The order of the history. System and method in Voltaire's historical works

Abstract

Although Voltaire's expression "philosophy of history" was nothing more than a critical approach to the study of history, it is well known that his work as a historian - and, first of all, in his Essai sur les murs - was intended to be an attempt to provide a new object. historical inquiry: the "history of the human spirit." This conception of history, by the very nature of its object, can only aspire to universality, but, on the other hand, it requires that history be constructed and structured in accordance with a logic and criteria of coherence that bend the mere Empirical contingency of becoming historical to a rational order: in this contradictory need lie the originality and limitations of the historical Voltaian method.