The 234-Line French Poem Voltaire Wrote in Three Weeks After Lisbon and the Three-Year Argument It Started With Rousseau
Voltaire wrote the *Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne* in mid-November 1755 — three weeks after the earthquake — as a direct philosophical attack on the Leibnizian doctrine of optimism. Rousseau answered with a long defence in August 1756. The argument substantially defined the French Enlightenment's theological position for the next generation.
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