
In Candide (published 1759), moreover, though the fact has been strangely overlooked, Voltaire no longer believes in progress through light and reason.Perhaps noting the sharp contrast in the great man's life is important.
Even so, life goes on, with or without the optimism. In France, Enlightenment philosophy had provided a system useful for exploding all manner of inconvenient traditions and claims - especially Christianity. Such a tool wants to be retained. And if religious authority could be dismantled, why not political and economic authority? Already in France the philosophe was undermining the foundations of Divine Right and privilege, with only modest opposition by those threatened powers. But across the Atlantic the methodological criticism supplied in French thought would prove useful to American colonists seeking separation from the British crown.
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