Paris-born French Enlightenment philosopher, one of the most influential in history and famous for violently criticize the Church and religious intolerance, becoming the symbol of freedom of thought. The son of a wealthy bourgeois family, he studied law with the Jesuits at the College Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and became a writer.
A member of the Société du Temple, of libertines and freethinkers, he was a prisoner of the Bastille for 11 months (1717-1718) as responsible for a satirical pamphlet, although he claimed innocence, period where he wrote the tragedy Oedipe (1718), whose success consecrated him in the media intellectuals.
Due to disagreements with the influential Duke of Rohan-Chabot, he went into exile in England (1726-1729) and, back in France, wrote his most famous book, Lettres philosophiques ou Lettres sur les anglais (1734), a set of "letters" about the English, in which he made witty comparisons between English freedom and the backwardness of absolutist, clerical, and French France. obsolete.
With the book condemned by the authorities, he took refuge in the castle of Cirey, and there he spent ten years with his mistress, the marquise du Châtelet. He returned to Paris (1744), was elected to the French Academy (1746) and introduced by Madame de Pompadour at court. Recovered at court, he became a royal historian (1750) and was invited to the court of Frederick II the Grande, from Prussia, at the court of Potsdam (1750-1753), from which he left after a friction with the king.
Returning to France he made great deals, including stock market speculation, and settled near Geneva (1755), where he later bought Ferney's castle and farm. (1758), where he set up a fabric factory and a watch factory, and there he stayed until the end of his life, becoming very rich, even when he died, he had an annual income of 350,000 pounds. He began his anti-religious writings (1762) and returned from Ferney to Paris as a celebrity (1778), where his ideas became influential in spawning the French Revolution.
He defended the bourgeoisie against the feudal aristocracy and, although he detested the Catholic Church and any forms of intolerance, he was not an atheist. His literary work consisted essentially of plays such as Zaïre (1732) and Alzire (1736), history books A Histoire by Charles XII (1731I), Le Siècle by Louis XIV (1751) and Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations (1756), the dictionary Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) and the novels or philosophical tales Zadig (1747), Micromégas (1752) and Candide (1759), considered his masterpiece.
Figure copied from the UNIV website. TEXAS / PORTRAIT GALERY:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/photodraw/portraits/
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order F - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/francois-marie-arouet.htm