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Voltaire and Metaphysics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
It is too often assumed that Voltaire is uninterested in metaphysics and that his whole attitude is inimical to such studies. This assumption is of course largely dependent on the definition of the term metaphysics. To modern minds metaphysics tends to imply knowledge of the absolute obtained by some direct intuition of reality, and to the Bergsonian definition of metaphysics as the science which claims to dispense with symbols the present writer would largely subscribe. Given this modern definition of metaphysics, which is also the Kantian one, as a special mode of knowledge, it is an undoubted fact that Voltaire is not in this sense a metaphysical mind; the appeal to any peculiar or specifically a priori mode of thought was, of course, incompatible with his empiricism.
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References
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