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Bidding Information
Lot #    11132
Auction End Date    8/16/2005 10:04:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire
Author    Antoine Guenee, ed
City    Philadelphia
Publisher    William Young
Publication Date    1795
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    2 volumes in one. 519, [1] pp., 207:127 mm., wide margins, usual age staining, small tear in margin of f. 2 not affecting text. A very good copy bound in contemporary sheep skin boards, spine taped.
          
Detailed
Description		    Antoine Guénée (1717-1803) wrote a number of books critical of Voltaires. No writer contributed so much as Voltaire to the destruction of the traditional beliefs fundamental to European society before the French Revolution: belief in the divine right of monarchy, in the legitimacy of the privileges of the nobility, and in the infallibility of the Church. Voltaire's philosophical convictions were those of a deist, not an atheist. It is also noteworthy that he attacked the biblical belief in the unity of mankind; to Negroes, for instance, he attributed an inferior and separate origin. Voltaire preferred to concentrate his attacks on the Old Testament and its followers, the Jews; this he did in such a manner that in anti-Semitic campaigns in the following centuries he was used as an authority and frequently quoted. From the psychological point of view it seems that the anti-Semitism of Voltaire, far from being a tactical stratagem, expressed in the facility of his attacks against the Jews, was primarily a result of his hatred for the Church. Historically speaking, Voltaire's outlook was a powerful contribution to the creation of the mental climate which made possible the emancipation of the Jews, but at the same time it prepared the ground for the future racial anti-Semitism. Just after Voltaire's death, Zalkind Hourwitz, librarian to the king of France, wrote: "The Jews forgive him all the evil he did to them because of all the good he brought them, perhaps unwittingly; for they have enjoyed a little respite for a few years now and this they owe to the progress of the Enlightenment, to which Voltaire surely contributed more than any other writer through his numerous works against fanaticism."

Title: Letters of certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire. Containing an apology for their own people, and for the Old Testament; with critical reflections and a short commentary extracted from a greater. Translated by the Rev. Philip Lefanu.

          
Reference
Description		    Singerman 94; Rosenbach 103; Evans 28781; EJ
        
Associated Images
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Listing Classification
Period
  
18th Century:    Checked
  
Location
America-South America:    Checked
  
Subject
Polemics:    Checked
  
Characteristic
Blue Paper:    Checked
Language:    English
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica