Tag Archives: Voltaire

perfide manon: peace with the “petit collet”

Perfide Manon and Abbe Prevost. She was the classic cocotte, and he the classic dupe; first the Abbe wrote his famous story, and then he set out to live it… …Prevost ventured back to France, and there was joined by … Continue reading

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catherine: search for golden pheasants

Catherine’s boat ride. It was 1787 and the Empress was showing off the wonders of her realm, which were many indeed. Question was, were they real,or fake? Only General Potemkin, the one-eyed giant, knew for sure. And he wasn’t saying… … Continue reading

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ever since Abraham gave Ishmael the boot

There has been a couple of articles over the past several months in Haaretz, the Israeli secular left wing daily that try to confront the issue of co-existence with the Palestinians and of course the larger Islamic world from the … Continue reading

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tencin: high wire act between rationalism and passion

“My menagerie,” Alexandrine Tencin called her salon; her guests were “mes betes.” Her Tuesdays she filled with good talk, high spirits, and low comedy involving chamber pots and such. Her leisure she filled with literature, the recourse of the bored. … Continue reading

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liberation: french identity on the short leash

The liberation of Mme de Tencin. From convent to court, from bank to boudoir, she was always prone to argue. It was the end of the Louis XIV reign, a hey-day of cynical license that characterized the Regency period that … Continue reading

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hume: a fire hose in paradise

Our tradition of the Enlightenment. Secularism and at least partly a sectarian quarrel with religion. They could never fairly assess the contours of Christian thought, art and humanitarianism and in so doing opened the door to the counter Enlightenment which … Continue reading

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when the noble run free

The Enlightenment. It has become an ordinary and familiar thing; like a Marcel Duchamp sculpture, what was once subversive and novel, the quarrel with Christianity and that people of different religious affiliations could live peacefully together, has now become an … Continue reading

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avoiding the seductive charms of despair

“Returning form Syracuse?” ….Four hundred years ago, the French “politiques” advanced the novel, and totally subversive notion of the time that people of different religious persuasions could live together, in peace, in the same country and under the same sovereign. … Continue reading

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sunset of a new dawn

The Enlightenment. Its the basis of our secular society and ints values underpin much of the consumer economy. Its values have dominated the public sphere since the dawn of the industrial age. This liberal, rational, humanitarian way of thought has … Continue reading

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lessing and nathan the wise guy

It says much about the Enlightenment spirit that the playwright Gotthold Lessing preferred to look upon himself as a critic. It says much about Lessing the critic that his greatest work of poetic criticism was entitled Laokoon. To Lessing, the … Continue reading

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