Voltaire · Philosophy
Voltaire’s campaign against religious persecution - built from a real judicial murder, the Calas affair - and his argument that fanaticism is a disease of reason to be cured by tolerance, humanity, and the recognition that we are all children of the same God.
You learned that Voltaire turned the judicial murder of Jean Calas into a crusade, adopted the motto ‘écrasez l’infâme’ (crush the infamous thing), and argued in the Treatise on Toleration that persecution is contrary to both reason and humanity because no one can be certain enough to ki…
Leads to Pierre Bayle.
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