Editing Voltaire (section)

== Views on race and slavery ==
[[File:Moreau Sucre crop.jpg|thumb|right|An illustration of a scene from ''[[Candide]]'' where the protagonist encounters a slave in [[French Guiana]]]]

Voltaire rejected the biblical [[Adam and Eve]] story and was a [[Polygenism|polygenist]] who speculated that each race had entirely separate origins.<ref>[[Louis Sala-Molins|Sala-Molins, Louis]] (2006) ''Dark side of the light: slavery and the French Enlightenment''. Univ Of Minnesota Press. {{ISBN|0-8166-4389-X}}. p. 102</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=de Viguerie, Jean |date=July 1993 |title=Les 'Lumieres' et les peuples |journal=Revue Historique |volume=290 |issue=1 |pages=161–89}}</ref> According to William Cohen, like most other polygenists, Voltaire believed that because of their different origins, Black Africans did not entirely share the natural humanity of white Europeans.<ref name="Cohen 2003 86">{{Cite book |last=William B. Cohen |title=The French encounter with Africans: White response to Blacks, 1530–1880 |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2003 |page=86}}</ref> According to David Allen Harvey, Voltaire often invoked racial differences as a means to attack religious orthodoxy, and the Biblical account of creation.<ref>{{Cite book |last=David Allen Harvey |title=The French Enlightenment and its Others:The Mandarin, the Savage, and the Invention of the Human Sciences |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2012 |pages=135–46}}</ref> Other historians, instead, have suggested that Voltaire's support for polygenism was more heavily encouraged by his investments in the French [[John Law's Company|Compagnie des Indes]] and other colonial enterprises that engaged in the slave trade.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Giovannetti-Singh |first=Gianamar |date=7 September 2022 |title=Racial Capitalism in Voltaire's Enlightenment |journal=History Workshop Journal |volume=94 |issue=84|pages=22–41 |doi=10.1093/hwj/dbac025 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gliozzi |first=Giuliano |date=1979 |title=Poligenismo e razzismo agli albori del secolo dei lumi |journal=Rivista di Filosofia |volume=70 |issue=1 |pages=1–31}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Duchet |first=Michèle |title=Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières: Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvétius, Diderot |publisher=F. Maspero |year=1971 |isbn=978-2226078728 |location=Paris |language=fr}}</ref>

His most famous remark on slavery is found in ''Candide'', where the hero is horrified to learn "at what price we eat sugar in Europe" after coming across a slave in [[French Guiana]] who has been mutilated for escaping, who opines that, if all human beings have common origins as the Bible taught, it makes them cousins, concluding that "no one could treat their relatives more horribly". Elsewhere, he wrote caustically about "whites and Christians [who] proceed to purchase negroes cheaply, in order to sell them dear in America". Voltaire has been accused of supporting the slave trade as per a letter attributed to him,<ref>Davis, David Brion, ''The problem of slavery in Western culture'' (New York: Oxford University Press 1988) {{ISBN|0-19-505639-6}} p. 392</ref><ref>Stark, Rodney, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, ''Science'', Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (2003), p. 359</ref><ref>Miller, Christopher L., The French Atlantic triangle: literature and culture of the slave trade (2008) pp. x, 7, 73, 77</ref> although it has been suggested that this letter is a forgery "since no satisfying source attests to the letter's existence."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Catherine A. Reinhardt |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7ItZ3rkWk8MC&q=edward+seeber+%2B+voltaire&pg=PA43 |title=Claims to Memory: Beyond Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean |publisher=Berghahn Books |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-84545-079-3 |page=43}}</ref>

In his [[Dictionnaire philosophique|''Philosophical Dictionary'']], Voltaire endorses [[Montesquieu]]'s criticism of the slave trade: "Montesquieu was almost always in error with the learned, because he was not learned, but he was almost always right against the fanatics and the promoters of slavery."{{sfn|Durant|Durant|1980|p=358}}

[[Zeev Sternhell]] argues that despite his shortcomings, Voltaire was a forerunner of liberal [[wikt:pluralism|pluralism]] in his approach to history and non-European cultures.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Sternhell |first=Zeev |title=The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition |date=2010 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=126}}</ref> Voltaire wrote, "We have slandered the Chinese because their metaphysics is not the same as ours&nbsp;... This great misunderstanding about Chinese rituals has come about because we have judged their usages by ours, for we carry the prejudices of our contentious spirit to the end of the world."<ref name=":0" /> In speaking of Persia, he condemned Europe's "ignorant audacity" and "ignorant credulity". When writing about India, he declares, "It is time for us to give up the shameful habit of slandering all sects and insulting all nations!"<ref name=":0" /> In ''Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations'', he defended the integrity of the Native Americans and wrote favorably of the [[Inca Empire]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sternhell |first=Zeev |title=The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition |date=2010 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=283}}</ref>