VOLTAIRE AND THE NECESSITY OF MODERN HISTORY

This article revisits what has often been called the “naive presentism” of Voltaire's historical work. It looks at the methodological and philosophical reasons for Voltaire's deliberate focus on modern history as opposed to ancient history, his refusal to “make allowances for time” in judg...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern intellectual history 2009-11, Vol.6 (3), p.457-484
Main Author: FORCE, PIERRE
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
French literature
German language
Historiography
History
Language history
Philosophy
Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) (1694-1778)
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Summary:This article revisits what has often been called the “naive presentism” of Voltaire's historical work. It looks at the methodological and philosophical reasons for Voltaire's deliberate focus on modern history as opposed to ancient history, his refusal to “make allowances for time” in judging the past, and his extreme selectiveness in determining the relevance of past events to world history. Voltaire's historical practice is put in the context of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, and considered in a tradition of universal history going back to Bossuet and leading up to nineteenth-century German historicism. Paradoxically, Voltaire is a major figure in the history of historiography not in spite of his presentism (as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay have argued), but because of it.
ISSN:1479-2443
1479-2451
DOI:10.1017/S147924430999014X