Questions sur les Miracles

Questions sur les Miracles, also known as Lettres sur les Miracles (Questions/Letters on miracles) is a publication by the French philosopher and author Voltaire, written in 1765 and first published as a series of imagined letters by various people.[1]

Content

Questions sur les Miracles starts with theological questions, but moves on to repeat some of the defences of democracy and free expression that Voltaire had proposed in his earlier Idées républicaines:[1]

"Let us uphold the liberty of the press, it is the basis of all other liberties; through it we enlighten each other."[1]

The letters satirically express Voltaire's criticisms of the English biologist John Needham who had promoted the idea of spontaneous generation, of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and of the authorities at Geneva who had resisted greater democracy.[2][3] Voltaire uses irony and sarcasm to convey his sceptical opinion on miracles; one letter poses that miracles are authentic and, with exaggerated optimism, hopes that priests will manifest them. "We even hope that not only will these learned men work miracles, but that they will hang all those who do not believe in them. Amen!"[3] Voltaire thought that the alleged miracles of Jesus were best seen as moral lessons interpreted for a wide audience, rather than as real events.[4]

One surviving copy has extensive notes by Voltaire on just the first letter, suggesting that he intended to revise the book into the form of a treatise rather than series of letters, but never completed this.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gay, Peter (1959). Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 215.
  2. ↑ Aldridge, A. Owen (1975). Voltaire and the Century of Light. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 335.
  3. 1 2 Besterman, Theodore (1969). Voltaire. London: Longmans. pp. 447–448. ISBN 0582112168.
  4. 1 2 Philips, Edith (February 1931). "Some Changes Contemplated by Voltaire in His "Questions sur les Miracles"". Modern Philology. 28 (3). JSTOR 433669.

Further reading

  • Gargett, Graham: "Some Reflections on Voltaire's L'lngenu and a Hitherto Neglected Source: the Questions sur les miracles" in The Secular City: Studies in the Enlightenment : Presented to Haydn Mason edited by T. D. Hemming, Edward Freeman, David Meakin University of Exeter Press, 1994 ISBN 0859894169


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