Show Notes
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He wrote twenty thousand letters and made half of Europe afraid of him. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of Voltaire.
Tonight we spend nearly two and a half hours with Francois Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, the most famous writer in eighteenth century Europe and the most devastating enemy of fanaticism, superstition, and cruelty that the French language has ever produced. We follow him from his birth in Paris in 1694, through two imprisonments in the Bastille, through his three year exile in England and his discovery of Newton and Locke, through the Lisbon earthquake that destroyed his patience with Leibnizian optimism, through the writing of Candide, through the Calas affair, through the founding of the town of Ferney, through the Philosophical Dictionary, and finally through his triumphant return to Paris in 1778, where he died surrounded by the city that had once exiled him. Settle in, lower the lights, and let the story carry you.
Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.
(0:00:00) The Most Dangerous Man in Europe (0:14:11) The Making of Voltaire (0:28:57) The English Lessons (0:43:29) The Best of All Possible Worlds (0:58:56) Candide (1:14:23) Crush the Infamous Thing (1:28:50) The Garden at Ferney (1:43:14) Tolerance (1:57:53) The Watchmaker and the Garden (2:11:54) The Return to Paris
SUGGESTED READING Candide by Voltaire (Penguin Classics, trans. Theo Cuffe): https://amzn.to/4u0PvOy Treatise on Toleration by Voltaire (Penguin Classics, trans. Desmond Clarke): https://amzn.to/4cxpejr Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire (Penguin Classics, trans. Theodore Besterman): https://amzn.to/4vEkdyr Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom by Roger Pearson: https://amzn.to/4cRm1fY Voltaire: A Life by Ian Davidson: https://amzn.to/3OOljqI
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All research and writing is done personally.
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded
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