The Philosophical Dictionary is a humorous encyclopedia written by Voltaire concerning topics such as customs, religion, humanity’s place in the universe, and the world. Published in 1764, The Philosophical Dictionary is a worthwhile book to read, for it is sure to be enjoyed by many, seeing Voltaire’s masterful diction.
To begin, The Philosophical Dictionary, staying true to the nature of dictionaries, includes topics organized by alphabetical order, some of them being “Adultery,” “Ancients and Moderns,” “Animals,” “Atheism,” “Books,” “Character,” “Charlatan,” “Democracy,” “Envy,” “Friendship,” “Ignorance,” “Liberty,” “Limits of the Human Mind,” “Philosopher,” “Theist,” “Tolerance, “Truth,” “Tyranny,” “Virtue,” and “Why?”. As stated before, Voltaire discusses many things. Of everything he discusses, one of the main ones is his vehement criticism of man-made religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Voltaire as a famed enlightenment thinker is known for despising monotheistic religions: his less desirable side includes anti-semitic traits, as he is so unhappy regarding what Christianity has done to the world that he blames the Jews for its existence, seeing that they practiced the world’s first monotheistic religion. Voltaire was a deist, spurning man-made gods and constructs due to recognizing that the deities created by humans are deeply flawed, as they are frequently wrathful, lustful, envious, violent, and cruel because their creators are so. Voltaire was born on November 21, 1694 and died on May 30, 1778 in Paris at the age of fifty-three. During his life, he saw the rise of science, multiple social revolutions, and a decrease in the power of religious institutions. While extremely brilliant, Voltaire had his personal biases. For instance, he disliked atheism due to its implication that the world is unfair: Voltaire found the notion that evil individuals will never be held accountable for their crimes and that good people could live miserable lives utterly infuriating, for he desired justice. Thus, to demonstrate the foolishness of man-made religions and arrogance and to reconcile himself with the fact that this is not the best of all possible worlds, Voltaire adopted deism, believing in a divine entity that cannot possibly be understood by humans due to our limited intelligence and perception. However, he details that he believes the entity, despite being beyond our understanding, does care for all the sentient beings on Earth. This book includes many of the tenets of his deism, as he explicitly writes that one of the best ways to encourage people to practice justice and to be good to each other is to tell them that there is a divine entity that rewards good and punishes evil. He details in no uncertain words that deism is useful due to helping people make sense of everything, including life’s tribulations and turbulence. He explains that religious wars, full of bloodshed and savagery, occur when people believe in inhumane doctrines preached by greedy, unfeeling, and intemperate individuals who exploit the people’s faith for the sake of profit. For instance, during the Crusades Christians battled Muslim forces due to their fanatical belief that they alone knew the ultimate truth concerning existence and the existence of an afterlife. Furthermore, the god Christians believed in was worse than any human dictator, as it is made clear in the Bible that He is willing to punish a person in Hell for all eternity for committing even one misdeed (ex. stealing a lollipop). Unfortunately, Voltaire’s numerous statements on religion include some unsavory statements, like his referring to the Jews in derogatory terms. To reiterate, Voltaire was quite prejudiced, but I believe this can be excused when one examines the context: the period he lived in was full of religious dogmatism and persecution, traditional wars, and revolutions in which snobbish aristocracy tried to hold on to their power while denying the populace human rights. Furthermore, Voltaire appeared to be a genuinely great human being in his life: not only was he academically and creatively gifted, but he was also a vegetarian who believed in the humane treatment of animals. Furthermore, he was a champion of tolerance and went so far as to get involved in the Calas Case of 1762, in which a Protestant merchant named Jean Calas was believed by a fanatical community of Catholics in France to be guilty of murdering his son. To specify, their prejudice led them to see the suicide of Calas’s son (he hung himself) to be a murder, though Calas, even when being tortured and executed, stated that his son’s demise was self-inflicted (he claimed that he made the suicide look like a murder due to suicide being perceived as a mortal sin back then). Calas was brutally interrogated and was executed by being broken on the wheel (his limbs were shattered and he was tortured to death for the enjoyment of the gleeful community). Voltaire got himself involved in the Calas case by trying to get him declared innocent after his death, as he stated that Calas’s son Marc-Antoine probably killed himself due to his gambling debts that left him unable to pay for the rest of his education: surprisingly, his attempts at getting Calas a posthumous reprieve was successful, as King Louis XV personally recognized the trial as bogus, fired the magistrate presiding over the case, and gave Calas’s family 36,000 Livres as compensation. Thus, Voltaire was an honorable human being whose potentially extreme anger regarding certain issues can be easily understood given the times he lived in, as he witnessed barbarisms committed in the name of noble causes (seen also in his banishment from Paris: he was exiled due to his publishing Letters Concerning the English Nation that praised Britain over France due to its greater practice of human rights and religious tolerance).
In this book, Voltaire writes a fantastic short story regarding historical figures and their legacies: he details a fictional encounter between himself and heroes who lived in the past, including Numa Pompilius, Pythagoras, Socrates, Zarathustra, and even Jesus. In his conversations with them, the reader comes to understand his opinion regarding spirituality: he despises superstition due to it encouraging fanaticism and brutality but appreciates and supports the belief of a just deity to increase human happiness and facilitate social cohesion. That is, when he talks to Numa Pompilius, one of the earliest kings of Rome who claimed to have a supernatural figure, a nymph, as a partner to pacify the Roman people, Numa informs him that he came up with the myth to keep Rome from anarchy. Socrates informs Voltaire that the individual who brought the charges of corrupting the youth against him was a corrupt individual who wanted him dead due to being a dishonorable human being. Socrates tells Voltaire that he accepted his fate calmly, as he had already lived a long time (seventy years). Furthermore, he humorously points out that his life was cut short by only a few days, seeing how old he was already. Jesus tells Voltaire that in his life he didn't encourage the traditions practiced by institutions like the Catholic Church (ex. indulgences and special holidays), as he was a very humble and simple human who ate whatever he was given as he traveled the land and preached the belief in a good deity. Jesus tells Voltaire that those who slaughter others in his name do not follow his teachings whatsoever, as he preached peace while they practice wanton violence. He says that many of his teachings have been misinterpreted when being written in the Bible and translated, considering the fallibility of human beings. For instance, when he said that he came to bring peace and not a sword, the writers of the Bible wrote it the opposite way instead. Another instance in which Voltaire’s personal views are seen can be noted in his quotation that Muhammad was a fraud, for his claims regarding the archangel Gabriel appearing to him are spurious. However, he credits Islam with being more tolerant than Christianity, as they would usually leave people of other faiths alone so long as they didn't incite any trouble and paid the jizya. Voltaire writes repeatedly in his book that the ideal purpose and goal of religion is to help humans live with each other and to have self-respect. He accurately points out that he knows of no religion (theoretically, at least) that encourages people to steal from others, to mistreat and neglect their parents, and to harm innocent people. After all, although many religions exist (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shintoism), their ultimate goals are identical, though their methods are lacking. Voltaire writes that ideal spirituality is one with no traditions, ceremonies, or foolish superstitions. Instead, people show their appreciation to their creator by acting kindly. Voltaire defends the notion of the church being separate from the state, as the state punishes actions that are indeed harmful and wicked with things like execution and jail while spiritual authorities can and should only resort to telling people that what they did was morally wrong when they commit actions that are perceived to be unjust by some (ex. not going on a pilgrimage). Voltaire maintains that religion and secular laws must remain in their domains to prevent tyranny. A major misfortune concerning humanity is the tendency to refrain from realizing that other humans belong to the same species, as differing physical characteristics and traditions may be quite shocking to those unacquainted with them. Voltaire specifically mentions the horror Christian missionaries were filled with when they came across portrayals of Hindu deities, as their many arms and unique physical attributes made the outsiders believe they were devils. Regarding punishment, he accurately suggests that people should be punished in a way that will render them productive: “A hanged man is good for nothing, and a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.” Voltaire reveals astrology as being built on sand, for it relies heavily on the movement of planets, which has no correlation with human health and is subject to change over time. Furthermore, even when the predictions of astrologers are inaccurate, they can defend themselves by interpreting their forecasts in a different way, which is quite simple, as there are a substantial number of variables to keep in mind regarding “predicting” the future. As Voltaire detailed, “It would have been of no avail against the astrologers to say: My son was born at a fortune time, and nevertheless died in his cradle; the astrologer would have answered: It often happens that trees planted in the proper season perish; I answered to you for the stars, but I did not answer for the flaw of conformation you communicated to your child. Astrology operates only when no cause opposes itself to the good the stars can do.” In another instance, there is the following example: “Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish … the astrologer could … have defended himself by pointing out that the peasant made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the prince when he became king.”
As demonstrated in the previous example, The Philosophical Dictionary is full of witty, hilarious maxims. On the contrary, some of them can be quite serious, especially ones dealing with human fallibility and human nature. For instance, Voltaire details that while people may feel proud of overcoming some of their faults, upon further examination many people are intemperate regarding their actions and may even act like addicts, as they have conquered some passions only to enlarge a certain one, one in which they have grown accustomed to: “one of your passions has devoured the others … Do not nearly all of us resemble that old general of ninety who, having met some young officers who were debauching themselves with some girls, says to them angrily: ‘Gentlemen, is that the example I give you?’” Voltaire writes of the inconsistency of human behavior, as even tyrants like Nero and Alexander VI are capable of kindness while relatively just individuals can at times make terrible mistakes. I greatly appreciate Voltaire’s description of the beauty of plays, as he excellently states that their majesty lies in the fact that the observers, while watching them, become open-minded and are temporarily freed of their various biases and prejudices, as they are examining the play from the perspective of a different person. Voltaire writes, “One asks why the same man who has watched the most atrocious events dry-eyed, who even has committed cold-blooded crimes, will weep at the theatre at the representation of these events and crimes? It is that he does not see them with the same eyes, he sees them with the eyes of the author and the actor. He is no longer the same man; he was a barbarian … it is tranquil, it is empty; nature returns to it; he sheds virtuous tears. This is the true merit, the great good of the theatres; there is achieved what can never be achieved by the frigid declamations of an orator paid to bore the whole of an audience for an hour. David the capitoul, who, without emotion, caused and saw the death of innocent Calas on the wheel, would have shed tears at the sight of his own crime in a well-written and well-spoken tragedy … ‘Tyrants no more their savage nature kept; And foes to virtue wondered how they wept.’” Voltaire’s commentary on books is keen, for he states that there is so much knowledge to analyze and accumulate but so little time to do so, as a human’s life is short: thus, it becomes all the more important to read the right texts. Voltaire was ahead of his time in many ways, a fact that is seen in his statement that people should not be discouraged by the secular and religious authorities from making personal decisions that don’t harm others. For instance, if a married couple desires to have a divorce while having no children, priests and the clergy should not tell them that what they are doing is sinful and that they should stay together, as there is no evidence. He also says that people in his time are very inconsistent with their morality, as they are sheepish around sexual concepts like nudity but speak openly of much more disturbing ones like violence and exploitation. Therefore, Voltaire mandates that “It is better without doubt to pray God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with human blood.” Voltaire points out the erroneous mindset some people have: a common intellectual fallacy is that of the good old days, an idealized past. While the past may have certain advantages over the present, it usually has numerous more weaknesses. For instance, while in 2020 many may long for a past (in this case, the 1950s and 1960s) that is characterized by stability and loyalty concerning one’s employment, they forget the existence and prevalence of things like racism, segregation, virtually nonexistent environmental safety policies, and lower living standards. Voltaire describes it in the following words: “The Chinese … constructed that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the earth with their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety thousand square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wishes to undertake to-day these useless works, one could easily succeed by a lavish expenditure of money. The great wall of China is a monument to fear; the pyramids are monuments to vanity and superstition. Both wear witness to a great patience in the peoples, but to no superior genius. Neither the Chinese nor the Egyptians would have been able to make even a statue such as those which our sculptors form to-day.” Voltaire further describes that the belief that the past is better than the present can be seen in the notion that “the silver age succeeded the golden age.” Voltaire demonstrates that this is false, for science has advanced greatly in the last few centuries thanks to minds like Newton and Kepler. He concludes that “There are therefore spheres in which the moderns are far superior to the ancients, and others, very few in number, in which we are their inferiors.” This theme is relevant even today: as Steven Pinker put in his Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of Our Nature, the amount of violence Homo sapiens has committed has steadily decreased over the last few centuries. This is due to a variety of factors, the most prominent being increasing efficiency and agricultural yields thanks to machinery and the scientific method, the rise of liberal democracies, and of technology that helps spread information, the most prominent example being the internet.
One of the main themes of The Philosophical Dictionary is the tremendous importance of tolerance, as much trouble occurs when people act on their foolishness, seeing how every person makes many mistakes throughout their lifetimes. Voltaire repeatedly mentions that the human mind has limits, as there is virtually an infinite amount of knowledge outside the reach of humanity, seeing all that is left to discover. Of course, this statement of Voltaire is all the more relevant today, as many people recognize the extent of their ignorance: space, after all, is for humans infinitely large, and almost all the data people know are ones limited to a single planet. Voltaire in the section “Limits of the Human Mind” asks many questions concerning things he would like to know but is ignorant about, ending with the following clauses: “Many teachers have said—‘What do I not know?’ Montaigne used to say—‘What do I know?’ Ruthlessly trenchant fellow, wordy pedagogue, meddlesome theorist, you seek the limits of your mind. They are at the end of your nose.” Voltaire details that humans, like most life forms on Earth, are fragile, as their lives can be ended in an instant while it takes them much longer to mature and develop. He later compares humans to reeds, seeing their susceptibility to larger forces beyond their understanding and the ephemerality of reality, making it all the more important to be kind, charitable, and tolerant, not arrogant, persecuting, and angry: “Shall a reed laid low in the mud by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the opposite direction: ‘Crawl as I crawl, wretch, or I shall petition that you be torn up by the roots and burned?’” Hearkening to the mood of the previous sentence, Voltaire frequently writes of the incompatibility between a supposedly benevolent deity and a world with a huge number of sentient beings that live miserable lives. He concludes that the entity that formed the world is indeed well-meaning, and did its best regarding the creation of the reality sentient beings find themselves in, as Voltaire supposes that the entity, though almost unimaginably powerful, is still limited in certain regards: it made the best reality it was capable of generating, thereby explaining the problem of evil. Voltaire writes in another area of his book that people should refrain from cursing the entity for allowing an imperfect world to exist, as he supposed that it created a massive number of realities, many of which are perfect and happy, and only a few (including our own) that include wretchedness and unfairness. However, Voltaire has reservations regarding this concept, as he writes in the last category in his dictionary, “Why?”, of the meaningless struggle and suffering of the world, both human-made and natural: “Why does one hardly ever do the tenth part of the good one might do? … Why is the great number of hard-working, innocent men who till the land every day of the year that you may eat all its fruits, scorned, vilified, oppressed, robbed; and why is it that the useless and often very wicked man who lives only by their work, and who is rich only through their poverty, is on the contrary respected, courted, considered? Why is that, the fruits of the earth being so necessary for the conservation of men and animals, one yet sees so many years and so many countries where there is entire lack of these fruits? Why is the half of Africa and America covered with poisons? … Why does a little whitish, evil-smelling secretion form a being which has hard bones, desires and thoughts? And why do these beings always persecute each other? Why does so much evil exist, seeing that everything is formed by a God whom all theists are agreed in naming ‘good?’ Why, since we complain ceaselessly of our ills, do we spend all our time in increasing them? Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not to be is a great ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not to be before we were born? … Why do we exist? Why is there anything?” Though Voltaire spends a large portion of the text detailing the unfortunate elements of the world, he does offer much good life advice, such as the importance of friendship and universal compassion. Voltaire characterizes friendship as the marriage of the souls of those involved. He details, “It is a tacit contract between two sensitive and virtuous persons. I say ‘sensitive,’ because a monk, a recluse can not be wicked and live without knowing what friendship is. I say ‘virtuous,’ because the wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians get partisans; the generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers; virtuous men alone have friends.”
When it comes to universal compassion, Voltaire’s stance can be aptly summarized: “tolerance … is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly”. This attitude of Voltaire’s extends not only to human beings, but animals as well. He states that people’s treatment of other life forms and their regarding them as stupid machines is utterly moronic, as other animals feel many of the same pains and pleasures that people do, not-mentioning how they are capable of acting intelligently, as can be noted in the flight of birds and the strategy of dogs when it comes to pleasing their owners. Voltaire praises the Hindus for their attitude towards the slaughter of animals: “The Indian books announce only peace and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals: the Hebrew books speak only of killing, of the massacre of men and beasts; everything is slaughtered in the name of the Lord; it is quite another order of things.” Voltaire writes in “Virtue” that true virtue consists of aiding others, not holding wealth or some special position. He mentions Brutus the Younger, a man who was viewed as honorable by many: “It is said of Marcus Brutus that, before killing himself, he uttered these words: ‘O virtue! I thought you were something; but you are only an empty phantom!’ You were right, Brutus, if you considered virtue as being head of a faction, and assassin of your benefactor; but if you had considered virtue as consisting only of doing good to those dependent on you, you would not have called it a phantom, and you would not have killed yourself in despair … ‘Strength, prudence, temperance and justice.’” Voltaire then clarifies his sentences, maintaining that while the previously mentioned traits are very respectable (along with charity), having faith and hope is not to be considered traits of virtue, as they don’t actively benefit one’s lot or others. That is, even if one has faith in something, that something may not be true, thereby rendering it quite meaningless. As for hope, it is the opposite of fear, and since fear is not to be emulated, neither is hope, for they are both types of anxieties people hold about the future. When people do good, it should be for the sake of doing so, not for external reward. Voltaire’s The Philosophical Dictionary is a great book to read, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in Voltaire, humorous writing, dictionaries, criticism and analysis, and classics.
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