Voltaire
Crush intolerance with reason and irony.
Philosophical Letters (Letters on England) essential
What he saw in England: religious freedom, Locke, Newton. The book was condemned and burned in Paris. The 25th letter attacks Pascal's Pensées. Our text is his last revised version, not the 1734 one.
Treatise on Metaphysics
Written for himself and Mme du Châtelet, published after his death (1784). He still defends free will there. Not yet in our corpus.
Poem on the Lisbon Disaster essential
Written after the earthquake of 1 November 1755. It attacks the axiom "all is well". Rousseau answered with a long letter.
Candide, or Optimism essential
Published without his name, as "translated from the German of Doctor Ralph". A tale: the sentences are spoken by characters (Pangloss, Martin…), not directly by Voltaire.
Treatise on Toleration essential
Written to clear Jean Calas, a Toulouse Protestant broken on the wheel in 1762. Calas was cleared in 1765.
Philosophical Dictionary essential
A pocket fighting book, burned in Geneva and Paris, which Voltaire disowned in public. Note: modern editions mix in later texts (Questions on the Encyclopedia, 1770-1772) and a few posthumous pieces.
The Ignorant Philosopher essential
What a person can know by himself: experience, a God who is a maker, necessity, a universal morality.
Epistle to the Author of the Book of the Three Impostors
A poem against a clandestine atheist book. Contains the line "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him".