Lettres philosophiques

Voltaire’s *Lettres philosophiques* offers a series of candid, short-format discourses on a range of topics as observed in his two years of political exile in England. As with any anthology, the entries are intertwined but accessible in any order; each work can stand alone but is sweeter in meaning when encountered in its sequential context. Approachable for its two or three page chapters; the density of the prose exposes the wit and criticisms of Voltaire in a nonfiction setting.

The longest and final entry of the letters is a systematic dismantling of selections of Blaise Pascal’s *Pensées*. Delightful to read and bookended by Voltaire’s admission of the domain-specific genius of Pascal; a literary compliment sandwich filled with scathing criticisms. Exposing the periodic unintelligibility of the work, Voltaire’s adverse reception reaffirms my having put it aside years ago. The critical views of Pascal towards Montaigne’s entire project yield enmity from this reader. In his arrogance he critiques the wide and welcoming spirit of thought of which he is a product; the judgement of the past based on its present ephemeral cultural disparity. (The Essais were published and distributed widely before being put on the Index, only to be taken off again with time. The text remained unchanged while the culture and censorship swirls around it.) Voltaire elsewhere refers to Pascal as a brilliant physicist but a mediocre philosopher. This final chapter of the letters pairs well with Voltaire’s science fiction novella *Micromegas*, addressing the ironic combination of the limitations of human knowledge and the self-assuredness we have in the accuracy of our beliefs.

His letter on John Locke unveils in terse prose his thoughts on the well-worn debate of the nature and speculated immortality of the soul. If there is a singular chapter from this collection to be referenced elsewhere, it is this. His epistemological humility is overshadowed only by his understanding of the arguments he critiques.

In my interactions with Voltaire’s works I am continually challenged to reshape my categorization of him as a thinker. The contours of his thought are continually refined; a natural acquaintance grows with time. He displays consistency across the years in his opinions, arrayed with his signature sparkling genius across *Lettres philosophiques* (1734) to *Zadig* (1747) to *Candide* (1759). A misunderstanding from my youth associated him with militant atheism; an absurd reductionist opinion from religious critics. My perception of Voltaire is assuredly that of a deist with a true aspiration to virtue. He makes palatable incisive truth, derived from a recognition of the relationship between things and his lifelong observations of the human condition, by wrapping it with wry humor. His exiled writings make him the embodiment of the freethinker with no home.

*Lettres philosophiques* is both an entry into Voltaire’s thought and a reference for the future reconciliation between the reader’s perception and the writer’s motivating inclinations behind his fiction.