/lit/ - Literature

אני לא יודע מי זה ומה כתוב כי אני לא דובר צרפתית

>>16549517
Stop speaking in tongues, this is an American site

>>16549342
>Le snarky witty man
No idea, Reddit personified.

It's truly a tragedy that he lived 50 years too early to be beheaded by the fanatic he partially created.

>>16549730
You would have been beheaded, not him.

>>16549851
50/50 on him being 'tined after the purge of the Girondins or becoming an émigré
As he'd be about 98 at the time, I don't think he'd be able to escape cosmic judgement.

>I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know — namely, that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog — just like a brute. That is his reward!

>>16549342
He’s the quintessential enlightenment philosopher: liberal, dull, neither profound nor insightful. He was also a huge piece of shit.

>>16549992
>He was also a huge piece of shit.
why?

>>16549342
There are few people who have done more to make the world a worse place than he did.

Voltaire is very funny and spoke with the wrath of the holy spirit.

>>16549992
>enlightenment
>Dull
>Not insightful
A-ha. So this was the dark enlightenment I keep hearing about. Hmmmm

>>16550013
If you speak French, I’ll send you a lecture about it.

>>16549851
I doubt it, i would probably have been a peasant.
I would probably have died at Valmy or something.

>>16549342
You (and everyone itt) don't realize how influential he was. Nowadays it's fashionable (even in France), to just dab on him and treat him as nothing more than le snarky insufferable sophist. While he was that (among others things), he's also one of the most important writers of one of the most important eras of European history, he was for a time advisor to one of the greatest kings in Europe, and he is perhaps the first reason Shakespeare is even popular in continental Europe (and by extension the world).

He's also fairly easy and pleasant to read, his lack of depth notwithstanding. Just read one book by him and ask yourself how many writers you have read can write with the same simplicity and levity. If you think about it you'll realize it's not that common. Voltaire was no Proust but he's a legit good and enjoyable writer.

I think of him a bit like I think of Russell and Sartre: in many ways irritating and overrated, but ultimately you can't deny him both a certain quality of writing and a certain ability to expose a simple and honest kind of reasonable thought.

>>16550039
Yes, please

>>16549342
Should have read this dude instead. He is actually witty and interesting unlike that idiot you posted.

>>16550051
good and well-thought post, please leave this website

>>16550051
>I think of him a bit like I think of Russell and Sartre
way to ruin your post

>>16550119
Well, not that poster, but in some ways that comparison kind of applies.
Except that this is a negative, not a positive.

>>16550090
Read Roussau if you want to read a semantic third-worlder.

>>16549342>>16550090
I actually prefer pic to both of them. Too bad he wasn't influential enough at his time.
>>16550123
>semantic third-worlder
What do you mean?

>>16550119
If you think about it they kinda fulfill the same role: central intellectual figure with a strong moralistic (but liberal, progressive) slant, that can't stop talking even when they should, and whose political influence and reputation overshadows their actual works.

So i won't take back the comparison. In fact De Gaulle seems to have felt the same, when he was asked whether he would take measures against Sartre for criticising his government, he said "You don't put Voltaire in jail". Sartre as a the Voltaire of his era makes a lot of sense, even though the former is an actual (however lackuster) philosopher while the latter is more of a journalist.

>>16550165
was Voltaire a pedo cuck as well?

>>16550158
I haven't read any of the three, but I have been told that de Maistre is based, so I'll say it:
based

>>16550172
Not sure, but he had more than his fair share of personal failings, as his relations with most his friends and colleagues can attest.

>>16550051
>I think of him a bit like I think of Russell and Sartre: in many ways irritating and overrated, but ultimately you can't deny him both a certain quality of writing and a certain ability to expose a simple and honest kind of reasonable thought.
Yeah, I can see that. Reasonable
And, as far as I understand it, he inaugurated the style of the snarky romance in France. Without him, we wouldn't have actually good writers like Céline and Wellybeck.
Still, he's insufferable

>>16550306
/lit/ in a nutshell

>>16550306
Based

>>16550090
rousseau is very based in some aspects.

>>16550090
I literally know only the things I learned back in school about him
Man is fundamentally good, social contract and that damn SOCIETY corrupts everyone
Which even then I thought sounded like bullshit

>>16550741
Roussau is the retard behind the noble savage concept? TOP KEK

>>16549342
>Without him, we wouldn't have actually good writers like Céline and Wellybeck.
One of the dumbest thing I've read this week, thank you for that

>>16549342
I have Voltaire's complete verse and prose tales. What am I in for?

>>16550756
He's right, though.

>>16549342
>not giving me the (You)
Fuck off, this isn't how this shit works retard
Also, not an argument

>>16550758
In verse, literally two good poems. His prose is fun though.

>>16549342
He's only overrated because you are already long used to the ideas and methods he brought to the surface in his own time.

>>16549342
Voltaire is a poor """"philosopher"""" but a great satirist and rhetorician. don't look him up for his social critiques.

>>16551478
>great satirist
God no
The Lisbon chapters in Candide almost gave me an aneurysm; it's obvious he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and never went to Portugal and just wanted to play with stereotypes
The Inquisition burning people alive in the 18th century? People being accused of witchcraft? Totalitarian religious control over a society of stupid masses?
It's as vitriolic as an American right-winger who never left the Midwest writing about a trip to Sweden where he's supposedly attacked by roving bands of grenade-chucking gangs of Muslims jailed by the Swedish government for islamophobia.

It's lampooning and misrepresenting for political purposes, and especially significant as he was writing for people who would have literally no idea it's not as he says.
And it's not even funny enough to justify itself.

>>16551629
*and jailed by the Swedish government for islamophobia.

>>16551629
This.
His whole criticism of Leibniz in Candid is also retarded, he's basically clueless on more technical matter.

As >>16550051 inadvertendly confessed, he was just a slick courtesan who had his way with word and can make anything sound easy on the ears, but he's clueless on many things he ranted about.

>>16549342
People like him precisely because he was the John Oliver of his time. A smug douchebag who made his career off of telling countries what to do. Sadly, the middle class proved to be midwits and now we have governments influenced by Volatire's ideals.

>>16549342
The French aren't that kind on him. Many called him in his redditness, both contemporaries and posthumously. That's why he had to spend half his time at the Prussian king's court where he received extravagant honors because Frederick II wanted to pound his effeminate boipussy.

>>16550090
Press S to spit on this swiss faggot. I swear the swiss people are the cancer of Europe. Fuck Them.

Press S to spit on Rousseau
and
Press F to spit on the Swiss

>>16551979
>John Oliver of his time

>>16549342
lmao 300yo fedora edgelord

>>16550090
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA hw is at the very best retarded.

>>16552367
S

F

>>16550090
>In 1755 Rousseau had written a Prize Essay for the Academy of Dijon called The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men, which he sent to Voltaire. Voltaire replied in the following letter;
>I have received, sir, your new book against the human race, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society--from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations--have never been painted in more striking colors: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go about all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it
No human being has ever been so btfo than Rousseau in this moment

>candide
what did the ending mean?

>>16549342
Screw the pope though desu

>>16552669
>4gifs.com

my god

>>16552669
The happy-ish ending kind of ruins it.

>>16549517
שתוק יא דפוק בוא לקריית מלאכי

Bunch of quotes pf Voltaire aka the bourgeois pseud:

>"The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous -- cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity."

>''They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race...

>"You seem to me to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, and the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables in bad conduct and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny.[2] —Voltaire, From a letter to a Jew who had written to him, complaining of his antisemitism in L'Essai sur le Moeurs

>If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.

>All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

>Women are like weathervanes: they set when they rust.

>“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."

>“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”

>“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.”

>“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

>>16552783
Stopped reading after the first paragraph and called my local based department

>>16552669
Leibniz is wrong, the world is a mess
Stay home and tend to your mess
Epicurean style, tend to your garden

>>16552697
You can pretend they lived miserably

>>16552940
>Hello, based department?
>I'd like to report a based fren--
>never mind

>>16553747
seething anglo

>>16549517
>>16552709
חבל שהיטלר לא סיים את מה שהתחיל.

>>16552367
Rousseau, much like Calvin, was a Genevan. Geneva did not belong to the Swiss Confederation at the time, and so we can in no wise be blamed for them.
Moreover, Geneva remains a stain on our confederation to this day, but few outsiders have the discrimination to recognise that this is of no shame to us patrician Catholic cantons, since we had our constitution illegally forced upon us by the pr*ts who outnumber us.

>>16553915
Geneva has always been a blight on humanity.
The Parisian kingdom rejected it. Savoy rejected it. Switzerland rejected it most of the time. In spire of being a strategic position.

>>16549992
>hurr durr the worst writer in this cultural current is therefore its "quintessential" (Rabelais kicking the bucket there) representative

>>16550039
Please do so.

>>16553066
>>16551704
>Giving an account of Gödel’s trip to the USA in 1933, Menger remembers that Gödel was particularly worried about the fate of the Leibniz Archives, because of the political situation in Germany at that time. As Hao Wang first reported in his book Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice to what we know (1987): “Menger asked Gödel, ‘Who could have an interest in destroying Leibniz’s writings?’ ‘Naturally those people who do not want men to become more intelligent’ Gödel replied. To Menger’s suggestion of Voltaire being a more likely target, Gödel answered ‘Who ever became more intelligent by reading Voltaire’s writings?’”3

>Que répondre à un homme qui vous dit qu'il aime mieux obéir à Dieu qu'aux hommes et qui, en conséquence, est sûr de mériter le ciel en vous égorgeant ?
Voltaire is cringe

>>16555856
lmao