The Honorable Philosopher of the French Revolution.. Did Voltaire Spread Enlightenment or Darkness and Slavery?

In the 18th century, many French thinkers who inspired the French Revolution 1789-1799 emerged, including François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Denis Diderot. Their revolutionary ideas encouraged the French masses to "fight" for their rights, revealing incompetence The king and his government.

These and other philosophers provoked the people to challenge authority through their writings, and Voltaire attacked the Catholic Church and believed that "man's destiny is in his hands and not in heaven".

His ideas encouraged people to fight against the privileges and domination of the Church. He considered the French philosopher a symbol of the Enlightenment era. He became famous for his humorous philosophical satire and his defense of civil liberties, especially freedom of belief.

His works and ideas left their clear mark on important thinkers whose ideas belong to the American and French Revolutions.

Voltaire was a prolific writer, writing works in almost every literary form, from plays, poetry and novels to essays and historical and scientific works, as well as more than 20,000 letters.

But this "clear" picture is not the whole truth. According to a report by the American Foreign Policy magazine, the famous philosopher was a racist, anti-Semitic and inspired Nazi leader Hitler.

dark face

The American magazine report, written by the French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramadan, said that when the statue of Voltaire was removed from outside the French Academy in Paris last August, it was not only members of the far-right who expressed their anger. The prolific 18th century must remain untouched.

In return, angry people sprayed anti-racist graffiti on his photos due to his links to the slave trade.

Accusations by those responsible for vandalizing his portraits and statue asserted that Voltaire had personally invested in the French East India Company, founded in 1664 to exploit the New World, including the trade of African slaves sold as commodities for profit.

Voltaire had many enemies, and there were certainly many rumors such as forged documents linking him to the slave trade.

Nevertheless, he liked to define himself as a "merchant philosopher" and certainly did finance the French East India Company in the 1840s, when its armed frigates focused on commercial voyages to Africa.

In addition to owning stock in companies, it has been documented that Voltaire put his own money directly into the adventures of transporting slaves by ships such as Le Saint-Georges, which left Cadiz, Spain, in December 1751 for Guinea, according to the author.

controversy renewed

After more than 250 years, the controversy over Voltaire returned to Paris. The removal of his statue in the middle of last month sparked outrage, and many accused the mayor of the capital of bowing to the so-called culture of canceling the symbols of the “Black Lives Matter” movement aimed at removing symbols of the era of colonialism and slavery, but an official from the Council of The city of Paris confirmed that the statue was only temporarily removed for cleaning and restoration after it was vandalized.

His defenders say that the philosopher - who was 83 years old when he died in 1778 - was the son of his time and era, and they consider that France had the right to compete with other imperialist powers, especially Britain, and if this meant that (Voltaire) work in an economic system that includes The exploitation of slaves from the colonies, so be it, as they put it.

Supporters of the French philosopher consider that his ideas of humanity are what brought Europe to the era of “enlightenment” and raised science and reason above superstition, “the obscurantism of religion” and property, so that individual freedom became the cornerstone of France’s secular culture, and the names of philosophers such as Voltaire are now turning into models of rational and liberal thought.

The writer compares the French philosopher with Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had open racist attitudes, as Jefferson owned slaves that he inherited from his father, and Churchill once admitted saying, "I hate Indians .. they are people Brutal with a savage religion."

The writer says that the difference is that Jefferson and Churchill were not philosophers but politicians who engaged in the practical necessities and constraints of running the state, such as fighting major conflicts, and Churchill is considered a hero in World War II and is partly attributed to the destruction of Nazism, while Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, which paved the way for the Revolutionary War against British rule.

In contrast, Voltaire was a philosopher and thinker, and had an intellectual and cultural influence including his ideas that had a perverse effect on the minds of historical leaders, and his intense hatred of religious groups was easily enough to incite violence against them, and his biological racism confirmed that there are gradations of life forms and that blacks came Somewhere near the bottom, far from the "monkeys".

In 1769 Voltaire portrayed Africans in one of his books as "animals" with a "flat black nose with little or no intelligence".

Many anti-religious and anti-ethnic racist attitudes are attributed to Voltaire (networking sites)

Voltaire initially saw the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a typical religious fanatic, in a play called "Muhammad", which was said to have been a symbolism intended to overthrow another French character so that he could pass it on and avoid church censorship, however Voltaire retracted his visions Negativity about the Prophet of Islam, whom he considered in later works an enemy of superstition, and praised him for his religion, which has no incantations or mysteries, and forbids gambling and alcohol and commands prayer and charity, according to the book “Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today” by the French historian and academic John Tolan.

The change in Voltaire’s attitudes is due to his knowledge of the English orientalist George Sale’s translation of the meanings of the Qur’an published in 1734, and the latter wrote in its preface that the Prophet of Islam was a creative reformer and anti-clerical, keen to abolish superstitious practices such as the worship of saints and sacred relics, and abolished the power of corrupt and greedy clergy.

Nazism and anti-Semitism

Voltaire was also an anti-Semite, writing various texts that placed the Jews outside the great civilizations of Greece and ancient Rome that he admired.

For example, Voltaire wrote of the Jews in 1771, "They are all born with a fanaticism in their hearts, just as the British and Germans were born with blond hair."

Voltaire was a model for Enlightenment philosophers, who provided disturbing justifications for hatred of ethnic and religious groups, and this systematic racism created a pseudo-scientific hierarchy of life.

She asserted that the thinkers were inextricably intertwined with the imperialists who wanted to conquer and oppress the supposedly racially inferior races.

The influence of this "evil" Enlightenment was not marginal. His books were widely read throughout Europe, including by Voltaire's "great" friend Frederick II of Prussia. Voltaire traveled from Paris to join his royal court in Potsdam in 1750, At the time, Frederick II considered Voltaire as his mentor.

The writer says that it is not difficult to draw the historical line between Voltaire's anti-Semitism and a Germany with a fanatical nationalism bent on killing the enemies it considers subhuman.

Adolf Hitler was certainly influenced by discussions between Frederick "the Great" and Voltaire as he formulated his plans for the Third Reich.

Crucially, there are records of Hitler's private conversations in which he confirmed the study of correspondence and meetings between Voltaire and his inspiring model Frederick II, whose portrait hung in Berlin on the spot where the Nazi leader died in April 1945.

The writer considers that the problem is not simply that Voltaire failed to integrate oppressed groups, such as blacks and Jews, into so-called progressive thinking, but that his defense of biological racism and white supremacy still provided inspiration for all kinds of extremists.

These include Nazi sympathizers traditionally associated with the far-right National Assembly (formerly the National Front) as well as terrorists who target synagogues and Muslim mosques.

French President Emmanuel Macron has insisted that statues of people associated with deeply reprehensible ideologies are part of France's heritage and should not be removed. This view is "regressive and completely ignores a pertinent question. Why do Enlightenment racists remain sacred?... It is time for the French to stop The veneration of racist philosophers, and the transition to a new age of rationality.