Voltaire’s Critiques of Superstition Still Hold Up

Voltaire’s wit and fierce criticism of dogma make him a timeless guide for anyone seeking truth in a sea of misinformation.

Voltaire is one of the most famous European Enlightenment thinkers. Given his clear writing style, he’s also one of the easiest to read, making him one of the most accessible champions of free thought during Europe’s Enlightenment.

One of the things he remains famous for is his religious criticism. Voltaire was a frequent critic of cruelties inflicted in the name of religion and other superstitions. He wrote throughout the 1700s, so the memory of the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict between Catholics and Protestants killing each other over theological differences, was close in memory the way World War II in our minds.

He even went to his grave a deist, someone who didn’t believe in a god that interacted with the earthly world. The editor’s preface to The Portable Voltaire described Voltaire’s deathbed:

“The priests arrived to make sure of their old enemy, whose confession of faith they now held in their hands; but Voltaire had done all he proposed to do along that line — he had refused absolution and the last sacrament at the time of his recantation — or he was too weak and weary to play his part in what, at best, could have been only a farce. In any case, he waved the priests away, saying: ‘Let me die in peace.’”

Voltaire’s religious criticism wasn’t just about spirituality, but rather about the corrosive impact that superstitions of all kinds had on ordinary people and political elites. Toward the end of his life, he would even chastize Catherine the Great for clamping down on Russia’s freedom of thought in response to the French and American Revolutions.

Today, Voltaire is a great writer to read for guides on how to think clearly and detect nonsense. The Portable Voltaire includes several works, including entries from his Philosophical Dictionary, full fictional works like Candide and Zadig, and many letters and essays from throughout his life. It’s a great place to start for anyone unfamiliar with him.

Superstition Beyond Religion

One of the most common false beliefs is that old ideas are inherently better than new ones. A mystique surrounds ancient thinkers and beliefs, whether they’re religious texts or “lost wisdom” that the modern world has forgotten.

In reality, each age has its wise men and popular frauds alike. Voltaire made this point as he ruminated on the achievements of the great ancient societies:

“The Great Wall of China is a monument to fear; the pyramids are monuments to vanity and superstition. Both bear witness to a great patience in the peoples, but to no superior genius.”

The Great Wall of China was built to keep the Mongols from the north out of China while the pyramids were built at great cost to the slaves who died satiating their pharaoh’s ambitions. Voltaire is similarly critical of clergymen who enforced Lent door-to-door:

“Sometimes in the provinces the pastors go beyond their duty, and forgetting the rights of the magistracy, undertake to go among the innkeeprs and cooks, to see if they have not some ounces of meat in their saucepans, some old fowls on their hooks, or some eggs in a cupboard; for eggs are forbidden in Lent. They intimidate the poor people, and even use violence against these unfortunates, who do not know that this police duty is the business of the magistrates alone. It is an odious and punishable inquisition.”

In this entry on Lent, Voltaire deplores the use of force clergymen use to ensure Lent is followed, overreaching from their spiritual duties to material ones left to state authorities. He’s also conscious of the magnitude of harm inflicted on the poorest members of society who lacked the status and resources to challenge mistreatment from Church authorities.

Humans are Alone, Therefore Responsible

Voltaire’s focus on human beings as the cause of good and evil in the world leads to one of his more haunting entries. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire has this short paragraph on “Man, General Reflection On:”

”It requires twenty years for man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother’s womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.”

His appreciation for how difficult it is to generate wisdom — and how little time we have to create a scrap — makes his disdain for clerics more understandable. Voltaire seems to view revelation as a slap in the face to ordinary people trying their best to puzzle out reasonable answers to profound questions.

However, his imperfections are on display throughout The Portable Voltaire, too. Like the other European Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire is celebrated for his writing celebrating the Age of Reason but held onto some Dark Age prejudices. His anti-Jewish writing has aged as poorly as David Hume’s opinions about Black people.

Readers of The Portable Voltaire will get to know Voltaire at his best, worst, flawed, and wise.