In this comprehensive study of Voltaire's intellectual development, he provides the first full treatment of the effect of the English experience on Voltaire, the diversity of activity at Cirey, and the relation of Voltaire’s thought to 17th- and 18th-century philosophy. By devoting considerable attention to the movements, the personal relationships, and the environments that influenced Voltaire, Professor Wade is able to illuminate the sources of Voltaire’s thought and show at the same time how he wove them into a unique synthesis. A final chapter in the book contains a general summation of the importance of Voltaireanism as a philosophy of life. Originally published in 1969. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The inimitable Nancy Mitford’s account of Voltaire’s fifteen-year relationship with the Marquise du Châtelet—the renowned mathematician who introduced Isaac Newton’s revolutionary new physics to France—is a spirited romp in the company of two extraordinary individuals as well as an erudite and gossipy guide to French high society during the Enlightenment. Mitford’s story is as delicious as it is complicated. The marquise was in love with another mathematician, Maupertuis, while she had an unexpected rival for Voltaire’s affections in the future Frederick the Great of Prussia (and later in the philosophe’s own niece). There was, at least, no jealous husband to contend with: the Marquis du Châtelet, Mitford assures us, behaved perfectly. The beau monde of Paris was, however, distraught at the idea of the lovers’ brilliant conversation going to waste on the windswept hills of Champagne, site of the Château de Cirey, where experimental laboratories, a darkroom, and a library of more than twenty-one thousand volumes enabled them to pursue their amours philosophiques. From time to time the threat of impending arrest would send Voltaire scurrying across the border into Holland, but his irrepressible charm—and the interventions of powerful friends—always made it possible for him resume his studies with the cherished marquise.

With the same sense of historical responsibility and veracity he has exemplified in his studies on Voltaire, Ira O. Wade turns now to Voltaire's milieu and begins an account of the French Enlightenment which will explain its genesis, its nature and coherence, and its diffusion in the modern world. To understand the movement of ideas that produced the spirit of the Enlightenment, Mr. Wade identifies and examines the people, events, and rich development of philosophy in the Renaissance and seventeenth century. He considers, in turn, the challenges of the Renaissance and the responses of its leading writers (Rabelais, Bacon, and Montaigne); Baroque thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, the Freethinkers); and Classicism (Moliere, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Newton). Mr. Wade begins his discussion by examining the critical literature on the Enlightenment and concludes with a theoretical chapter, "The Making of a Spirit." As the history of an intellectual culture, his study makes vivid the power of thought in the making of a civilization. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Despite comparisons between Erasmus and Voltaire having become common-place in the course of the nineteenth century, this is the first full study to bring them together in their careers, their works, and their historic afterlives. Each was a force for change in his time and thus ranks among the masters of modern liberalism. Beginning with the continuities between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, award-winning scholar Ricardo J. Quinones joins Erasmus and Voltaire as voices of moderation and reason that remain capable of addressing the philosophical crises of twentieth-century thought. A companion piece to Dualisms, Quinones' 2007 book, Erasmus and Voltaire differs in method: where its predecessor looked to inveterate, unyielding differences, this new work looks to similarities. In delving beneath the obvious differences between these two intellectual giants, Quinones uncovers the great practical and spiritual vocations that unite them.