Abstract

RATTO, Adrián. Voltaire, Diderot, and Russian History in the 18th Century. Eidos [online]. 2021, n.36, pp.316-340.  Epub May 14, 2022. ISSN 1692-8857.  https://doi.org/10.14482/eidos.36.194.03.

On the first pages of Voltaire's Histoire de l'empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand, published between 1759 and 1763, he reflects upon the method which should be used when writing a historical work and the characteristics an ideal historian should have. The aim of this paper is to assess to what extent the text follows the methodology Voltaire is proposing. This article attempts to demonstrate that the author himself, occasionally, does not respect his own methodology, jeopardizing the objective of his work. On the other hand, the paper highlights some ideological and epistemological differences between Voltaire and Diderot as regards Russian history, something which may be noteworthy, since their texts are usually studied within the same historiogra-phical categories. In a more general sense, this work sheds some light on the theory of history during the siècle des Lumières.

Keywords : Voltaire; philosophy of history; Russia; Enlightenment; Diderot.

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