Cronk Nicholas - A pocket philosophical dictionary

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Translation John Fletcher 2011
Editorial material Nicholas Cronk 2011

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2011

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

VOLTAIRE

Translated by

JOHN FLETCHER

With an Introduction and Notes by

NICHOLAS CRONK

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

A POCKET PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLTAIRE was the assumed name of Franois-Marie Arouet (16941778) Born into a well-to-do Parisian family, he was educated at the leading Jesuit college in Paris. Having refused to follow his father and elder brother into the legal profession he soon won widespread acclaim for dipe (1718), the first of some twenty-seven tragedies which he continued to write until the end of his life. His national epic La Henriade (1723) confirmed his reputation as the leading French literary figure of his generation. Following a quarrel with a worthless but influential aristocrat, the Chevalier de Rohan, he was forced into exile in England. This period (17268) was particularly formative, and his Letters concerning the English Nation (1733) constitute the first major expression of Voltaires deism and his subsequent lifelong opposition to religious and political oppression. Following the happy years (173443) spent at Cirey with his mistress Mme du Chtelet in the shared pursuit of several intellectual enthusiasms, notably the work of Isaac Newton, he enjoyed a brief interval of favour at court during which he was appointed Historiographer to the King. After the death of Mme du Chtelet in 1749 he finally accepted an invitation to the court of Frederick of Prussia, but left in 1753 when life with this particular enlightened despot became intolerable. In 1755, after temporary sojourn in Colmar, he settled at Les Dlices on the outskirts of Geneva. He then moved to nearby Ferney in 1759, the year Candide was published. Thereafter a spate of tragedies, stories, philosophical works, and polemical tracts, not to mention a huge number of letters, poured from his pen. After the death of Louis XV in 1774 he eventually returned to Paris in 1778 for the performance of his penultimate tragedy Irne. He was acclaimed and fted by the entire capital as the greatest living Frenchman and as one of the most effective champions of freedom, tolerance, and common sense the world had ever seen. He died there on 30 May 1778.

JOHN FLETCHER is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Kent.

NICHOLAS CRONK is Professor of French Literature and Director of the Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford. He is General Editor of The Complete Works of Voltaire and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire (2009).

VOLTAIRES Pocket Philosophical Dictionary (Dictionnaire philosophique portatif) is not a dictionary (in any ordinary sense of the term), nor is it philosophical (in the way we now use the word). But, crucially, it is portable (portatif) and meant for the pocket. Voltaire wanted to write a book which would shock and which would change minds, above all he wanted to reach out to a wide readership, so portability was essential: small books are cheaperand easier to hide if the police come looking for them. The Pocket Philosophical Dictionary is one of the most explosive and controversial works of the European Enlightenment; and it is also, if this all sounds rather serious, one of the funniest. It certainly tested the sense of humour of those in authority. Published anonymously in Geneva, in July 1764, the book was promptly condemned by the Paris parlement and ceremonially burned by the public executioner in Geneva. It was also placed on the Index of books prohibited by the Catholic Church, where it remained until the Index was abolished in 1966. Voltaires critique of the Bible and of Christian faith was certainly shockingsome believers still find it shockingbut many of the ideas he expresses in the work were commonplace in clandestine literature of the time. Why then did the book cause such an enormous storm from the moment of its first publication?