Sarcasmos y agudezas

by Voltaire

Recopilación de máximas y aforismos que nos permite comprender a un autor genial, que dedicó su vida a combatir la intolerancia, las rutinas dogmáticas y la autoridad mal entendida y peor ejercida.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1995

About the author

Complete works (1880) : https://archive.org/details/oeuvresco...

In 1694, Age of Enlightenment leader Francois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born in Paris. Jesuit-educated, he began writing clever verses by the age of 12. He launched a lifelong, successful playwriting career in 1718, interrupted by imprisonment in the Bastille. Upon a second imprisonment, in which Francois adopted the pen name Voltaire, he was released after agreeing to move to London. There he wrote Lettres philosophiques (1733), which galvanized French reform. The book also satirized the religious teachings of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, including Pascal's famed "wager" on God. Voltaire wrote: "The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire's French publisher was sent to the Bastille and Voltaire had to escape from Paris again, as judges sentenced the book to be "torn and burned in the Palace." Voltaire spent a calm 16 years with his deistic mistress, Madame du Chatelet, in Lorraine. He met the 27 year old married mother when he was 39. In his memoirs, he wrote: "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did, and decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind." He dedicated Traite de metaphysique to her. In it the Deist candidly rejected immortality and questioned belief in God. It was not published until the 1780s. Voltaire continued writing amusing but meaty philosophical plays and histories. After the earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755, in which 15,000 people perished and another 15,000 were wounded, Voltaire wrote Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster): "But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?"

Voltaire purchased a chateau in Geneva, where, among other works, he wrote Candide (1759). To avoid Calvinist persecution, Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney, where the wealthy writer lived for 18 years until his death. Voltaire began to openly challenge Christianity, calling it "the infamous thing." He wrote Frederick the Great: "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." Voltaire ended every letter to friends with "Ecrasez l'infame" (crush the infamy — the Christian religion). His pamphlet, The Sermon on the Fifty (1762) went after transubstantiation, miracles, biblical contradictions, the Jewish religion, and the Christian God. Voltaire wrote that a true god "surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough," or inspired "books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror." He also published excerpts of Testament of the Abbe Meslier, by an atheist priest, in Holland, which advanced the Enlightenment. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was published in 1764 without his name. Although the first edition immediately sold out, Geneva officials, followed by Dutch and Parisian, had the books burned. It was published in 1769 as two large volumes. Voltaire campaigned fiercely against civil atrocities in the name of religion, writing pamphlets and commentaries about the barbaric execution of a Huguenot trader, who was first broken at the wheel, then burned at the stake, in 1762. Voltaire's campaign for justice and restitution ended with a posthumous retrial in 1765, during which 40 Parisian judges declared the defendant innocent. Voltaire urgently tried to save the life of Chevalier de la Barre, a 19 year old sentenced to death for blasphemy for failing to remove his hat during a religious procession. In 1766, Chevalier was beheaded after being tortured, then his body was burned, along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. Voltaire's statue at the Pantheon was melted down during Nazi occupation. D. 1778.

Voltaire (1694-1778), pseudónimo de François-

Reviews

[Javier Sastre · Rating 3 out of 5]

No, no llama especialmente la atención porque como ya anuncia Savater en el prólogo, la mayoría de su pensamiento lo tenemos embebido en nuestras mentes, al menos en la cultura occidental. Y es que estás de acuerdo con la mayoría de las cosas que dice: hoy las damos por sentadas.
Pero qué inmenso pensador fue, que personaje debió ser en su época, hace más de 250 años, donde se vivía en un
mundo dominado por la monarquía absolutista, una hiperclasista aristocracia y una poderosa Iglesia. Debían pensar sus contemporáneos que era un completo marciano, un iconoclasta, alguien, en realidad, absolutamente moderno, pero que ha contribuido decisivamente a que seamos como somos hoy en día.
Además, por lo que se entrevé en estas citas seleccionadas de sus ensayos y, sobre todo, de sus cartas privadas, nos encontramos a un bonvivant con criterio, un tipo mordaz, divertido e interesante que creó toda una forma de vida y una mas que razonable riqueza a partir de una forma de pensar diferente y defendida a ultranza.

[Samuel Cano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como apunta Savater en el prólogo, el principal problema que presenta Voltaire al lector moderno consiste en que sus ideas se han vuelto el sentido común, al grado que sus observaciones más lucidas nos parecen simples obviedades.

Pero, aún así, es imposible no disfrutar la calidad de su prosa y su sentido del humor. Y no se puede pedir más a un escritor que generar placer.

Al final, más allá de las ideas, como el propio Voltaire nos recuerda: "Todo mortal debe al placer su existencia", y "el placer da lo que la sabiduría promete".