Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Voltaire, Rousseau   [John Derbyshire]

Yuval:   No argument from me on Rousseau. When I get my hands on a time machine, my first mission on behalf of humanity will be to go back and strangle the infant Jean-Jacques in his cradle. But Voltaire a "fanatical revolutionary addicted to cleverness"? Come on.

The only matter in which Voltaire was fanatical was his hatred of fanaticism. He spoke up for liberty — including religious liberty — and political reform, both sorely needed in the France of his time; and he spoke up for these ideals when it was dangerous to do so, a thing that should give pause to us pampered hacks of this age, who face no danger worse than a flame email. Voltaire risked real flames.

As for "addicted to cleverness" — well, I'm not out of sympathy there, and I sort of know what you mean. Voltaire could be silly. I'm glad to see, in fact, that the native English mistrust of cleverness is alive and well on this side of the pond. (When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan described his younger colleague Iain Macleod as "too clever by half," it was at once understood that Macleod's chances of succeeding Macmillan were killed stone dead. His career never really recovered from Macmillan's insult.) Still, there are worse things to be addicted to than cleverness. There is stupidity, for example, of which the world contains so much, I am increasingly inclined to buck my native predilections and cut cleverness some slack.

And Voltaire was a man who knew his own limits, in cleverness as in other things. He admired Isaac Newton quite immoderately:

After dinner, passing through a little parlour, where there was a head of Locke, another of the Countess of Coventry, and several more, he took me by the arm, and stopped me — "Do you know this bust  [Newton's]?  It is the greatest genius that ever existed. If all the geniuses of the universe assembled, he should lead the band" … It was of Newton, and of his own works, that he spoke with the greatest warmth.

That's from Martin Sherlock's account of Voltaire in old age, reproduced in David Bodanis' Passionate Minds, a book I heartily recommend (and which I was supposed to review for someone, but I never got round to writing the review — sorry, whoever it was). I think it catches the man very nicely, especially that "… and of his own works …"  Yet, as Bodanis' book explains, Voltaire had no great understanding of Newton's work, knew he had not, and relied on the beautiful and brilliant Emilie du Châtelet to explain it to him. She did her best, with mixed results; and he knew that, too.

Sorry, but I like the Enlightenment. I've heard the case against it, and have even chuckled over Roger Scruton's call for an "Endarkenment," but I think if you make the imaginative effort to understand the opposition faced by a curious and intelligent person like Voltaire under France's ancien régime, you'll come to a gentler opinion of the man. Reading Bodanis' excellent book would also help.

Voltaire was, like most of us, very far from perfect; but he was a much better, much more admirable man than any of those who hated him.

04/30 04:53 PMShare