Voltaire's letters to his niece

>Vi baccio mille volte. La mia anima baccia la vostra, mio cazzo, mio cuore sono innamorati di voi. Baccio il vostro gentil culo e tutta la vostra persona.

>I kiss you a thousand times. My soul kisses yours; my cazzo, my heart are enamored of you. I kiss your pretty bottom and all your person.

>Je ne viendrais ue pour vous e se il povero stato della mia salute me lo permesse mi gitturai alle vostre genochia e baccarei tutte la vostra Belta. In tanto io figo mille baccii alle tonde poppe, alle transportatrici natiche, a tutta la vostra persona che m'ha fatto tante volte rizzare e m'ha annegato in un fiume di delizie.

>I shall be coming [to Paris] only for you, and if my miserable condition permits, I will throw myself at your knees and kiss all your beauties. In the meantime I press a thousand kisses on your round breasts, on your ravishing bottom, on all your person, which has so often given me erections and plunged me into a flood of delight.

What did he mean by this?

It means Voltaire was a hardcore nigga who didn't wuss out when his gf had a smelly ass. This was the Enlightenment and no one had easy access to regular baths and modern soaps, let alone meticulous hair removal methods. Voltaire was getting on his knees and kissing right inside the buttcheeks of a smelly 18th century Frenchwoman. I tried to eat my girlfriend's ass two weeks ago after she had been in jeans for two hours in autumn, and I had to awkwardly suggest we watch a movie instead. I can only imagine the horrors Voltaire saw and still felt confident enough to write letters that would pass to posterity about it.

As mutton cutlets, prime of meat,
Which though with art you salt and beat
As laws of cookery require,
And toast them at the clearest fire;
If from adown the hopeful chops
The fat upon a cinder drops,
To stinking smoke it turns the flame
Pois’ning the flesh from whence it came,
And up exhales a greasy stench,
For which you curse the careless wench;
So things, which must not be expressed,
When plumped into the reeking chest,
Send up an excremental smell
To taint the parts from whence they fell.
The petticoats and gown perfume,
Which waft a stink round every room.
Thus finishing his grand survey,
Disgusted Strephon stole away
Repeating in his amorous fits,
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!

>niece

Samuel Pepys is way worse, it's basically like Humbert's diary.

what the fuck does that mean

It was not unusual for men to marry their nieces in the past

men have had sexual urges throughout all of history. who could have ever guessed.

How come most American literally don't know of any philosophers, even Descartes, Hume, or Kant, all of whom tend to be at least nominally familiar to most European, but they all know about Voltaire, Rosseau, and Locke? Locke was a pretty cool guy eh spoke of ideas and didn't afraid of exploring internalist theories of meaning, but Hume, and certainly Kant are just as (if not more) important than him. Rosseau on the other hand was a step down (or two) from figures like Locke and Kant. His ideas weren't very deep, they related almost exclusively to human political life, and had little influence on the course of philosophy (he was basically like a Dan Dennett or Ned Block tier philosopher). Finally Voltaire is basically completely irrelevant to academic or professional philosophy. He was basically what we'd call today a popularizer of science (or in his case philosophy), and something of a man of letters (he was basically like a glorified Sam Harris or Alain de Botton).

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo idea if this is really true but I would guess that America was kind of a political experiment. Not a natural entity like a european monarchy but a test to see if political theory would work. So they cling to works of political philosophy as the basis of their society. Philosophy that discusses if you can be happy or if you can truly think isn't as popular as philosophy that reasserts America's political existence. Also works produced in the old world after the new word was created are obviously going to be treated with a certain amount of disdain for being probably old fashioned.

Oh yeah this is pretty accurate. Most school systems even educate the student about Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire at some point, but other than that, no other philosophers are really ever mentioned. Actually American students are really exposed to any humanities or even social sciences other than history. Most public schools systems in american require 10 or 11 years of "social studies" classes (out of 12 years of school total, excluding kindergarten), of which usually 8 or 9 are based entirely on American history and/or the American political/legal system, and the remaining 2-3 years usually included at least one course on World History, and one course on something like foreign/ancient/world cultures or society.

*aren't really exposed to an humanities. . .

*any humanities
lel typos left an' right
also *Most [American] school systems even educate their students about. . .

To add, certain readings really legitimize individualism and them deserving the land more than the Indians.

That said, I did take a course in a US uni that had some bits on Locke and they generally seemed quite clueless beyond state of nature.

>why do Americans know Locke?
we're literally the Enlightenment, the country.
the founding fathers were fanboys and his ideas pervade much of their writing

>Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire

Wait wait waaaiit do most American highschools cover this? I didn't get any exposure to them at all. They may have been briefly mentioned during out one week on the French Revolution. I thought my school was alright, guess not?

Yeah that's what I mean most American school systems will touch upon these people at some point, but not really go into any depth. However, even most college educated Americans are probably completely unfamiliar with people like Descartes, Hume, and Kant let alone the later analytic and continental traditions. In Europe however, most people are at least familiar with these names despite not knowing much else about them.

In fact, the way the history of ideas is presented in the American public school, one is given the impression the Thomas Paine was probably the greatest, most original, and intelligent political "philosopher" (in fact he was more of an activist or pamphleteer than a philosopher) and we are taught the Ben Franklin (and Thomas Edison too!) was one of the greatest geniuses in history. This is just complete lels. Compare Leibniz, Grothendieck, Wittgenstein, or Tarski to Ben Franklin. They're not even in the same category. Ben Franklin is another fellow who was probably comparable to Sam Harris (or maybe Richard Dawkins in we're being generous).

desu my real question is why the second one starts in french then switches to italian for the rest of it.

Fuq your thread niqqa, we taking this shit over. You got derailed bitch.

mais pourquoi hoc, amice, facis?

Sorry, I don't speak French.

Wasn't he french? Why did he write on italian?

Get out feminist, now.

I googled it, apparently he was learning it for a while. Not by going to Italy though, so his pronunciation and occasionally his grammar were shit.

It means he loved scat

>positivists are perverts

Who would've though...

Didn't he die eating his own shit? I think i read it on madame bovary