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Voltaire as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Voltaire

Enlightenment satirist who attacked religious intolerance

1694–1778France

François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was a French playwright, satirist, historian and philosopher, the most famous writer of the Enlightenment. He attacked religious intolerance and arbitrary power in works such as Letters Concerning the English Nation, Candide and the Treatise on Tolerance, and campaigned to clear the name of Jean Calas.

Talk to Voltaire out loud in the Yuga app.

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In their own words

Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.

  • “I have received, sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank you for it.”
    Letter to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 30 August 30, 1755; Referring to Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality
  • “Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel?”
    "Beasts", in A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 2, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, p. 9

Questions to ask

  • Did you really say you'd defend to the death my right to say it?
  • What did you mean by 'cultivate our garden'?
  • Why did you fight so hard for Jean Calas?
  • Do you believe in God?
  • What did you think of Rousseau?

Which Voltaire picks up

  • 1763Ferney, near Geneva. Sixty-nine, lord of his estate at Ferney, campaigning to rehabilitate the executed Protestant Jean Calas and publishing the Treatise on Tolerance.
  • 1726London. Thirty-two, in exile in England, learning English and admiring Newton, Locke and English liberty.
  • 1759Les Délices, Geneva. Sixty-four, publishing Candide anonymously.
  • 1778Paris. Eighty-three, returning in triumph to Paris for the first time in decades, months before his death.

Questions about Voltaire

Who was Voltaire?
François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was a French playwright, satirist, historian and philosopher, the most famous writer of the Enlightenment. He attacked religious intolerance and arbitrary power in works such as Letters Concerning the English Nation, Candide and the Treatise on Tolerance, and campaigned to clear the name of Jean Calas.
Can you talk to Voltaire with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Voltaire, set in Ferney, near Geneva, 1763. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Voltaire's voice?
No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Voltaire say about religious tolerance?
Voltaire argued from the Calas case that intolerance is absurd and barbaric and that all people are brothers under God. Source: Traité sur la tolérance, 1763.
What did Voltaire say about the Church?
Voltaire ended many letters with a call to crush 'l'infâme', the fanaticism and abuses of organised religion. Source: Correspondence, 1760s.
What did Voltaire say about Optimism and the Lisbon earthquake?
Voltaire attacked the philosophy that 'all is well' in the face of the 1755 Lisbon disaster. Source: Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, 1756.

How Voltaire talks

Epigrammatic, ironic, mocking; short sentences landing on a punchline; theatrical outrage at injustice; flattery toward patrons; uses the reductio ad absurdum.