Glancing At Voltaire's Rationalistic Thoughts

Voltaire was a famous master of rationalism which guidance the west historiography since 18 century. Focus on the《Louis XIV age》, author lucubrated on Voltaire's historiography thought from the following three parts, essence, contribution and limitation.As one of the inaugurator of rationalism historiography, Voltaire negated the feudal divinity theory which has overruled the west world for thousands of years. He totally accomplished the history mission of criticizing the feudal divinity and the divinity history theory. He transferred his viewpoint from the traditional political military history to the cultural history and initiated the historical science of rationalism. He believed that the intention to research and compose the history was to teach people loving morality and to illumine their conscience. He noticed the society development was accelerated by economy and some heroic person. He refuted the traditional West-Europe Centre Theory and put forward new method for whole history research. His precise attitude about history research exhibited in his history writes. His rationalism history science thought was the bridge between the humanism thoughts and new history science, and inherited by the coetaneous and aftertime historian. But Voltaire's rationalism thoughts also had some flaws such as magnified the effect of history chanciness, over depreciated the middle century and apotheosized the ration.