François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his nom de plume Voltaire. He was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity -- especially the Roman Catholic Church -- and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirised intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day. His best-known work and magnum opus, "Candide", is a novella which comments on, criticises, and ridicules many events, thinkers, and philosophies of his time.
He died on 30 May 1778. He was denied a Christian burial due to his criticism of the Church; however, friends and relations managed to bury his body secretly at the Abbey of Scellières in Champagne, where Marie Louise's brother was abbé. Interestingly, on 11 July 1791, the National Assembly of France, regarding Voltaire as a forerunner of the French Revolution, had his remains brought back to Paris and enshrined in the Panthéon. An estimated million people attended the procession, which stretched throughout Paris. There was an elaborate ceremony, including music composed for the event by André Grétry.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.
His "Discourse on Inequality" and "The Social Contract" are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel "Julie", or the "New Heloise" (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction. His "Emile", or "On Education" (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished "Reveries of the Solitary Walker" (composed 1776–1778) -- exemplified the late 18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterised modern writing.
Rousseau befriended fellow philosopher Denis Diderot in 1742, and would later write about Diderot's romantic troubles in his "Confessions". During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.
Source: Wikipedia
No comments:
Post a Comment