What Voltaire Actually Said About Freedom
All 4 Voltaire passages on freedom, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Voltaire returns to freedom four times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. French Enlightenment satirist and crusader for civil liberty. Candide remains a masterwork of philosophical wit.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is freedom for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Voltaire passage on freedom
“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.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Voltaire is not offering four opinions about freedom; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Voltaire applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts two such cases to Voltaire.
Public life feels ugly, exhausting, and still important.
Argued as public courage: You are treating speech as a duty when stakes are real. The danger is becoming addicted to opposition.
The news makes you feel responsible and useless at once.
Argued as stoic discipline: You are matching concern to agency so that concern can become action. The cost is a world that shrinks to the size of your street.
Work through these yourself
- Public life feels ugly, exhausting, and still important. — argued from public courage and several competing positions
- The news makes you feel responsible and useless at once. — argued from stoic discipline and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Socrates, Aristotle, Epictetus and Friedrich Nietzsche all address freedom too, and they do not converge. Reading Voltaire alone gives you a coherent position; reading Voltaire against Socrates shows you what the position is actually choosing against.