Early modern · 1694–1778
Who influenced Voltaire?
Influences
The Enlightenment's sharp pen — toleration, ridicule of dogma, écrasez l'infâme.
Voltaire was influenced by John Locke. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Nicolas de Largillière, CC0 See the whole map
Who was Voltaire?
Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist and historian. Famous for his wit, he attacked Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, and slavery, and argued for freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, always at risk from the censorship of the French monarchy.
He wrote in almost every form, from plays and poems to histories and scientific expositions, with more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets, and was one of the first authors to win international fame and commercial success. His best-known work, the novella Candide, mocks the thinkers of his day, above all Leibniz's claim that ours is the best of all possible worlds.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Voltaire?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- John Locke 1632–1704
The line of teachers behind Voltaire
The longest documented line of influence ending at Voltaire runs 16 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Voltaire
Indirect influences
- Through John Locke: René Descartes
Contemporaries of Voltaire
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Voltaire, with no direct line between them.
- Montesquieu 1689–1755
- George Berkeley 1685–1753
- Émilie du Châtelet 1706–1749
- Christian Wolff 1679–1754
- Thomas Reid 1710–1796
- David Hume 1711–1776
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Denis Diderot 1713–1784
Voltaire by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 0
- Thinkers upstream
- 57
- Thinkers downstream
- 0
- Wikipedia languages
- 179 — #3 of 36 among early modern philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Questions about Voltaire
- Who influenced Voltaire?
- John Locke.
- Who did Voltaire influence?
- No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on Voltaire.
- When did Voltaire live?
- 1694–1778. The map files Voltaire under the early modern period.
- How rare is the Voltaire card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Voltaire in 179 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More early modern philosophers
- René Descartes 1596–1650
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- Adam Smith 1723–1790
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- John Locke 1632–1704
- Blaise Pascal 1623–1662