Book: Philosophical Dictionary

Overview
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary (1764) is a compact, alphabetically arranged series of essays that distills his mature Enlightenment outlook into sharp, provocative entries. Published anonymously and quickly banned, it circulated widely and was repeatedly expanded. The work champions reason, historical criticism, and humane reform while lampooning superstition and fanaticism across confessions. Its portability and wit made complex debates accessible to a broad readership and turned the dictionary form into a weapon for cultural change.

Form and Method
Eschewing systematic treatises, Voltaire advances ideas through brief articles that mix anecdote, philology, satire, and moral reflection. The alphabetical format masks a coherent method: compare sources, prefer observation to authority, and expose contradictions by juxtaposing doctrines with their historical effects. He draws on Locke's empiricism and Newtonian science while keeping a stylus dipped in irony; the tone is urbane but edged, designed to puncture pretension rather than build a closed system.

Religion, Superstition, and Toleration
Religious topics dominate. Voltaire separates a sparse natural religion, belief in a creator inferred from the order of nature, from revealed religions, which he subjects to textual scrutiny and moral tests. Miracles, prophecies, and scriptural literalism are treated with skepticism; priestcraft and the alliance of altar and throne are indicted for nurturing persecution. Fanaticism is the great public vice: it corrupts conscience, justifies cruelty, and breeds civil discord. Against it, he advocates toleration as both a moral imperative and a political necessity. The dictionary returns repeatedly to notorious miscarriages of justice, such as the Calas affair, to argue that a plural society stabilizes itself when conscience is free and law is impartial.

Knowledge, Science, and Limits
The entries praise experimental inquiry and clear reasoning, mock scholastic jargon, and deflate metaphysical grandiosity. Voltaire rejects systems that explain everything, Leibnizian optimism and monads are prime targets, and insists on the modesty of probable knowledge. He favors practical enlightenment: support for smallpox inoculation, admiration for useful arts, and esteem for those who test nature rather than spin abstractions. On the soul, free will, and immortality, he tends toward cautious deism and moral utility, affirming responsibility while doubting the pretensions of dogmatic metaphysics.

Morals, Law, and Society
Moral progress hinges on reducing cruelty. Voltaire attacks torture, religiously motivated penalties, and arbitrary judgments, aligning with contemporary calls for penal reform. War is treated as organized barbarism disguised by rhetoric; conquest spreads misery more often than virtue. He endorses commerce and manners as civilizing forces and defends freedom of thought and the press as safeguards against tyranny. Slavery and colonial violence are condemned with a mix of economic critique and moral outrage, underscoring the hypocrisy of Christian powers that traffic in human beings.

Language, History, and Critique
Many articles operate as miniature lessons in historical method. Voltaire tracks the evolution of words and institutions to show how revered terms, heresy, orthodoxy, miracle, shift with power, not truth. By comparing cultures and epochs, he relativizes local customs and punctures claims to timeless authority. The dictionary’s skeptical philology turns sacred history into a human record, full of contingencies that can be evaluated rather than blindly obeyed.

Style and Legacy
The book’s brilliance lies in its fusion of lucidity and bite. Aphoristic turns, staged dialogues, and cool understatement let ridicule do philosophical work. Its portable format encouraged piecemeal reading and debate, spreading Enlightenment ideals beyond salons to a broader public. The Philosophical Dictionary helped define the Enlightenment’s creed: reason without pedantry, piety without superstition, liberty secured by toleration and law, and a persistent demand that belief answer to evidence and humanity.