French philosopher Voltaire dies. Voltaire was one of the most famous of the French philosophers during the French Enlightenment in the 18th century.
A freethinker and a deist, Voltaire opposed organized religion and wrote scathing critiques of the French Catholic Church, which in turn attacked him just as often.
In his Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764 — Philosophical Dictionary) he explained his opinions on metaphysics, religion, and ethics, as well as his negative views about the clergy. In Candide, ou l'optimisme ( 1759 — Candide) he attacked the philosophical optimism and theodicies espoused by Leibniz. Whereas Leibniz argued that we live in the best of all possible words which God could have created, Voltaire argued that our world includes the existence of unredeemed evil.
