Voltaire’s epistemological theory

This French philosopher was one of the great defenders of freedom of expression and science.

If you think about it, you may come to the conclusion that a large part of our lives can be summed up in one task: knowing how to manage our doubts. We are incapable of knowing everything around us, or even ourselves, completely.We are unable to fully know everything around us, or even ourselves, but we get frustrated by it, even though it can't be helped. This leads us to feel obliged to position ourselves in the face of these unanswered questions: which of the possible options will we bet on?

Voltaire, the great French philosopher of the Enlightenment era, decided to address just this issue. Given that there are many things of which we cannot be sure, what criteria should we follow to trust more in certain beliefs and less in others? In the following we will see What was Voltaire's theory and how can it be applied to our daily life?.

Who was Voltaire?

The word Voltaire is actually a pseudonym used by the French philosopher and writer François Marie Arouetborn in 1694 in Paris into a middle-class family. Although he studied law at university, from a very young age he stood out especially for his gifts as a writer, and as a teenager he had already written a tragedy named Amulius and Numitor.

In 1713, François managed to get a job at the French embassy in The Hague, and although he was soon expelled from it because of a scandal involving a French refugee, from that moment on he began to gain fame as a writer and playwright, although his popularity also brought him problems. In fact, he was imprisoned more than once for insulting the nobility, and ended up being banished from France. By then, he had already adopted the pseudonym VoltaireVoltaire; he did so during one of his banishments to a rural French village.

Thus, Voltaire was expelled from France in the year 1726, and went to England, where he imbibed the philosophy of theThere he immersed himself in the philosophy and epistemology of the place. When he returned to France in 1729, he published writings defending the line of thought of materialist philosophers such as John Locke and Newton's science, areas of knowledge that Voltaire considered had not yet reached a dogmatic and irrational France.

Meanwhile, Voltaire began to enrich himself through speculation and his writings, although many were banned due to, among other things, his criticism of the Christian-rooted religious fanaticism that abounded in the country. He died in 1778 in Paris.

Voltaire's theory of knowledge

The main characteristics of Voltaire's work are as follows.

1. Certainty is absurd

Voltaire's philosophical starting point may seem pessimistic, but in reality, in the context of his time, it was revolutionary. In Europe, until the Enlightenment, the task of philosophy and much of science had been to rationalize explanations of how the existence of the Christian god was revealed through what could be investigated. Basically, the word of the Church on any subject was taken for granted, so that knowledge was erected on a structure of dogmas that, as such, could not be questioned.

Voltaire's epistemological theory starts from a total rejection of dogmatism and a proactive search for valid knowledge obtained through empirical testing.

2. Rejection of innatism

Voltaire broke completely with the rationalist tradition that had taken such a strong hold in France since René Descartes published his works. That implies, among other things, that for Voltaire we are not born with innate concepts in our brainsbut that we learn entirely through experience.

3. Doubt is the reasonable thing to do

Since we only depend on experience to learn, and since experience is always incomplete and mediated by senses that often betray us, Voltaire concludes that it is impossible to know faithfully the whole truth about what is real and what is not. This may be discouraging, but any other conclusion cannot be logical.

4. We can manage doubt

Whether or not we can come to know the exact reflection of what exists, Voltaire believes that what is important is what we do with the doubts we have, and the way in which we we learn to discriminate between reasonable and unreasonable possibilities.How can this be achieved?

5. Rejecting dogmas

This point is derived from the previous ones. If doubt is reasonable and innate knowledge does not exist, there is no reason to take certain ideas for granted simply because they are widely accepted or because certain institutions defend them with great vehemence.

6. The importance of education and science

Absolute certainties may be dead, but that, in turn, gives us the possibility of creating a more genuine, much better constructed knowledge. Thanks to freedom of expression, to critical thinking nurtured by education and to the nurtured by education and the testing of hypotheses through science, it is possible to bring our ideas closer to the truth.

Thus, what is necessary to manage doubts is, according to Voltaire's theory, an attitude that leads us to doubt everything, the ability to develop ways to see how our beliefs fit with reality, and science, which for this philosopher would not be just another institution, but a new culturally perfected way to obtain information that is much more reliable than what we were used to.

Of course, not all of us have scientific measuring devices or knowledge and tools for data analysis, but these philosophical principles help us to understand something important. To know something, you have to put effort into it, analyze it critically, and turn to evidence-based sources of information.