Voltaire's Free Speech Treatise Is The French Rage
"Tolerance has never provoked a civil war; intolerance has covered the Earth in carnage," said Voltaire, the French philosopher who is now the source of ideal enlightenment for the protestors against the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Voltaire's "Treatise on Tolerance", originally published in 1763, is selling like hotcakes, according to france24.com. French bookbuyers are turning to that venerable philosopher. Publisher Gallimard is printing 10,000 copies of his 'Treatise on Tolerance', which was shown by those involved in the Parisian rallies of 11 January. Voltaire had announced that religious belief should be tolerated, even as everyone has the right to argue against it. He also condemned religious fanaticism.
Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, born in 1694. He had been the philosopher, novelist, playwright, activist and "virtuoso of equal-opportunity ridicule". Since the early 20th century, he is used a lot by protestors in libertarian wars. He did not actually say: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", but it was formulated by his English biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall. She described his "attitude" in her 1906 biography, The Friends of Voltaire, according to The Guardian.com.
Earlier, when he heard that one of his competitor's book had been banned, he had said: "What a fuss about an omelette!" The instruction "écrasez l'infâme!" ("Crush what is infamous"), which he used with his signature on many letters, became famously used.
Voltaire became famous for being infamous. He first published a satirical poem accusing the Duc d'Orléans of an incestuous relationship with his daughter, for which he got imprisoned in Bastille. But Voltaire there he wrote his first play, Oedipe, which was a farce on the Sophoclean tragedy under his nom de plume.
His most famous work remains Candide, about a hero who is taught about philosophical optimism. This was a rip-off on the philosophical theories of the great mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
