Questions sur l'Encyclopédie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs is a philosophical work by Voltaire, the first edition of which was published in 9 volumes by Cramer in Geneva between 1770 and 1772.
From the Kehl edition (1784–1789) onward, its contents were incorporated into the Philosophical Dictionary of 1764, alongside other alphabetically arranged texts. Recent editions have untangled these compilations to restore the original content of each work.
Written in alphabetical order, the text is considered a summation of Voltaire's thought.
Composition
Voltaire initially considered contributing to a Supplement to the Encyclopédie envisioned by the bookseller Panckoucke,[1] a project that, after many transformations, would eventually lead to the Encyclopédie méthodique. By the end of 1769, however, Voltaire began drafting "alphabetical scraps": “It is a great pleasure to put one's thoughts on paper, to clarify them for oneself, and to enlighten others by enlightening oneself.”[2]
Voltaire's own publications
Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs was published by Cramer in Geneva in nine volumes plus one Supplement. The print run was 4,000 copies.[3]
The first three volumes appeared in November–December 1770, comprising 141 articles, 20 of which were taken wholly or partly from the Philosophical Dictionary. The other 121 were new texts, sometimes adapted from previously published works, such as “Bees,” “Air,” and “Anatomy,” inspired by Singularities of Nature; “Apostate,” based on Of Julian and Julian the Apostate’s Speech against the Christians; and “On Bacon,” which echoes ideas from the Elements of the Philosophy of Newton.
Five further volumes were released from March to December 1771, totaling 207 mainly original articles. Some, like “God,” reused material from God, a response to The System of Nature—a rebuttal to Baron d’Holbach’s The System of Nature.
Volume IX and the Supplement (with 19 and 55 articles respectively) appeared in 1772.
A New edition, carefully revised, corrected, and expanded was issued in 1771–1772 by the Société typographique de Neuchâtel in 2,500 copies,[3] which Voltaire labeled a counterfeit—even though he had revised some articles, such as adding a note about the Chevalier de la Barre affair in the article “On Crimes or Offenses.”[4]
A counterfeit dated London was published by Marc-Michel Rey in Amsterdam (1771–1772), containing Notes that defended Jean-Jacques Rousseau where Voltaire had attacked him.[5]
In the Complete Collection of Voltaire's Works published by Cramer (Geneva) and Panckoucke (Paris), Questions sur l’Encyclopédie spans volumes 21–24 (1774). The Supplement articles were alphabetized. Voltaire added 25 articles (e.g., “Slavery,” “Mohammedans,” “Number”) and revised others like “Apocalypse,” “Government,” and “Taxes.”[6]
In the so-called “Framed Edition” of 1775 (Cramer and Bardin), Questions sur l’Encyclopédie spans volumes 25–30. Voltaire’s own annotated copy in Saint Petersburg contains manuscript notes for a future edition.[7]
Disappearance of the Questions
In the Kehl edition of Voltaire's Complete Works,[8] the Questions articles were incorporated—according to the editors' foreword—into the reprinted Philosophical Dictionary under the title La Raison par alphabet, along with the manuscript L’Opinion en alphabet, articles Voltaire had contributed to the Encyclopédie, and other brief texts.[9] This corpus occupied volumes 37–43.
This editorial "monster,"[10] in which the Questions were subsumed, was reproduced identically in later editions, such as those by Beuchot (1831–1841) and Moland (1877–1885).
Only recent editions have restored the original structure of the work.