Mésentente, malentendu et langage chez Voltaire ou le danger des liaisons
Misapprehension, Misunderstanding and the Language of Voltaire or the Dangers of Familiarity

Summary/Abstract: The study is a reflection on the disrupted faith in universalism, as manifested in Enlightenment thinking of the second half of the 18th century through the analysis of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, which came out in 1864 as a compensation for a temporarily pause in the issuing of Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Voltaire’s thinking in 118 alphabetically ordered entries represents a testimony of his moral principles (entries such as Morality, Tolerance, Dogmas) and notes the unreliability of language as a means of understanding among the people. Through a critical reading of selected entries from the Philosophical Dictionary, the author of the study suggests particular stages of the process of the disintegration of faith in understanding and analyses some of the indicated ways to its rehabilitation (through morality, refusal of fatality), which, however, are immediately denied by Voltaire himself.

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