"Better is the enemy of good", which was popularized by a French Enlightenment writer known of his attacks on what?
bd3b49699f2aa58913aaff3c339a1660
Perfect is the enemy of good Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism, an English variant of the older "better is the enemy of good", which was popularized by Voltaire in French form. Alternative forms include "the perfect is the enemy of the good", which more closely translate French and earlier Italian sayings, or "[the] perfect is the enemy of [the] good enough". Similar sentiments occur in other phrases, including from English, and are all attested since around 1600.
9749888ec0803d2fa01816133e7cc6a5
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (] ; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his "nom de plume" Voltaire ( ; ] ), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state.
a2efc9590e422d11d2dd47f672181e4c
Charles Porée Charles Porée (4 September 1675 – 11 January 1741) was a French priest, Jesuit, educator, orator, poet and homme de lettres. All his life, Voltaire, who was his pupil, kept a profound reverence for him.
fbe99f0ac9f66a691df394d79511bc83
Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont (18 July 1759 – 29 September 1829), known as Étienne Dumont, sometimes anglicised as Stephen Dumont, was a Genevan political writer. He is chiefly remembered as the French editor of the writings of the English philosopher and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham.
016fc3fce33323728582dd13e4772df3
Ernest Hello Ernest Hello (November 4, 1828 – July 14, 1885) was a French Roman Catholic writer, who produced books and articles on philosophy, theology, and literature.
e2189a68b4b552631635e3854c7ef403
Jacques de la Faye Jacques de la Faye was a 17th-18th century French writer whose "Defensio Religionis" ('"Defense of Religion') a 251-page critique of the pantheism of John Toland, was published at Utrecht in 1709. De la Faye's was the first recorded use of the word, "pantheism".
f3de4d6db9478085ae452f6f7d47dff1
Jean Banières Jean Banières (18th century) was a French physician and philosopher. He was sceptic about Voltaire's newtonian theories on light and colours, as Banières was a zealous Cartesian.
ceb2bd66af384776b2bc968686a0bde0
Charles Maurras Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (] ; 20 April 1868 – 16 November 1952) was a French author, poet, and critic. He was an organizer and principal philosopher of "Action Française", a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme intégral". A major tenet of integral nationalism was stated by Maurras as "a true nationalist places his country above everything". A political theorist and a major intellectual influence in early 20th-century Europe, his views influenced several far-right ideologies; it also anticipated some of the ideas of fascism.
1bac82abbf1f7625be114375729bc6a8
Étienne-Jean Georget Étienne-Jean Georget (2 April 1795 – 14 May 1828) was an early French psychiatrist. He is known for writing on monomania. He is also the pioneer of forensic psychiatry, and was the first psychiatrist to discuss the defence of insanity to criminal charges.
f63aca6feb64ab5d2718c93bdd4e6d5f
François-René de Chateaubriand François-René, Viscount of Chateaubriand ( ; ] ; September 4, 1768 – July 4, 1848), was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian who is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature. Descended from an old aristocratic family from Brittany, Chateaubriand was a royalist by political disposition; in an age when a number of intellectuals turned against the Church, he authored the "Génie du christianisme" in defense of the Catholic faith. His works include the autobiography "Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe" (""Memoirs from Beyond the Grave"", published posthumously in 1849–1850).
f372a42a8b159fa616f4b55fa3475d6b
Élie Catherine Fréron Élie Catherine Fréron (20 January 1718 – 10 March 1776) was a French literary critic and controversialist whose career focused on countering the influence of the "philosophes" of the French Enlightenment, partly thorough his vehicle, the "Année littéraire". Thus Fréron, in recruiting young writers to counter the literary Establishment became central to the movement now called the Counter-Enlightenment.
8cee4653acae330317d1f8890dfc1135
Déprimisme Déprimisme ("depressionism") is a contemporary French art and literary movement, in which authors dwell on the failures of society. The movement can be identified as a cross between expressionism and symbolism. Originally a French movement, the term has later been extended to refer to direct commentary on any contemporary, particularly western or American culture. In a general sense, "depressionism" is the practice of manipulating social ideas and conventions in such a way as to elicit an emotional or intellectual effect from the audience.
2b90d15fcccb50953477f7aafb9793cf
Johann August von Starck Johann August Starck also "Stark" (28 October 1741 – 3 March 3, 1816) was a prolific author and controversial Königsberg theologian, as well as a widely read political writer now best remembered for arguing that an Illuminati-led conspiracy brought about the French revolution. Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann were among his acquaintances in Königsberg. His broadly deistic approach emphasized natural religion and smoothed over doctrinal differences among the various faiths.
f9b84c44a70184d3b8005434138df1f2
Louis Du Four de Longuerue Louis Dufour de Longuerue (1652, Charleville-Mézières, Ardennes) – 22 November 1733), abbé of Sept-Fontaines (from 1674) and of Saint-Jean-du-Jard near Melun (from 1684), known simply as the abbé de Longuerue, was an antiquarian, a linguist and historian, a child prodigy who became the protégé of Fénelon; in his turn Longuerue encouraged the Abbé Alary and the young cartographer-to-be, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville (1697–1782), perhaps the greatest geographical author of the eighteenth century. As a philologist, he remarked on the astonishing progress the French language had made, in its refinement and conscious purification from 1630 to 1670. The abbé was a free-thinker, for a man ostensibly of the cloth: Helvétius quoted his remark that, if all the good and all the evil done in the name of religion were weighed together, the evil would preponderate.
ef803dab75217bff9e0a5ff2df7ae027
Louis de Jaucourt Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt (] ; 16 September 1704 – 3 February 1779) was a French scholar and the most prolific contributor to the "Encyclopédie". He wrote about 18,000 articles on subjects including physiology, chemistry, botany, pathology, and political history, or about 25% of the entire encyclopaedia, all done voluntarily. In the generations after the "Encyclopédie"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s, mainly due to his aristocratic background, his legacy was largely overshadowed by the more bohemian Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, but by the mid-20th century more scholarly attention was being paid to him.
3e42af94fcd0bbea20b6ca768db519b4
Étienne de La Boétie Étienne or Estienne de La Boétie (] ; ] or ] in local occitan Périgord dialect; 1 November 1530 – 18 August 1563) was a French judge, writer, and "a founder of modern political philosophy in France." He is best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist Michel de Montaigne, in one of history's most notable friendships."
de61b2bcdca50901ea60537833048acf
Charles Péguy Charles Pierre Péguy (] ; 7 January 1873 – 5 September 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic.
3741a518238dc0a65049ae5ed5db3249
François Quesnay François Quesnay (] ; 4 June 1694 – 16 December 1774) was a French economist and physician of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" (Economic Table) in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats. This was perhaps the first work attempting to describe the workings of the economy in an analytical way, and as such can be viewed as one of the first important contributions to economic thought. His "Le Despotisme de la Chine", written in 1767, describes Chinese politics and society, and his own political support for constitutional Oriental despotism.
8e481d496033bf5004de020b6baa8ab3
Louis-Françisque Lélut Louis Francisque Lélut (1804–1877) was a French medical doctor and philosopher known for his works "Démon de Socrate" and "L'Amulette de Pascal", where he stated that Socrates and Blaise Pascal were insane.
258a7528ff9cd46c586230cfbd0685fa
Resistentialism Resistentialism is a jocular theory to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans. The theory posits a war being fought between humans and inanimate objects, and all the little annoyances that objects cause throughout the day are battles between the two. The concept was not new in 1948 when humorist Paul Jennings coined this name for it in a piece titled "Report on Resistentialism", published in "The Spectator" that year and reprinted in "The New York Times"; the word is a blend of the Latin "res" ("thing"), the French "resister" ("to resist"), and the existentialism school of philosophy. The movement is a spoof of existentialism in general, and Jean-Paul Sartre in particular, Jennings naming the fictional inventor of Resistentialism as Pierre-Marie Ventre. The slogan of Resistentialism is ""Les choses sont contre nous"" ("Things are against us").
567f0fc0b627c08c9728c19748baeea9
Satire Ménippée The Satire Ménippée (] ) or "La Satyre Ménippée de la vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne" (written in 1593, published in Tours in 1594) was a political and satirical work (in French) in prose and verse which criticized the excesses of the Catholic League and Spanish pretensions during the Wars of Religion in France and defended the idea of an independent but Catholic France. The title derives from the classical Roman literary genre "menippean satire" which included a mixture of prose and verse.
b3ab63e1be799e030f9c8c724064b565
Jean-Baptiste Pitois Jean-Baptiste Pitois, also known as Jean-Baptiste or Paul Christian (1811-1877), was a French author, known for "The History and Practice of Magic", first published in France in 1870.