Voltaire's Liberty And Fundamental Laws, 1764

Liberty and Fundamental Laws, 1764 In this document, Voltaire focuses even more strongly on religion and goes as far to claim that religion is damaging and dangerous to society. It was written during the Enlightenment and became very popular because of Voltaire’s rational thought. He writes this as a conversation between three people and uses them as examples of hypocrisy of religion. Because of Henry IV’s varying religious beliefs, according to French fundamental law, he should not have been eligible for kingship. He makes a valid point that fundamental law is just law based on convention and ancient usage/practices. He further supports his argument by giving the example of the Ancient Roman Republic. They do not still follow the same laws
In his opinion, man is destructive and ruins everything. The source of this problem is that man always wants more than what is given causing him to overuse his resources. This document was written in the same year as The Social Contract. He reiterates in Emile the idea that man is born free but very quickly becomes a slave to society and his environment. His goal with this document is to expand and maximize the education of man so that he may be equipped to survive and create a better civilization. He believes that man should seek out nature and follow its path. He repeatedly refers to the training of man, presumably the education of man, and this is significant to the French Revolution because out of it came a modernized education system in France. In the latter years of the Enlightenment, education became extremely important to philosophers and they advocated for a system based on absolutism. In Emile, he attempted to explain how man should be educated and described a reformed system of which traces can be seen in many modern-day education systems. He imagines a system where man is educated presumably from birth in order to live in natural order. In the brief excerpt, it does not seem as if Rousseau’s definition of education is what we think when we think about pedagogy, rather he sees it as being trained to learn to live a virtuous
Man is no longer himself rather he has conformed to society which he has described as a powerful and restrictive system. Rousseau believes that is man would have never gained knowledge from the arts and sciences, then they would not have the false values and motives or behave in such barbaric ways. He especially focuses on the idea of politeness. He claims that this is merely a societal norm because behind it, people are actually just lying frauds and that arts and science is to blame because it has corrupted out minds. He positively correlates the knowledge of the arts and sciences with the corruption of