The Scientific Revolution: Voltaire's Effect On Government And Society

In the late 16th century through the end of the 17th century, France was afflicted by religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. These feuds would originally turn the French monarchy into something irreversible. The power of the nobility in France started to cause a threat to the monarch. The monarchs over the next half-century sided with either the Protestants or the Catholics in order to keep their own political security and the peace in France. Eventually, these wars would come to an end. The Enlightenment grew as an addition of the Scientific Revolution; during the Scientific Revolution, Europeans discarded traditional morals and began using rationale and actuality to explain the world around them. While the Scientific Revolution focused on the physical world, the Enlightenment attempted to explain the purpose of regulation,

Along with this came Enlightenment Thinkers; Voltaire being one of them. Voltaire contributed freedom of speech, opposition to the monarchy, and many more ideas up to the plate. Voltaire had a major effect on France’s government and society because he emphasised freedom and justice, he questioned what he knew what was wrong, and he spurred the third estates to revolt.
To begin, Voltaire stuck by the idea of individualism by emphasising freedom and justice. In Voltaire’s book, Candide, it states, “Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities--you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation” (52). Voltaire grew up with Absolute Monarchy and thought an enlightened monarchy would be a good type of governing; he wanted to see monarchs treat everyone equally and with justice.