Voltaire Born in 1694 in Paris, France, Voltaire established himself as one of the leading writers of the Enlightenment. His famous works include the tragedy Zaire, the historical study The Age of Louis XIV, and the satirical tale Candide. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Often at odds with French authorities for his politically charged works, he was jailed twice and spent many years in exile. He died shortly after returning to Paris in 1778. François-Marie d'Arouet (1694–1778), better known by his pseudonym Voltaire, was a French writer and public activist who played a singular role in defining the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment. At the center of his work was a new conception of philosophy and the philosopher which in several crucial respects influenced the modern concept of each. Yet in other ways Voltaire was not a philosopher at all in the modern sense of the term. He wrote as many plays, short stories, and poems as overtly philosophical treatises, and indeed directed many of his critical writings against the philosophical claims of recognized philosophers such as Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes. He was, however, a vigorous defender of a conception of the natural sciences which served in his mind as an antidote to vain and fruitless philosophical inquiry. In clarifying this new distinction between science and philosophy, and above all in fighting it vigorously in public campaigns directed against the perceived enemies of fanaticism and superstition, Voltaire indicated several paths for modern philosophy that it subsequently followed. Voltaire was of bourgeois origins. According to his birth certificate he was born on 21 November 1694, but the hypothesis that his birth was kept secret cannot be discarded, since he stated several times that it actually occurred on 20 February. believed he was the son of an officer named Rochebrune, who was also a songwriter. She had no love either for her supposed father, François Arouet, a one-time notary who later became a bankruptcy trustee at the Cour des Comptes (audit office), or for her older brother Armand. Please note: this is just an example. Make an article habit now from our expert writers. Get a custom essay Almost nothing is known about his mother, about whom he said almost nothing. Having lost her when he was seven, he appears to have become an early rebel against family authority. He became close to his godfather, the abbot of Châteauneuf, a freethinker and epicurean who introduced the boy to the famous courtesan Ninon de Lenclos when she was 84 years old. Without a doubt he owes his positive vision and sense of reality to his bourgeois origins.