François-Marie Arouet
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François-Marie Arouet
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his '' nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher ('' philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Roman Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance and religious dogma, as well as the French in ...
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Epistle
An epistle (; ) is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as part of the scribal-school writing curriculum. The letters in the New Testament from Apostles to Christians are usually referred to as epistles. Those traditionally attributed to Paul are known as Pauline epistles and the others as catholic (i.e., "general") epistles. Ancient Egyptian epistles The ancient Egyptians wrote epistles, most often for pedagogical reasons. Egyptologist Edward Wente (1990) speculates that the Fifth-dynasty Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi—in his many letters sent to his viziers—was a pioneer in the epistolary genre. Its existence is firmly attested during the Sixth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, and is prominently featured in the educational guide ''The Book of Kemit'' written during the Eleventh Dynasty. A standardized formulae for epistolary compositions exi ...
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Deism
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin term '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God—often, but not necessarily, an impersonal and incomprehensible God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it, solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology—that is, God's existence is revealed through nature. Since the 17th century and during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in 18th-century England, France, and North America, various Western philosophers and theologians formulated a critical reject ...
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Philosophes
The were the intellectuals of the 18th-century European Enlightenment.Kishlansky, Mark, ''et al.'' ''A Brief History of Western Civilization: The Unfinished Legacy, volume II: Since 1555.'' (5th ed. 2007). Few were primarily philosophers; rather, ''philosophes'' were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics, and social issues. They had a critical eye and looked for weaknesses and failures that needed improvement. They promoted a "Republic of Letters" that crossed national boundaries and allowed intellectuals to freely exchange books and ideas. Most ''philosophes'' were men, but some were women. They strongly endorsed progress and tolerance, as they distrusted organized religion (most were deists) and feudal institutions. Many contributed to Diderot's ''Encyclopédie''. They faded away after the French Revolution reached a violent stage in 1793. Characterization ''Philosophe ...
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Lumières
The Lumières (literally in English: ''The Lights'') was a cultural, philosophical, literary and intellectual movement beginning in the second half of the 17th century, originating in France, then western Europe and spreading throughout the rest of Europe. It included philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, John Locke, Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton. This movement is influenced by the Scientific Revolution in southern Europe arising directly from the Italian Renaissance with people like Galileo Galilei. Over time it came to mean the , in English the Age of Enlightenment. Members of the movement saw themselves as a progressive élite, and battled against religious and political persecution, fighting against what they saw as the irrationality, arbitrariness, obscurantism and superstition of the previous centuries. They redefined the study of knowledge to fit the ethics and aesthetics of their time. Their works h ...
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French Philosophy
French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism. Medieval period Peter Abelard Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was a scholastic philosopher, theologian and logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary. The '' Chambers Biographical Dictionary'' describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century".'' Chambers Biographical Dictionary'', 2011, , page 3 The general importance of Abelard lies in his having fixed more decisively than anyone before him the scholastic manner of philosophizing, with the object of giving a formally rational expression to received ecclesiastical doctrine. However his ...
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Western Philosophy
Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" , "to love" and σοφία ''Sophia (wisdom), sophía'', "wisdom". History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e., dogma superseded reason, ...
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Age Of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empiricism, the Enlightenment was concerned with a wide range of social and Politics, political ideals such as natural law, liberty, and progress, toleration and fraternity (philosophy), fraternity, constitutional government, and the formal separation of church and state. The Enlightenment was preceded by and overlapped the Scientific Revolution, which included the work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton, among others, as well as the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and John Locke. The dating of the period of the beginning of the Enlightenment can be attributed to the publication of René Descartes' ''Discourse on the Method'' in 1 ...
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Marie Louise Mignot
Marie Louise Mignot (February 12, 1712 – August 10, 1790) was a French literary figure. She was the daughter of Voltaire's sister, Catherine Arouet (1686–1726) and her husband Pierre-François Mignot (d. 1737). After the death of her widowed father in 1737, Voltaire provided her with a dowry and she married army supply officer Nicolas-Charles Denis, giving rise to her married name of Madame Denis. Pearson, Roger, 2005. ''Voltaire Almighty: a life in pursuit of freedom''. Bloomsbury. . p. 186 After her husband's premature death in 1744, she was taken in by her uncle Voltaire and became his housekeeper, hostess and companion. She also adopted his protégée Reine Philiberte de Varicourt when the latter's marriage to the Charles, marquis de Villette foundered on his homosexuality. She did not follow Voltaire to the court of Frederick II of Prussia but moved with him to Les Délices in Geneva and then to Ferney, where they lived as a couple (though Voltaire was in love w ...
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Émilie Du Châtelet
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (; 17 December 1706 – 10 September 1749) was a French mathematician and physicist. Her most recognized achievement is her philosophical magnum opus, ''Institutions de Physique'' (Paris, 1740, first edition; ''Foundations of Physics''). She then revised the text substantially for a second edition with the slightly modified title ''Institutions physiques'' (Paris, 1742). It circulated widely, generated heated debates, and was translated into German and Italian in 1743. The ''Institutions'' covers a wide range of topics, including the principles of knowledge, the existence of God, hypotheses, space, time, matter and the forces of nature. Several chapters treat Newton's theory of universal gravity and associated phenomena. Later in life, she translated into French, and wrote an extensive commentary on, Isaac Newton's ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica''. The text, published posthumously in 1756, is still c ...
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The Age Of Louis XIV
''The Age of Louis XIV'' (''Le Siècle de Louis XIV'', also translated ''The Century of Louis XIV'') is a historical work by the French historian, philosopher, and writer Voltaire, first published in 1751. Through it, the French 17th century became identified with Louis XIV of France, who reigned from 1643 to 1715. Background A letter in May 1732 is the first recorded mention of Voltaire's intent to write a history of the reign of Louis XIV. He stopped and resumed the project multiple times, expressing the fear that he might not live long enough to complete it. For preparation, he read two hundred volumes of material, plus many unpublished memoirs, as well as historical documents he found in the archives of the Louvre. Content In common with other Enlightenment philosophers, Voltaire saw the age of Alexander the Great and Pericles, the age of Caesar and Augustus, and the Italian Renaissance as "great ages" or "ages of light". He presented the age of Louis XIV as the fourth a ...
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The Maid Of Orleans (poem)
''The Maid of Orleans'' ( French: ''La Pucelle d'Orléans'') is a satirical poem by Voltaire about Joan of Arc, circulated in private readings and in manuscript beginning the 1730's. In response to pirated prints appearing in the 1750's, Voltaire published an authorized edition (Geneva 1762) shorn of most bawdy and anticlerical passages. One English translation is that by W. H. Ireland (1824). Scandal Voltaire was undoubtedly one of the most controversial writers and philosophers of the Enlightenment Age, and ''The Maid of Orleans'' was also certainly one of his more contentious works. An epic and scandalous satire concerning the life of the not-yet-canonised Joan of Arc ("the Maid of Orleans"), the poem was outlawed, burned and banned throughout a great portion of Europe during the 18th and the 19th centuries.Heimann, p.13 Containing mockery and satirical commentary on the life and antics of its subject, the poem itself has variously been described as "bawdy" and "licentio ...
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