1. The meaning of the name "Voltaire" is still unclear.
Voltaire dropped his family's name and adopted his pen name "Voltaire", but he never explained the meaning of his name so many continue to speculate the meaning. A popular theory is that the name is a certain Latinized spelling of "Arouet", other theories claim its a name of one of his family's chateaus, or its even been speculated that its a shortened version of volunteer.
2. Voltaire helped popularize some of Issac Newtown's theories.
Voltaire had always loved Newton's studies. In his "Essay of Epic Poetry", Voltaire wrote of Newton's theory of Gravity.
3. Voltaire was once a spy for the French Government.
Voltaire met with Frederick the Great of Prussia a few times in person. One time, before heading to Prussia, the French government asked Voltaire to send any information about the foreign policy he got from the meeting. However, Voltaire proved a lousy spy.
Here's a link to the rest of the article.
http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-should-know-about-voltaire
2 comments:
You forgot to mention the MOST IMPORTANT FUN FACT: Because Voltaire was born on the scorpio/sagittarius cusp (November 20-24), this makes him a ZODIACAL HYBRID.
Kidding about its importance obviously. But I genuinely wonder if there are any intense astrological nerds (minor astro nerds only do silly stuff such as bring up a particular zodiac sign of that of a renowned writer/historian in a class blog...) who have researched how exactly this supposedly impacted his life (‘cause it totally did…yeah).
But in truth, I think it's interesting that Voltaire was a spy. Makes sense considering how rebellious of a figure he was and at the same time, I see why it didn't work out; I don't think discretion was his strongest suit (mocked French authorities, jailed, etc). I think he almost made an interesting foil to John Locke, who, although he was among Voltaire's strongest influences, appeared to be more of a peaceful "protester" than Voltaire. Maybe 'foil' isn't exactly the right word here....
I found some more fun facts on Voltaire.
1) Voltaire was a vegetarian because he was a strong supporter of animal rights. He even denounced Europeans for their violence towards animals.
2) Voltaire believed in polygenism, the theory that different races have different origins. He most likely held his Anti-Semitics views (which we briefly touched on in class) due to this. Moreover, his belief in polygenism also affected how he viewed slave trade because he ultimately believed that Africans did not originate in the same way as he did.
3) Voltaire was not a fan of democracy and thought it was just the masses being dumb. We've seen this kind of view with earlier writers such as Dante.
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