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The inimitable Nancy Mitford’s account of Voltaire’s fifteen-year relationship with the Marquise du Châtelet—the renowned mathematician who introduced Isaac Newton’s revolutionary new physics to France—is a spirited romp in the company of two extraordinary individuals as well as an erudite and gossipy guide to French high society during the Enlightenment. Mitford’s story is as delicious as it is complicated. The marquise was in love with another mathematician, Maupertuis, while she had an unexpected rival for Voltaire’s affections in the future Frederick the Great of Prussia (and later in the philosophe’s own niece). There was, at least, no jealous husband to contend with: the Marquis du Châtelet, Mitford assures us, behaved perfectly. The beau monde of Paris was, however, distraught at the idea of the lovers’ brilliant conversation going to waste on the windswept hills of Champagne, site of the Château de Cirey, where experimental laboratories, a darkroom, and a library of more than twenty-one thousand volumes enabled them to pursue their amours philosophiques. From time to time the threat of impending arrest would send Voltaire scurrying across the border into Holland, but his irrepressible charm—and the interventions of powerful friends—always made it possible for him resume his studies with the cherished marquise.
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During much of his life Voltaire's plays and verse made him the toast of society, but his barbed wit and commitment to reason also got him into trouble. Jailed twice and eventually banished by the King, he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. His personal life was as colourful as his intellectual one. Voltaire never married, but had long-term affairs with two women: Emilie, who died after giving birth to the child of another lover, and his niece, Marie-Louise, with whom he spent his last twenty-five years. With its tales of illegitimacy, prison, stardom, exile, love affairs and tireless battles against critics, Church and King, Roger Pearson's brilliant biography brings Voltaire vividly to life.
"The findings, in essence, reveal a person of dual identity, with unconscious forces playing a prominent role and holding the key to Voltaire's paradoxical character. His conscious, rational, and cognitively astute self - the standard-bearer of the philosophes in their epochal struggle for freedom - was also responsible for sealing off the subconscious portion of the self associated with traumatic experiences. The elaborate characterological structure erected to ward off consciously unacceptable impulses and, simultaneously, to obtain satisfaction of frustrated needs, is the subject of this study. The price he had to pay for the drastic disconnect between the two selves was formidable. In this volume, much attention is devoted to the unconventional ways and phantasmal stratagems adopted for dealing with the internal pressure of repressed impulses and a perpetual quest for affectional support. Some of these maneuvers show tenuous contact with social reality, as do his bizarre psychosomatic symptoms and bold rationalizations in the Memoirs." "Fortunately for the Western world, Voltaire's prodigious mind was put to use in rattling the cage of the intolerant and rigidly backward theocratic/political system. Due to his immense popularity as a playwright, and his agile participation in current events through a flood of pamphlets, leaflets, and occasional pieces, together with the gigantic volume and engaging style of his correspondence, the name Voltaire became synonymous with the Age of Enlightenment. The dual identity did not interfere with his effectiveness as a humanist. In fact, there is reason to believe that the energy invested in fighting l'infame, the oppressive authority of Church and State, was augmented by a dynamic driving force of the hidden self: the never verbalized and consciously never processed bitter resentment of paternal coercion. Principles and methods of depth psychology, as applied in the study, are elucidated and illustrated."--Jacket.
A brilliant comedy destined for great things
The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters tells nothing less than the story of how the modern, Western view of the world was born. Cultural and intellectual historian Anthony Pagden explains how, and why, the ideal of a universal, global, and cosmopolitan society became such a central part of the Western imagination in the ferment of the Enlightenment - and how these ideas have done battle with an inward-looking, tradition-oriented view of the world ever since. Cosmopolitanism is an ancient creed; but in its modern form it was a creature of the Enlightenment attempt to create a new 'science of man', based upon a vision of humanity made up of autonomous individuals, free from all the constraints imposed by custom, prejudice, and religion. As Pagden shows, this 'new science' was based not simply on 'cold, calculating reason', as its critics claimed, but on the argument that all humans are linked by what in the Enlightenment were called 'sympathetic' attachments. The conclusion was that despite the many tribes and nations into which humanity was divided there was only one 'human nature', and that the final destiny of the species could only be the creation of one universal, cosmopolitan society. This new 'human science' provided the philosophical grounding of the modern world. It has been the inspiration behind the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union. Without it, international law, global justice, and human rights legislation would be unthinkable. As Anthony Pagden argues passionately and persuasively in this book, it is a legacy well worth preserving - and one that might yet come to inherit the earth.