Voltaire, Rousseau, & the Enlightenment

François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire, was a writer, philosopher, poet, dramatist, historian and polemicist of the French Enlightenment. The diversity of his literary output is rivalled only by its abundance: the edition of his complete works currently nearing completion will comprise nearly 200 volumes.
‘The age of Voltaire’ has become synonymous with ‘the Enlightenment’, but although Voltaire’s eminence as a philosophe is self-evident, the precise originality of his thought and writings is less easily defined. In this section, you can explore the story of his life, works and legacy. Oxford

The 18th century Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the bold claim that modernity and civilisation are not improvements; they’ve dragged us from a primitive state of innocence and happiness.

Modern life is, in many ways, founded around the idea of progress: the notion that as we know more (especially about science and technology), and as economies grow larger, we’re bound to end up happier. Particularly in the eighteenth century, as European societies and their economies became increasingly complex, the conventional view was that mankind was firmly set on a positive trajectory; moving away from savagery and ignorance toward prosperity and civility. But there was at least one eighteenth-century philosopher who was prepared to vigorously question the “Idea of Progress” – and who continues to have very provocative things to say to our own era... (continues)