Voltaire: The Universal Man

Voltaire: The Universal Man. Derek Parker. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. xv + 240 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3440-9. Voltaire, the pen-name of Francois-Marie Arouet, has had quite a good press since his death in 1778. He is widely regarded as a model of the large-hearted libertarian who endlessly crusades for tolerance and who sets himself up as the critic of 'establishments'.

Mr Parker for his part has no doubt that Voltaire was 'the universal man', the 'great humanitarian' and a leader of 'the march of reason'. The author accepts that Voltaire was a man of his time and class and had no regard for the theories of human equality or universal education. He sympathises with Voltaire's deism (or agnosticism) and his hatred of the Catholic Church and accepts that outside his novel, Candide, he was not all that great a writer and is little read today. He also accepts that his highly praised reason was not universally applied because like so many liberal intellectuals, he found disagreement hard to take: Dr Johnson was 'a superstitious dog' and Alexander Pope, 'a bigot, a poor being'. As he became a 'great man' he expected praise and agreement and in this biography he has found an appreciative writer. (A.C.)

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