How Voltaire Influenced the French Revolution

Voltaire (1694–1778) died just eleven years before the storming of the Bastille, but his ideas, his campaigns, and his reputation had an enormous influence on the French Revolution that followed. Through his prolific writing, his public campaigns against injustice, and his role as the most famous intellectual of his age, Voltaire helped to create the intellectual and political climate in which revolution became possible. This article traces the specific ways in which Voltaire’s legacy shaped the course of the French Revolution and its aftermath.

The Critique of Religious Authority

Voltaire’s lifelong campaign against the established churches — embodied in his famous slogan “Écrasez l’infâme” (“Crush the infamous thing”) — was one of the most important intellectual contributions to the revolutionary climate. By exposing the corruption of the clergy, the absurdity of religious dogma, and the cruelty of religious persecution, Voltaire helped to delegitimize the role of the Catholic Church in French public life.

When the revolutionaries of 1789 set about the reorganization of French society, the anti-clericalism of the Enlightenment was a major force. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), which placed the Church under state control, the confiscation of church property, and the eventual establishment of the Cult of the Supreme Being were all, descendants of Voltaire’s campaign against religious authority.

The Defence of Civil Liberties

Voltaire’s campaigns on behalf of victims of religious persecution and arbitrary justice — most famously the case of Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant in Toulouse who was falsely accused of murdering his son and executed under torture in 1762 — helped to create a new consciousness of civil liberties in France. The Traité sur la tolérance (1763), which Voltaire wrote in the course of the Calas affair, became a foundational text of the modern human rights tradition.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), with its proclamation of the rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression, was the direct descendant of the campaign for civil liberties that Voltaire had done so much to lead. The revolutionaries’ commitment to due process, to the presumption of innocence, and to the protection of citizens against arbitrary arrest and punishment all drew on principles that Voltaire had championed.

The Rejection of Aristocratic Privilege

Voltaire’s biting wit was often directed at the aristocracy, and his works contributed to the growing sentiment against the privileges of the nobility. His satirical tales, his historical works, and his philosophical dictionary all portrayed the aristocracy as ignorant, superstitious, and exploitative, and they helped to create a new critical consciousness of the inherited privileges of the Old Regime.

The August Decrees of 1789, which abolished the feudal privileges of the nobility, and the subsequent abolition of the aristocratic titles and privileges were, the political culmination of the critique of aristocratic privilege that Voltaire had done so much to develop. The revolutionaries’ commitment to legal equality, to the abolition of hereditary privilege, and to the principle that all citizens should be equal before the law drew on arguments that Voltaire had been making for half a century.

The Power of Public Opinion

Voltaire’s career demonstrated the power of public opinion to shape political life. His prolific writing, his wide correspondence, and his strategic use of the press helped to create a new public sphere in which the policies of the government could be debated, criticized, and sometimes reversed. The Calas affair, in which Voltaire mobilized public opinion to overturn a criminal conviction, was one of the first great examples of the power of public opinion in modern politics.

The Revolution of 1789 was, in significant part, a revolution of public opinion. The pamphlets, the newspapers, the political clubs, and the various other forms of public discussion that the Revolution generated were all descendants of the new public sphere that Voltaire and his contemporaries had done so much to create. The revolutionary commitment to the freedom of the press, to the right of assembly, and to the role of public opinion in shaping political life drew on principles that Voltaire had championed throughout his career.

The Limits of Voltaire’s Influence

The influence of Voltaire on the Revolution was real, but it was also limited. The Revolution went in directions that Voltaire would not have approved. The Terror of 1793–1794, with its execution of thousands of French citizens in the name of the Republic, was a perversion of the Enlightenment ideals that Voltaire had championed. The execution of Louis XVI, the establishment of the Jacobin dictatorship, and the various other excesses of the revolutionary period all went far beyond anything that Voltaire had contemplated.

Voltaire had been a monarchist who believed in enlightened absolutism, not a democrat or a republican. He had no confidence in the ability of the common people to govern themselves, and he would have been horrified by the political experiments of the revolutionary period. The Revolution was, a revolution of the people, and it went far beyond anything that Voltaire had imagined.

The Lasting Legacy

Despite the limits of his influence, Voltaire’s legacy to the Revolution was substantial. The revolutionary vocabulary — liberty, equality, the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people — was, the vocabulary that Voltaire had helped to create. The revolutionary principles — the rule of law, the protection of civil liberties, the rejection of religious intolerance, the critique of aristocratic privilege — were the principles that Voltaire had championed throughout his life.

The contemporary engagement with the French Revolution is, an engagement with the Enlightenment that produced it. Voltaire, more than any other single figure, represents the public face of that Enlightenment: the witty, irreverent, tireless defender of reason, justice, and human dignity. The Revolution that he helped to make possible was, for all its excesses, the political expression of the values he had spent his life defending.