Voltaire

Voltaire was the son of a Paris notary, educated by the Jesuits, and as a young man offended the Regent with satirical verse, went twice to the Bastille, and in 1726 was exiled to England after a quarrel with a nobleman. Three English years made him a disciple of Locke, Newton and religious toleration; the Philosophical Letters portrayed England as a model of liberty and were burned in France.

He then spent fifteen years in the château of his lover the Marquise du Châtelet, studying Newton and history and writing tragedies and epic. He served as historiographer to Louis XV and as guest of Frederick the Great, and after falling out with the latter settled at Ferney near Geneva, from which for twenty years he wrote letters, pamphlets and plays to all Europe, received visitors and won the exoneration of the persecuted Calas family, becoming 'the patriarch of Ferney'. In 1778 he returned to Paris to be cheered by crowds and died three months later.

He was no system-builder; his philosophy was an attitude: empiricism, deism, scepticism, and hatred of fanaticism and cruelty. Candide mocks Leibniz's optimism and ends with 'we must cultivate our garden'. The Philosophical Dictionary attacks dogma in short entries. His cry 'crush the infamous thing' meant the intolerance of the Church. He was no democrat and hoped for enlightened monarchy, but his fight for free speech and equality before the law shaped the world that followed.