Ep. 26 - Alan Charles Kors: Voltaire’s ‘Philosophical Letters,’ Part I
The Ralston College Podcast
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Ignorance of Smallpox
Inoculation, the faculty of medicine resolves, is such an experimentation. The faculty of theology debates inoculation and con s essentially that human beings may not substitute themselves for providence. Only god gives a disease, not one human being giving disease to another by choice. You can't play god. You cannot experiment on human beings. That remains the official position in france, until forty years later, the death of louis the fifteenth from smallpox. Everyone races to get themselves inoculated against smallpox. And the practice is legalized in france. So an interesting beginning to a presentation of formal philosophy. Beginning in experience, analyzing it with reason, testing it, you save human
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