Voltaire

Some people might find this tough going. The main character was supposed to study law, but preferred to write poems, a few of which resulted in him being imprisoned in the Bastille for eleven months beginning in May 1717. (p. 4). More than most philosophers, Voltaire tended to pick targets which are similar to the points which are most dear to the hearts of modern comics. Serious thinkers will also find much to admire in this book. In Chapter 4, Voltaire's Conception of History, A. J. Ayer quotes "Voltaire's summary of Charles's career, if only as a good example of his style of writing history:" . . . His strength of will, developed into obstinacy, caused his misfortunes in the Ukraine and kept him for five years in Turkey: his generosity, degenerating into extravagance, ruined Sweden ; his courage, swollen into rashness, caused his death : his justice developed sometimes into cruelty ; and in the last years of his life the maintenance of his authority came near to being tyrannical. . . . He was the first man to be ambitious for conquest, without desiring to increase his possessions ; he wanted to win empires in order to give them away. . . . His life should teach kings how far a peaceful and happy government is superior to such an abundance of glory." (pp. 87-88).Voltaire's opinions tended to be stronger than the views that modern professors strive to achieve to arrive at balance in their writing. While Voltaire criticized Charles XII in great depth, Ayer emphasizes Voltaire's enthusiasm for Peter the Great in his HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE UNDER PETER THE GREAT (Vol. 1, 1759, and Vol. 2, 1763). Ayer's knowledge of history includes the section `Six English Historians' in Lytton Strachey's book PORTRAITS IN MINIATURE, in which a chapter on Hume, who lived during the lifetime of Voltaire, states that Voltaire "was indeed a master of narrative, but was usually too much occupied with discrediting Christianity to be a satisfactory historian." (p. 107). The index includes entries for both Hume and Strachey for that page and others, even for Strachey "as source, 10, 11, 58, 171." (p. 181).The book dares to have a conclusion along the same line as its subject:"When we look farther afield and observe such things as the recrudescence of fundamentalism in the United States, the horrors of religious fanaticism in the Middle East, the appalling danger which the stubbornness of political intolerance presents to the whole world, we must surely conclude that we can still profit by the example of the lucidity, the acumen, the intellectual honesty and the moral courage of Voltaire." (p. 174).