Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet, was a tireless writer, playwright and polemicist. He used irony as a weapon against religious fanaticism, censorship and the abuses of the Church and monarchy, even being jailed and exiled. His tales, like Candide, and his campaigns for victims of injustice made him the face of the French Enlightenment.
Core ideas
Religious tolerance is a condition for a civilized and peaceful society
Fanaticism and superstition are the greatest enemies of human reason
Naive optimism does not solve the world's evil; it is better to work and act
The tradition: Enlightenment thinker
The Enlightenment was the 18th-century movement that trusted reason, science and free debate to fight blind tradition. Voltaire was its most famous and combative popularizer.
