|
Voltaire
and Rousseau offered opposing viewpoints on the major
intellectual movement of their time: the Enlightenment.
Like most Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire repudiated tradition
and history, embracing reform based on individualism and intellectual
freedom. Rousseau, however, valued intellectual tradition and
emphasized society's importance in establishing property, the
rule of law, moral equality, and freedom. Though they openly
despised one another, their contest of ideas provided important
insights into the commitments of an era that produced the American
and French
Revolutions.
Francois-Marie
Arouet (1694-1778) whose pen name was Voltaire, wrote novels,
articles, poems, histories, and plays with a satirical wit that
lampooned political and social traditions; he inspired the rise
of liberal thought on the European continent. Voltaire's chief
enemy was superstition and fanaticism, including many religious
beliefs. He repudiated Descartes' rationalism (i.e. emphasis
on the powers of the mind alone) in favor of English empiricism
(i.e. emphasis on learning from experience). His most influential
philosophical work was Letters Concerning the English Nation,
published in 1733 in London (and later in France as Lettres
Philosophiques). Voltaire's more mature views were published
in his Philosophical Dictionary in 1764.
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778) was a passionate man who rejected the Enlightenment's
emphasis on skepticism and cool-headed reason. Amid widespread
rejection of social and political traditions, Rousseau sought
to identify the conditions of a free society. His greatest work,
Social
Contract, declared that rights, property,
moral obligation, and freedom itself can exist only in a
social context. His famous concept of the general will
refers to a general consensus of unifying values, loyalties,
commitments, customs, taboos, aspirations, language, and religious
beliefs, all of which denote a people as a "we" --
as this people rather than another.
|
