Voltaire and the Necessity of Modern History

Bibliographic Data

ID12740586
AuthorsPierre Force (0009-0006-0758-5226, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume6
Issue3
Pages457-484
Publication date2009-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Intellectual History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1479-2443 • E-ISSN: 1479-2451
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s147924430999014x
OpenAlexW2046386382
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited19

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

Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · German · Historicism · Historiography · History of ideas · Intellectual history · Literature · Presentism · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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