Critics such as Leibniz said no, since mathematical description was not the same thing as philosophical explanation, and Newton refused to offer an explanation of how and why gravity operated the way that it did. Voltaires influence is palpably present, for example, in Kants famous argument in his essay What is Enlightenment? that Enlightenment stems from the free and public use of critical reason, and from the liberty that allows such critical debate to proceed untrammeled. Voltaire sheds light on the psychological idea of optomism versus pessimism. None of the inhabitants attempts to force beliefs on others, no one is imprisoned, and the king greets visitors as his equals. Among the philosophical tendencies that Voltaire most deplored, in fact, were those that he associated most powerfully with Descartes who, he believed, began in skepticism but then left it behind in the name of some positive philosophical project designed to eradicate or resolve it. Philosophy was also a part of this mix, and during the Regency the young Voltaire was especially shaped by his contacts with the English aristocrat, freethinker,and Jacobite Lord Bolingbroke. Had it been executed, a royal lettre de cachet would have sent Voltaire to the royal prison of the Bastille as a result of his authorship of Lettres philosophiques; instead, he was able to flee with Du Chtelet to Cirey where the couple used the sovereignty granted by her aristocratic title to create a safe haven and base for Voltaires new position as a philosophical rebel and writer in exile. Originally titled Letters on England, Voltaire left a draft of the text with a London publisher before returning home in 1729. Emilie du Chtelet was twenty-nine years old in the spring of 1733 when Voltaire began his relationship with her. It was during his English period that Voltaires transition into his mature philosophe identity began. They further insisted that it was enough that gravity did operate the way that Newton said it did, and that this was its own justification for accepting his theory. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes. Newton pointed natural philosophy in a new direction. Yet contained in the text is a serious attack on Leibnizian philosophy, one that in many ways marks the culmination of Voltaires decades long attack on this philosophy started during the Newton wars. Voltaire found this Leibnizian turn dyspeptic, and he began to craft an anti-Leibnizian discourse in the 1740s that became a bulwark of his brand of Newtonianism. It is no doubt overly grandiose to say with Lord Morley that, Voltaire left France a poet and returned to it a sage. It is also an exaggeration to say that he was transformed from a poet into a philosophe while in England. Gradually, however, through a combination of artfully written plays, poems, and essays and careful self-presentation in Parisian society, Voltaire began to regain his public stature. Religious Criticism: Voltaire's Fanaticism In Religious Tolerance But the English years did trigger a transformation in him. Bolingbroke, whose address Voltaire left in Paris as his own forwarding address, was one conduit of influence. Montesquieus 1721 Lettres Persanes, which offered a set of fictionalized letters by Persians allegedly traveling in France, and Swifts 1726 Gullivers Travels were clear influences when Voltaire conceived his work.
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