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WorkVoltaire

Philosophical Dictionary

Voltaire's pocket-sized, unsigned alphabet against the Church, burned in Geneva and thrown onto an executed young man's pyre.

by Voltaire3,068 passages held

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Original title
Dictionnaire philosophique portatif
First published
(aged 70)
Original language
French

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Overview

The Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert grew to twenty-eight large volumes and cost its subscribers 980 livres, and in 1759 the French government suspended its licence to publish. Voltaire had written articles for it. In 1764 he produced a book of the opposite kind, and he would later tell d'Alembert why: a cheap little book did more damage to established authority than a shelf of folios. The Dictionnaire philosophique portatif appeared without his name, printed in Geneva by Gabriel Grasset under a false London imprint: one small volume of seventy-three short articles, running from "Abraham" to "Vertu" (virtue). Their target is the authority of the Church and of the Bible read as history. The articles treat scripture as a document like any other, set its chronology and miracles against what any reader knows of the world, and place the wars and burnings over doctrine beside a moral teaching that no one disputes. What survives is a belief in one just God and a morality shared by every people, the position Voltaire called theism. In his letters of these years Voltaire urged Écrasez l'infâme — crush the infamous thing — by which he meant the fanaticism and superstition he blamed on the churches. Geneva had the book burned in September 1764, and the Parlement of Paris, the kingdom's highest court, condemned it the following March; Voltaire denied that he had written it. In July 1766 the chevalier de La Barre, a nobleman of twenty convicted of blasphemy, was executed at Abbeville, and his sentence ordered a copy of the dictionary thrown onto the pyre with his body. The book grew over several editions in the 1760s, and after Voltaire's death his editors merged it with his far larger Questions sur l'Encyclopédie into one many-volume alphabet.

Key concepts

What does the Dictionary mean by a theist?

Someone firmly persuaded of one supreme being, good and powerful, who punishes crimes without cruelty and rewards virtue, while admitting he does not know how. The theist joins no sect, since the sects contradict one another, and holds that religion lies in adoration and justice, not in metaphysics or ceremony. It is the belief the dictionary leaves standing once it has cleared dogma away.

Why does the Dictionary say there are no sects in geometry?

Because where a truth is evident, nobody divides into parties: no one calls himself a Euclidean, and no one disputes that it is day at noon. The article on sects turns this into a test. Every sect is a rallying point for doubt and error; the points on which all people agree, one God and honesty, are therefore true, and the doctrines they fight over are false.

How does the Dictionary tell certainty from probability?

Certainty proper belongs to a geometrical proof and to the fact of one's own existence and feelings; everything that rests on appearances and testimony, however overwhelming, is only probability. Most of what people call certain belongs to the second kind. The distinction has teeth: judges who were sure condemned Calas and others later shown innocent, and not even all Paris testifying can make a physically impossible event credible.

What is the 'infamous thing' Voltaire wanted crushed?

Fanaticism and the superstition that feeds it, which he blamed on the churches, not belief in God, which the dictionary defends. Écrasez l'infâme was his watchword in the letters of these years, and the book is its arsenal: every article that exposes a forged miracle, a contradictory chronology or a burning over doctrine is aimed at the power superstition gives to those who persecute in its name.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Écrasez l'infâme

What turns a religion that preaches love of neighbour into one that tortures and burns? The dictionary's answer is fanaticism fed by superstition, and it names the institutions that profit from both.

Fanaticism, one article says, is a false conscience that makes religion serve the caprices of the imagination and the excesses of the passions, and superstition is the soil it grows in. Against both the dictionary sets toleration, which it calls the first law of nature: all of us are full of weakness and error, so we must pardon one another. Its model is the exchange at Amsterdam or London, where Jew, Muslim, Brahmin and Christian trade without drawing knives to win souls. The case is argued from history rather than theory, through councils, massacres, torture and the judges who were certain that Calas was guilty.

  • religious persecution
  • persecution
  • superstition
  • church and state
  • religious authority
  • political power
  • satire
  • irony
  • rhetoric

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Scripture Read as History

What happens to sacred history when it is held to the standards of any other history? The dictionary puts scripture's chronology, miracles and prophecies to the tests of evidence it would apply to a Roman chronicle.

Certainty, the dictionary argues, is rarer than people think: a proof in geometry has it, and so does the fact of one's own existence, but testimony yields only probability, and not even all Paris can make an impossible event credible. Miracles fall under that rule. The order of nature is itself the grand miracle, and a wise God who made the machine as good as it could be would have no reason to break it. So the articles read Genesis, the prophets and the early church as a historian reads any ancient source, noting contradictions, borrowings and pious forgeries, and reporting the absurd with a straight face.

  • biblical criticism
  • biblical interpretation
  • scriptural interpretation
  • historical criticism
  • historical evidence
  • historiography
  • evidence
  • miracles
  • skepticism
  • epistemology
  • early christianity
  • religious history

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One God, One Morality

If the sects all contradict one another, what is left that every reasonable person can believe? The dictionary's answer is theism: one just God, and a morality that no people ever needed dogma to learn.

There is but one morality, the article on it argues, as there is but one geometry: the Indian dyer, the Tartar shepherd and the English seaman know justice from injustice without having read Cicero. The article on sects draws the consequence. Where a truth is evident there are no parties, since nobody calls himself a Euclidean; so what all agree on, one God and honesty, is true, and what they quarrel over is false. The theist adores that God without claiming to know how he punishes or rewards, joins no sect, and counts doing good as his whole worship.

  • morality
  • justice
  • law
  • human nature
  • theology
  • religion

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Within this work

passages held
3,068
distinct concepts
2,276
by passages held, corpus-wide
#10

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “religion” and “satire”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 90 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
religionsatire25
biblical interpretationreligion22
religious authoritysatire21
evidencehistorical criticism19
historical criticismreligion18
biblical interpretationreligious authority15
political powerreligion15
political powerreligious authority13
historical criticismreligious authority12
biblical interpretationhistorical criticism9
evidencereligion8
historical criticismpolitical power8
historical evidencepolitical power8
political powersatire8
religionreligious authority7
evidencesatire6
historical criticismsatire5
historical evidencereligion5
biblical interpretationevidence4
biblical interpretationsatire4
biblical interpretationhistorical evidence3
historical criticismhistorical evidence3
historical evidencereligious authority3
biblical interpretationpolitical power2
historical evidencesatire2
evidencepolitical power1
evidencereligious authority1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1734 Philosophical Letters (Lettres philosophiques)

    Written out of the English stay that began in 1726 and published a quarter-century before Candide; it cost Voltaire his place in Paris and set out the programme that his later campaigns pursued.

     EN
  2. 1759 Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme)

    The most widely read of Voltaire's philosophical tales, a short novel published in the year he bought Ferney; its quarrel with optimism began in his poem on the Lisbon earthquake three years earlier.

     EN
  3. 1762 The Sermon of the Fifty (Sermon des cinquante)

    Among Voltaire's anti-Christian pamphlets, the one his posthumous editors counted the first to attack the religion directly; the arguments it set down came back in many of the tracts he wrote over the following decades.

     EN
  4. 1763 Treatise on Tolerance (Traité sur la tolérance)

    Voltaire's contribution to his own campaign for Jean Calas, the best known of the wrongly condemned people he defended from Ferney; it appeared two years before the verdict was overturned.

     EN
  5. 1764 Philosophical Dictionary (Dictionnaire philosophique portatif) you are here EN
  6. 1772 We Must Take Sides (Il faut prendre un parti, ou le principe d'action)

    Written at seventy-seven, it turns Voltaire's arguments away from the Church he had attacked in The Sermon of the Fifty and against the atheists of d'Holbach's circle.

     EN
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