Voltaire vs John Locke on Freedom
Voltaire and John Locke on freedom, side by side — 4 passages against 5, and what the disagreement is actually about.
Voltaire and John Locke both have a great deal to say about freedom — 4 passages and 5 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.”
John Locke on freedom
English empiricist and political theorist. Argued the mind begins as a blank slate and that legitimate government rests on consent.
“All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.”
“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.”
“Government has no other end than the preservation of property.”
“Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”
“The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.”
Where they part
France, 1694–1778 and England, 1632–1704 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. John Locke 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.