Voltaire vs Jean-Paul Sartre on Freedom
Voltaire and Jean-Paul Sartre on freedom, side by side — 4 passages against 16, and what the disagreement is actually about.
Voltaire and Jean-Paul Sartre both have a great deal to say about freedom — 4 passages and 16 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.
Voltaire on freedom
French Enlightenment satirist and crusader for civil liberty. Candide remains a masterwork of philosophical wit.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
“Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.”
Jean-Paul Sartre on freedom
French existentialist novelist and philosopher. Held that existence precedes essence — we are condemned to be free, and to bear the weight of our choices.
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”
“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”
“Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”
“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.”
“I hate victims who respect their executioners.”
“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”
“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”
“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
“To eat is to appropriate by destruction.”
“It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.”
“Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.”
“Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.”
“Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.”
“Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.”
“I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.”
Where they part
France, 1694–1778 and France, 1905–1980 are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Voltaire treats freedom as something to be i disapprove of what you say,… — a matter of practice. Jean-Paul Sartre approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.