Thursday, May 01, 2008

Pérolas das História

Voltaire, Our Hero?, Tom Piatak

John Derbyshire is an estimable man and a terrific writer, but alas, being human, he is not always right. Evidence of this came today with his strange admiration for Voltaire, a man who “was fanatical only in his hatred of fanaticism” and who was “a much better, much more admirable man than any of those who hated him.” Indeed, Derbyshire asks us to sympathize with Voltaire on account of “the opposition faced by a curious and intelligent person like Voltaire under France’s ancien regime.”

Really? Voltaire hated more than fanaticism--he hated the Catholic Church. Pre-revolutionary France was able to accommodate many “curious and intelligent” men, including Lavoisier, the fifth ranking figure in the general science category in Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment, Fermat, the fifth ranking figure in Murray’s list of mathematicians, and Pascal, the ninth ranking figure in Murray’s listing of mathematicians and also a formidable writer, philosopher, and theologian. Revolutionary France was far less tolerant, as Lavoisier discovered; the judge who condemned him to death rejected appeals for clemency, declaring, “The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists.”

And Voltaire’s character was atrocious. As Thomas Fleming writes in The Morality of Everyday Life, Voltaire was “the very model of the modern sentimentalist. A chronic liar who flattered the very people he was libeling, faithless in love and friendship, he forfeited the esteem of Frederick the Great when he speculated on the devalued Saxon currency after learning that Frederick--who had forbidden speculation--was going to redeem it. (...)"

(nota: o autor é um paleo-conservador e assim não é de admirar este tipo de críticas a opiniões por neo-cons na National Review que arranjam sempre forma de evidenciar as suas raízes)

5 comments:

Miguel Madeira said...

O rei Luis XIV mandou queimar alguns textos de Pascal (as "Lettres provinciales"). Também parece ser verdade que tal proibição não teve grande efeito (e nada que se compare a ser guilhotinado, embora Lavoisier tenha ido para o cadafalso sobretudo por ser cobrador de impostos, não tanto pelas suas opiniões)

Pedro Fontela said...

O curioso é que ninguém do sector católico pergunta se esse ódio tem alguma razão de ser... só vitimas.

CN said...

Existe sempre uma verdade nos ódios,o problema é que notamos que esse "ódio" parte sobretudo de intelectuais e a sua consequência não foi a de uma tentativa de mudança social pela persuasão e exemplo mas por acontecimentos que os transformaram em "humanitarians with a guilhotine".

Pedro Fontela said...

"...acontecimentos que os transformaram em "humanitarians with a guilhotine""

Por oposição a católicos com fogueiras?

Miguel Madeira said...

O triste destino da guilhotina e da cadeira electrica: a ideia era serem meios "humanos" de execução e ficaram para a história como simbolos de atrocidade.