30
change, but he still supported his more radical counterparts. For example, he was
outraged over the French government’s response to and crackdown on the
Encyclopedie
produced by the radical Diderot, and he was enthusiastic when Denmark-Norway became
the first state to remove all censorship.
72
Voltaire was not only discussing works by others but was
also writing prolifically
himself. Not everything he wrote was on toleration, government, or religion, but these
were frequent topics, even in his personal correspondence. For example, in a 1765
letter
to Helvetius, he claimed that “however unrelenting the strife, freedom of thought and
toleration would emerge victorious and be proclaimed indispensable to mankind.”
73
Even
his poetry exhibited evidence of his views on toleration: his epic poem
Henriade
made
King Henry IV into a hero for the Edict of Nantes which attempted
to establish religious
tolerance. Nevertheless, three of his works stand out above the rest. These include his
Philosophical Letters
or
Letters Concerning the English Nation
, the
Treatise on
Tolerance
, and the
Philosophical Dictionary
. All of these works demonstrate Voltaire’s
commitment to tolerance and expanding freedom.
The
Philosophical Letters
were published in French in 1734
and were quickly
banned and burned as they were seen as an attack on the French government. In these
letters, Voltaire examined the English nation from his view as an outsider. This work is
based on his experience living in England while out of favor in France, and Voltaire was
also a professed anglophile and Lockean (Voltaire even devotes a full
letter to Locke and
his ideas). According to Israel, Voltaire’s time in England “exerted a lasting influence on
72
Ibid, 125.
73
Israel, “
Libertas Philosophandi
,” in
Freedom of Speech
, ed. Powers, 11.
73
Israel,
Democratic Enlightenment
, 115.
31
his views about God, toleration,
philosophy, and science” and “set in motion a process of
philosophical maturing and development.”
74
Voltaire was such a fan of England because
that country was “flourishing amid toleration, Latitudinarianism, and freedom of the
press, and dominated
by Lockean-Newtonian ides, while the latter [France] languished
under censorship, relative intolerance, and reverence for outdated authorities and old
quarrels,” a view which comes across when one reads the letters.
75
Voltaire starts his
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