A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07 — Story, Setting & Ideas

Joseph as a Literary Precedent

Voltaire treats the story of Joseph not as scripture but as a precursor to later fiction. He notes that Joseph's tale 'appears to be the model of all the Oriental writers' and traces parallels to Greek myths: Hippolytus and Phaedra, Bellerophon and Zenobia. The seduction scene with Potiphar's wife is analyzed as a recurring motif, with Voltaire dryly observing that the eunuch having a wife 'is not at all extraordinary' given that the kislar aga in Constantinople still keeps a seraglio. He highlights a variant from 'ancient Arabian authors' where a child in a cradle provides testimony, a detail that underscores Voltaire's interest in how narratives evolve across cultures. By treating Joseph as a literary archetype, Voltaire implicitly questions the uniqueness of biblical revelation.

Luxury and the Invention of Scissors

In the entry on luxury, Voltaire deploys a historical argument to deflate moral panic. He imagines the outcry when scissors first appeared: 'They were undoubtedly considered as prodigals and coxcombs, who bought at an extravagant price an instrument just calculated to spoil the work of the Creator.' The same logic, he suggests, was applied to shirts and socks, which 'old counsellors' denounced as 'dreadful and fatal' innovations. Voltaire's method is to expose the arbitrariness of moral judgments by showing that what is condemned in one era becomes commonplace in another. He quotes Horace to advocate a mean between extremes, but his tone is more subversive than balanced: the examples are deliberately trivial, forcing readers to question why similar reasoning is accepted in weightier matters.

The Paradox of the Mad Soul

Voltaire's entry on madness confronts a theological puzzle: if the soul is immaterial and immortal, how can it become irrational? He describes a madman who 'has the same perceptions' as a wise man—seeing red, hearing music—yet cannot reason correctly. 'It is pure, they say, and subject to no infirmity; behold it provided with all the necessary assistance; nothing which passes in the body can change its essence; yet it is shut up in a close carriage, and conveyed to Charenton.' The reference to the Parisian asylum is pointed. Voltaire concludes that thought, like other senses, is subject to bodily derangement: 'A madman is an invalid whose brain is diseased, while the gouty man is one who suffers in his feet and hands.' This materialist leaning, though cautiously phrased, challenges the dualist orthodoxy of his time.

The Dictionary as a Weapon

Throughout this volume, Voltaire uses the dictionary form to juxtapose disparate topics—Joseph, luxury, madness—without explicit transitions, forcing readers to draw their own connections. The entries share a common strategy: take a received idea, examine it with historical or logical scrutiny, and reveal its inconsistencies. The entry on Joseph treats a sacred story as literature; the entry on luxury reduces moral outrage to a historical curiosity; the entry on madness questions the very nature of the soul. Each undermines authority in a different register, from scholarly comparison to ironic mockery to philosophical analysis. The cumulative effect is a dismantling of dogmatic certainty, one entry at a time.

Readers approaching this volume should expect not a systematic treatise but a series of provocations. Voltaire's method is to start from a concrete example—a biblical episode, a household tool, a medical condition—and expand it into a critique of broader assumptions. The dictionary format allows him to shift tone and topic abruptly, rewarding those who read across entries. Pay attention to the recurring tension between reason and custom, and to Voltaire's habit of citing authorities only to undermine them. The volume is best read as a performance of Enlightenment skepticism in miniature.