Oeuvres Compl�tes de Voltaire Vol 3 PDF Ì de

Oeuvres Compl�tes de Voltaire Vol 3 PDF Ì de 1694 Age of Enlightenment leader Francois Marie Arouet known as Voltaire was born in Paris Jesuit educated he began writing clever verses by the age of 12 He launched a lifelong successful playwriting career in 1718 interrupted by imprisonment in the Bastille Upon a second imprisonment in which Francois adopted the pen name Voltaire he was released after agreeing to move to London There he wrote Lettres philosophiues 1733 which galvanized French reform The book also satirized the religious teachings of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal including Pascal's famed wager on God Voltaire wrote The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing Voltaire's French publisher was sent to the Bastille and Voltaire had to escape from Paris again as judges sentenced the book to be torn and burned in the Palace Voltaire spent a calm 16 years with his deistic mistress Madame du Chatelet in Lorraine He met the 27 year old married mother when he was 39 In his memoirs he wrote I found in 1733 a young woman who thought as I did and decided to spend several years in the country cultivating her mind He dedicated Traite de metaphysiue to her In it the Deist candidly rejected immortality and uestioned belief in God It was not published until the 1780s Voltaire continued writing amusing but meaty philosophical plays and histories After the earthuake that leveled Lisbon in 1755 in which 15000 people perished and another 15000 were wounded Voltaire wrote Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne Poem on the Lisbon Disaster But how conceive a God supremely good Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves Yet scatters evil with as large a handVoltaire purchased a chateau in Geneva where among other works he wrote Candide 1759 To avoid Calvinist persecution Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney where the wealthy writer lived for 18 years until his death Voltaire began to openly challenge Christianity calling it the infamous thing He wrote Frederick the Great Christianity is the most ridiculous the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world Voltaire ended every letter to friends with Ecrasez l'infame crush the infamy — the Christian religion His pamphlet The Sermon on the Fifty 1762 went after transubstantiation miracles biblical contradictions the Jewish religion and the Christian God Voltaire wrote that a true god surely cannot have been born of a girl nor died on the gibbet nor be eaten in a piece of dough or inspired books filled with contradictions madness and horror He also published excerpts of Testament of the Abbe Meslier by an atheist priest in Holland which advanced the Enlightenment Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was published in 1764 without his name Although the first edition immediately sold out Geneva officials followed by Dutch and Parisian had the books burned It was published in 1769 as two large volumes Voltaire campaigned fiercely against civil atrocities in the name of religion writing pamphlets and commentaries about the barbaric execution of a Huguenot trader who was first broken at the wheel then burned at the stake in 1762 Voltaire's campaign for justice and restitution ended with a posthumous retrial in 1765 during which 40 Parisian judges declared the defendant innocent Voltaire urgently tried to save the life of Chevalier de la Barre a 19 year old sentenced to death for blasphemy for failing to remove his hat during a religious procession In 1766 Chevalier was beheaded after being tortured then his body was burned along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary Voltaire's statue at the Pantheon was melted down during Nazi occupation D 1778Voltaire 1694 1778 pseudónimo de François