The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) [Mass Market Paperback]

Voltaire (Author), Francois Maria Arouet De Voltaire (Author), Ben Ray Redman (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Portable Library | Publication Date: January 1, 1995

Includes Part One of Candide; three stories; selections from The Philosophical Dictionary, The Lisbon Earthquake, and other works; and thirty-five letters.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140150412
• ISBN-13: 978-0140150414
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > European
  • #43 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > French

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The crusher of infamy, July 19, 2004

By 

A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

"The Portable Voltaire" is an excellent compendium of the major works of the man who became the most famous iconoclast of the French Enlightenment. One of the attractions of this particular volume is the introduction by Ben Ray Redman, who delivers with witty, flowing prose an extremely interesting short biography and a summary of the man's philosophy. Normally I don't bother to mention a book's introduction in a review, but Redman's is so good I make a notable exception.

Voltaire was a man of contrasts. He was sickly and feeble but miraculously managed to extend his lifespan to eighty-four years, travel abroad, and survive in prison; he was made wealthy by various benefactors and seemed generally happy but could be very cynical and antagonistic in his writing; and most notoriously, he was a deist whose hatred of Christianity could make him appear to be an atheist. Most of what he hated about Christianity was the clergy--their hypocrisy, their adherence to practices he found absurd, their conceit that everything in the universe is made exclusively for man's consumption and amusement--and the superstition and fanaticism exhibited by the more extreme practitioners of the faith.

Nowhere are his themes more vigorously pronounced than in the novella "Candide," his most famous achievement. Candide is a simpleminded, ingenuous young man who, under the influence of his tutor Dr. Pangloss, apparently a caricature of the German mathematician-philosopher Leibnitz, steadfastly continues to believe the world as designed is optimal, where everything happens for the ultimate best, even while an endless string of ridiculous circumstances sends him on a series of adventures searching for his lost lover Cunegonde and forces him to bear witness to a theater of war, brutality, murder, rape, chaos, catastrophes, and nonsense, the only wordly haven being the utopian city of gold El Dorado in the mountains of Peru.

The other novella, "Zadig," is similar but paints a more optimistic picture of fate. Here, the Babylonian nobleman Zadig is a virtuous man whose every act of virtue brings him a new misfortune because of other people's avarice, jealousy, or foolishness, but who always succeeds because of his will and cleverness rather than divine justice. As in "Candide," its hero is cast into a world of picaresque adventure and fateful encounters, but he eventually meets a hermit who teaches him that evil events induce, in various and unintended ways, good acts in response. We live our lives and protect one another as well as we can, as though we could not rely on God to do so for us.

In the "Philosophical Dictionary," of which this volume contains a portion, Voltaire selects some terms and concepts from philosophy, religion, and politics, and writes a mini-essay on each that expresses his thoughts on the subject. For example, under "tolerance" he fires off a powerful indictment of bigots and those who think they are superior to others; under "government" he observes that no nation seems to be ruled by its own people, and the examples he gives are quite convincing.

Like most philosophers of his day, Voltaire looked back at history with a hard eye to see exactly how Europe had gotten itself into its current situation, and looked ahead to see that it had no hope for the triumph of reason as long as its people were under the yoke of a tyrannous church. He had no answer for the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?", but he would emphasize that neither does anyone else, no matter how much they pretend to.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction, November 23, 2001

By 

R. J. Marsella (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

This volume provides a wonderful introduction to the writings and thought of one of the great cynics of the ages. Voltaire exemplifies the age of reason in his questioning of both authority and the prevailing beliefs of his day. His writing as presented here is very accessable and this book can be picked up and opened to any selection and read with enjoyment. An excellent intro for the general reader.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative and extremely easy to read, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

If you are thinking of learning about philosophy in general would recommend this book as a good introduction to the beliefs of the 18th century French movement. If you are interested in Voltaire I would tell you to read this book AND NO OTHER. I have flipped through and read parts of other books and a great many of the boring, extremely boring. This book, especially the short introduction, are extremely exciting and bring the beliefs of Voltaire into sharp clarity. It includes his Philosophical Dictionary, the Candide, and several of his essays and plays. It also has a history of his life and what happened to him due to his heretical views.