Voltaire

Voltaire (1694–1778), born François-Marie Arouet, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher and satirist who made wit a method of argument. Candide tests optimism against war, disaster, exploitation and grief, using an adventure tale to expose cruelty hidden inside reassuring abstractions. Letters on England compares institutions, religion and intellectual life across the Channel, turning observation into criticism of French assumptions. A Philosophical Dictionary arranges short, polemical entries around tolerance, belief, power and reason rather than building one doctrine. Micromegas changes the scale: extraterrestrial travellers make human vanity look comically small. Across these forms, authority must answer to evidence, irony and humane judgment. Candide gives the sharpest fictional encounter; A Philosophical Dictionary reveals the argumentative workshop behind it.