The Age of Voltaire

The death of Louis XIV to the beginning of the Seven Year’s War was a time of change for Western Europe, especially in a growing conflict between faith and reason. The Age of Voltaire is the ninth volume of The Story of Civilization series by Will Durant and joined for the third time by his wife Ariel investigate the changing politics, cultural traits, and the face of sciences of the early modern era as well as the conflict between religion of philosophy.

While this volume isn’t a biography of Voltaire, the Durants used his life to focus on specific regions of Europe—mainly his native France, England, and greater Germany. Those regions are the focus of the first three books of the volume in which their political developments, their show more cultural accomplishments in the various arts, and the impacts they and Voltaire had on one another. The last two-fifths of the book features the two highlights of the “Age of Enlightenment”, the advancement of science and the attack of the Philosophes upon Christianity. It is this last topic in which Will Durant had waited decades to get to as reason and faith battled leading to the intellectual development of atheism in the cultural context of Catholicism in 18th-Century France especially in play between factions of the Jesuits and the Jansenists. Durant not only introduces the reader to Diderot, Helvetius, D’Holbach, and Voltaire’s shifting view of religion and philosophy in the context of morality. Through the writing a long-time reader can tell how much Will Durant enjoys discussing the topic, but also how he foreshadows the result of this conflict that would not affect England or Germany the same way and why.

The Age of Voltaire finds Will and Ariel Durant detailing the “Age of Enlightenment” following the life of its most well-known thinker, and setting the stage for revolution. show less

Aside from the cursory first volume of "The Story of Civilization" entitled "Our Oriental Heritage" this series has been the backbone of my reading in the history of the Mediterranean basin, and of Europe. The prose is very good, and the information very well organised, with the short biographical sketches being quite informative. There are a reasonable number of illustrations, and the end-paper maps usually good enough. Not a quick read, but a very high quality answer to those who find cultural history "boring." As the Durants had already entitled the previous Volume "The Age of Louis XIV", a title they shared with one of Voltaire's works, they felt it just to use this title. And, the volume is an account of a period roughly coeval show more with bulk of the eminent French man of letter's life. Indeed his skeptical but well researched personal attitude is the tone of European intellectual life portrayed here..... show less

Amazing how much political, anti-cleric, philosophic, medical, and scientific development occurred in the 1700s. And mentions in passing enclosure in Britain -- first half of the eighteenth century (maybe staring in the end of the 1600s.

Mr. Durant writes so plainly. One doesn't have to struggle to understand what his prose is meaning to convey. Nor does one have to struggle against the fear of falling asleep by the numbing academic language of a typical erudite book on this period.

A history of Western European civilization 1715-1756 with special emphasis on the conflict between religion and philosophy. in-depth examination of France and England in the first half of the eighteenth century will introduce you to: The English ideas that inspired the Enlightenment in France-skepticism, scientific experiment, constitutional government, "natural rights," and individual liberty the Salons of Paris, where the wits and thinkers of all...