Celebrating Enlightenment Values in 2026: the Example of Voltaire and Slavery

Join the American Philosophical Society on Thursday, March 26, 2026, to welcome Nicholas Cronk for a discussion titled "Celebrating Enlightenment Values in 2026: the Example of Voltaire and Slavery".

In 2026 we are celebrating a number of Enlightenment milestones: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the first volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire were both first published 250 years ago, in 1776; and, most importantly, this is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Such anniversaries provide an opportunity to reflect on what we owe, if anything, to our Enlightenment inheritance. The question is not a simple one, as the example of Voltaire and slavery shows. Voltaire, like almost all eighteenth-century thinkers, writes about slavery, notably in Candide. Yet his contribution to the debate often leaves commentators unsatisfied. Some would like him to be more radical, more ‘modern’, in his critique. And some go so far as to condemn the whole Enlightenment project as an illiberal sham. To what extent can the writings of the Enlightenment still engage us meaningfully? Thinking about how we should read, and judge, a writer like Voltaire can help us reassess the place of Enlightenment values in our modern world.

Professor Nicholas Cronk, Hon DLitt (McGill), is Professor of European Enlightenment Studies and Director of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and of the American Philosophical Society. As general editor from 2000 of the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, he led the edition to completion in 2022, and he is now directing the digital version, Oxford University Voltaire.