zoes_human's review against another edition
This is just silly. The Patron Saint of Well Actually is no doubt worshiped by many who believe their reasoning so profound as to ignore reality and facts, but at some 250 pages, I know all I need to know about Voltaire. DNF.
paloma_sanchezh's review against another edition
4.0
J'ai fini :)
I proudly wrote "I finished" because this books took me more than year and a half to finish. I found a copy of this edition at a very cool coffee shop in Mexico City and fell in love with the Penguin Edition. So I borrowed it. I must confess I was scared of reading the direct work of a philospher, as I am not really fond of philosphy and find it difficult to follow up. So this Portable Voltaire book was quite a nice surprise, not only as it was a careful selection of key works and miscellaneous thoughts and ideas but also because it allowed me to discover a clever, witty, sarcastic, funny philospher... Perhaps I was biased by my high school classes on philosophy and their unsuccessful attempt to bring a 16 year old teenager to Nietzche or so, but by reading this book, I discovered that philosphy can be funny and that truly great thinkers are not that complicated. For, was it not Voltaire, along with other two key French figures, who with their work, brought a whole Revolution of thought and in history?
Voltaire is funny and at the same time, precise on its critique. This selection shows that he was always opposed to fanaticism, to religion and to ideas that made men ridiculus to the point of avoiding any critique and failing to see truth. Anything that opposes knowledge and learning is, to Voltaire, the quickest way towards failure and suffering. As he wrote "less fanaticism, less misery".
I found two of his complete works, included in this volume, quite hilarous "Candide" and "Zadig". I thinks that the contemporary reader could find these stories -particularly Candide- dull and silly, to modern standards. However, one must always consider the author´s time and context. Candide is a story that can be considered as silly and absurd, and yet, the idea behind it is what should remain. The character is Candide, an orphan adopted by a rich family sometime in the the 16th centry or so, whose life is, to say the least a catastrophe. He is a man who is separeted from those he loves one and again, and sees every disaster that can befall men time and again. He fails to believe that "things are always the best that they can be" as was a common belief on Voltaire's time, most likely a lesson from religion. Candide refuses to accept that thought and in every adventure he lives -from Europe to Africa, to America- he fights this. Though he does not have a quite happy ending, he understands at last, that things will always be as good as men, as we, make and work for them to be. That is, one can make oneself content by what one has, and work for it to be the best.
Zadig is somewhat similar, as we see the story of a man to whom tragedy befalls him for being wise, just and fair, but he never ceases to do good in his life.
In short, this book, though not easy to finish -one should take pauses- contains excellent works by Voltaire. A must-read, I should say.
I proudly wrote "I finished" because this books took me more than year and a half to finish. I found a copy of this edition at a very cool coffee shop in Mexico City and fell in love with the Penguin Edition. So I borrowed it. I must confess I was scared of reading the direct work of a philospher, as I am not really fond of philosphy and find it difficult to follow up. So this Portable Voltaire book was quite a nice surprise, not only as it was a careful selection of key works and miscellaneous thoughts and ideas but also because it allowed me to discover a clever, witty, sarcastic, funny philospher... Perhaps I was biased by my high school classes on philosophy and their unsuccessful attempt to bring a 16 year old teenager to Nietzche or so, but by reading this book, I discovered that philosphy can be funny and that truly great thinkers are not that complicated. For, was it not Voltaire, along with other two key French figures, who with their work, brought a whole Revolution of thought and in history?
Voltaire is funny and at the same time, precise on its critique. This selection shows that he was always opposed to fanaticism, to religion and to ideas that made men ridiculus to the point of avoiding any critique and failing to see truth. Anything that opposes knowledge and learning is, to Voltaire, the quickest way towards failure and suffering. As he wrote "less fanaticism, less misery".
I found two of his complete works, included in this volume, quite hilarous "Candide" and "Zadig". I thinks that the contemporary reader could find these stories -particularly Candide- dull and silly, to modern standards. However, one must always consider the author´s time and context. Candide is a story that can be considered as silly and absurd, and yet, the idea behind it is what should remain. The character is Candide, an orphan adopted by a rich family sometime in the the 16th centry or so, whose life is, to say the least a catastrophe. He is a man who is separeted from those he loves one and again, and sees every disaster that can befall men time and again. He fails to believe that "things are always the best that they can be" as was a common belief on Voltaire's time, most likely a lesson from religion. Candide refuses to accept that thought and in every adventure he lives -from Europe to Africa, to America- he fights this. Though he does not have a quite happy ending, he understands at last, that things will always be as good as men, as we, make and work for them to be. That is, one can make oneself content by what one has, and work for it to be the best.
Zadig is somewhat similar, as we see the story of a man to whom tragedy befalls him for being wise, just and fair, but he never ceases to do good in his life.
In short, this book, though not easy to finish -one should take pauses- contains excellent works by Voltaire. A must-read, I should say.
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