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Das Erdbeben von Lissabon und seine Konsequenzen für das aufklärerische Denken

Abstract

The earthquake of Lisbon (1755) provoked an ideological and philosophical debate, whose most famous participants in France in the 18th century were the philosophers Voltaire and Rousseau. Their early contributions, Voltaire’s Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (1756) and Rousseau’s reaction to it, formulated in a letter (Lettre à Voltaire, 1756), are presented and analysed. The paper comes to the conclusion, that this debate, in an exemplary manner, does not open the way to a general pessimism, as often claimed, but rather to a realistic pragmatism concerning scientific and social progress.