"Who are you?

Where do you come from?

What you are doing?

What will become of you one day?” Nobody will be able to ignore these questions.

Voltaire places them at the beginning of a small philosophical investigation in order to win over the reader who wants to connect the thought of his origins with the whole course of life and its finitude.

The author sees himself as "a slave to everything" that surrounds him, and "surrounded by this immensity" he begins to search for himself.

However, what knowledge can be gained here seems uncertain.

Voltaire gave his work, published anonymously in Geneva in 1766, which is now available in a new German translation, the title "The ignorant philosopher".

This may indicate the doubts that arise when trying to answer those elementary questions

Right at the beginning, Voltaire shows what philosophy cannot achieve, using the example of a prominent opponent: René Descartes.

The opposition between body and mind, as represented by Descartes in his theory of two substances, is untenable for Voltaire, if only because of the physical prerequisites, which for him are "of such enormous ridiculousness" that "I have to distrust everything he tells me the soul says after he has taught me so wrong about the bodies".

Descartes' search for first principles led to nothing for Voltaire.

The ego that thinks about itself remains obscure for him, which leads to a shock that “we are constantly looking for each other, but never find each other.

None of our senses can be explained.” If man is denied insight into the essence of things (“mystery of nature”), he must – here Voltaire follows Newton and Locke – conversely proceed from the facts in order to understand the order of the world and a recognizing a small number of properties of matter, insofar as these can be identified objectively.

The "learned ignorance"

At the same time, the abandonment of the Cartesian paradigm leads, as can also be observed in the case of contemporaries such as the Göttingen philosopher Samuel Christian Hollmann (1696 to 1787), to the idea of ​​a “scholarly ignorance”, in which we can clearly grasp and also give reasons for why something remains epistemically uncertain.

With the turn to empiricism, Voltaire felt compelled to draw a line against the materialism and atheism of the radical Enlightenment.

Contemplating the mechanical laws that ruled the universe, he is seized not by fear of the indifference and futility of human life, but by “admiration and awe” of the Creator's work.

Voltaire is a theist without submitting to any particular religion: “Of all the systems that men have devised about divinity, which one should I adopt?

None – except that I pray to him.”

Voltaire rejects Spinoza's concept of God because he does not see any purposeful plan in creation.

But that doesn't mean that our world should be considered perfect, on the contrary.

Voltaire comments ironically, even mockingly, that God could only have created the best of all possible worlds, as Leibniz – the name does not come up – claims in his “Theodicy” by referring to the cruelty, indifference and stupidity of his fellow human beings.

These passages are reminiscent of his "Candide ou l'Optimisme" (1759), of which twenty editions were printed in the year of publication alone.

The theodicy question was mentioned, but not yet solved.

Voltaire answers them with the general idea of ​​right and wrong, which the "highest intelligence" gave us: the "belief in justice" is "of absolute necessity" for the human race.

Only this morality, understood as universal, can form a "counterbalance" to our passions, which are considered fatal, and limit the evil in the world;

as such it is highly consensual and, for Voltaire, taught by all philosophers in all cultures.

But with what success?

The problem of theodicy leaves behind an uncertainty which in turn can only be reacted to with skepticism, because people just align their behavior "according to custom and habit and not to metaphysics".

Voltaire: "The Ignorant Philosopher".

Translated from the French by Ulrich Bossier.

Afterword by Tobias Roth.

Reclam Verlag, Ditzingen 2022. 108 p., br., 6 euros.