Book Reviews : Voltaire's Politics: The Poet As Realist. By PETER GAY. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. Pp. xiii, 417. $6.00.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591296001300229
• Author: Joseph S. Roucek
• Published date: 01 June 1960
• Date: 01 June 1960
• Subject Matter: Articles

537

did

not

become

just

an

empty

promise?

Its

inability

to

adapt

itself

to

this

new

role

undoubtedly

had

more

to

do

with

the

decline

of

the

MOWM

than

the

struggles

for

leadership

which

further

ravaged

it.

This

major

lesson

of

When

Negroes

March -

the

inherent

inability

of

mass

movements

to

survive

seeming

success

-

is

unfortunately

somewhat

obscured

by

the

uneasy

compromise

its

author

makes

in

the

presentation

of

his

material;

the

book

suffers

from

being

neither

a

straight

historical

narrative

nor

a

fully

concept-

centered

analysis.

Professor

Garfinkel

has,

however,

performed

a

valuable

task

of

documentation

in

the

field

of

recent

political

history.

When

Negroes

March

contains

much

information

of

help

in

putting

the

present

struggle

for

Negro

rights

in

perspective.

If,

as

seems

indicated

by

recent

events,

the

rise

to

independence

of

colored

peoples

in

Africa

and

elsewhere

serves

as

a

stimulus

to

Negro

mass

movements

in

the

United

States,

this

is

a

book

we

may

turn

to

with

even

greater

interest

in

the

not

too

distant

future.

VICTOR

C.

FERKISS

Boston

University

Voltaire’s

Politics:

The

Poet

As

Realist.

By

PETER

GAY.

(Princeton:

Princeton

University

Press,

1959.

Pp.

xiii,

417.

$6.00.)

The

debate

over

Voltaire’s

contributions

to

history

has

been

persistent.

Most

of

his

interpreters

have

focused

on

Voltaire

the

man,

the

playwright,

the

stylist,

and

the

philosopher,

succeeding

rather

well

in

rescuing

him

from

adulatory

or

malicious

misreadings.

Yet,

strangely

enough,

none

has

placed

Voltaire’s

politi-

cal

ideas

in

the

framework

of

his

time,

thus

neglecting

an

important

aspect

of

his

thought,

and

indeed

of

eighteenth-century

thought,

and

leaving

the

evalua-

tion

of

Voltaire’s

politics

to

such

clich6s

as

&dquo;enlightened

despotism&dquo;

or

&dquo;literary

Utopianism.&dquo;

Gay

has

certainly

made

a

definite

contribution

to

our

comprehension

of

Vol-

taire’s

politics.

After

anchoring

his

political

writings

firmly

in

the

ground

of

his

society,

his

experiences,

and

the

history

of

his

century,

he

then

established

his

thesis

that

Voltaire

was

a

realist,

a

practical

hard-headed

political

man.

Vol-

taire’s

constant

involvement

in

practical

politics,

which

was

glaringly

apparent

to

his

contemporaries,

has

been

obscured

for

his

commentators

by

the

abstract

tone

of

his

writings

and

by

his

own

denials

that

he

was

interested

in

political

affairs.

Gay

contends

that

Voltaire’s

abstract

tone

and

his

denials

do

not

reveal

his

true

attitude:

they

were

a

mask

for

the

censors.

Gay

shows

clearly

how

Voltaire

fought

for

his

great

trinity

of

toleration,

the

rule

of

law,

and

freedom

of

opinion;

these

premises

allowed

him

also

to

define

his

program

for

social

reform

and

his

political

philosophy.

Gay’s

erudition

is

remarkable;

and

his

&dquo;Bibliographical

Essay&dquo;

is

worth

its

weight

in

gold

for

the

specialist

in

political

theory

and

historical

sociology.

University

of

Bridgeport

JOSEPH

S.

ROUCEK