Talk Elections

HP for being an anti-Semite. Still, I like his work and agree with the rest of his ideas. Candide is one of my favorite books.

Candide is a horribly overrated dreary thing in my opinion.

HP.

Meh; FF I suppose.

I trust you haven't seen his remarks about Jews.

Nope.

If you had, you'd regret voting FF.

Here are some sources with quotes from Voltaire indicating how he felt about the Jews:

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/30/books/l-voltaire-and-the-jews-590990.html?pagewanted=1

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/jtr_01.htm

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/11525

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-69652501/can-jew-philosophe-isaac.html

He may be an anti-Semite, but he was a huge proponent of ideas like freedom of speech. Very important to the Enlightenment as a whole, and therefore to American history.

FF

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

That is a very witty quote, exemplifying Voltaire's reputation as a witty man.

FF in the proper sense of the word.

Mixed. (No vote). Certainly his anti-Semitism is cause for concern.

One saying, falsely attributed to Voltaire, seems to have some truth to it: "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." This statement was certainly true of the Catholic Church throughout much of European history. How this quote became associated with conservatives, neo-Nazis, and Holocaust deniers is beyond me (not to mention sad).

HP. Ecrasez l'infame.

The Sophists and their modern counterpart ("The Philosophs") were neither wise nor philosophical, just compare them with hard-thinking philosophers like BAYLE or LOCKE (let alone SOCRATES or PLATON, DESCARTES or HUME).
Their horrible fate has been to become the saints of our "intellectuals", i.e. les miserables, the ungifted voles.

Ad VOLTAIRE in special:
MARX's merit was to ecrasez l'infame and His "class without its own interests".

Very mixed.

Kind of a pretentious edgelord tbh, but mostly on the right side of the issues of his time, and you can't deny that he was one of the greatest attack dogs in history.

Freedom fighter because he fought for freedom.

Anti-semite and massive a**hole in his personal life.

Has an annoying legacy in the sense of endlessly repeated pithy witticisms that have long passed into cliche.

Vastly preferable to Rousseau, whose detached BS provided inspiration for people like Robespierre and Francia.

So you don’t buy that the Terror was necessary to preserve the Revolution?

contributed to the egos of countless assholes in college discussion sections. hp