulation for the Jews – “worthy of a cannibal” Mirabeau would say – and was, until the end of his life, much more ill-disposed towards the Jews than the Catholic sovereign Joseph II.” – Fadiey Lovsky in Rationalist Anti-Semitism