page_title: Deism
section_title: Deism in France and continental Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Deism / Enlightenment deism / Deism in France and continental Europe
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), known as Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer and philosopher
context_page_description: Deism is the philosophical position that rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a Supreme Being or creator of the universe.
  At least as far back as Thomas Aquinas, Christian thought has recognized two sources of knowledge of God: revelation and "natural reason". The study of the truths revealed by reason is called natural theology. During the Age of Enlightenment, especially in Britain and France, philosophers began to reject revelation as a source of knowledge and to appeal only to truths that they felt could be established by reason alone. Such philosophers were called "deists" and the philosophical position that they advocated is called "deism".
  Deism as a distinct intellectual movement declined toward the end of the 18th century. Some of its tenets continued to live on as part of other intellectual movements, like Unitarianism, and it continues to have advocates today.
context_section_description: France had its own tradition of religious skepticism and natural theology in the works of Montaigne, Bayle, and Montesquieu. The most famous of the French deists was Voltaire, who was exposed to Newtonian science and English deism during his two-year period of exile in England (1726-8).  When he returned to France he brought both back with him, and exposed the French reading public (i.e. the aristocracy) to them in a number of books.
  French deists also included Maximilien Robespierre and Rousseau. During the French Revolution the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being, a direct expression of Robespierre's theological views, was established briefly - just under three months - as the new state religion of France, replacing the deposed Catholic Church and rival atheistic Cult of Reason. 
  Deism in Germany is not well documented.  We know from his correspondence with Voltaire that Frederick the Great was a deist. Immanuel Kant's identification with deism is controversial.
caption: Voltaire at age 24 
  by Nicolas de Largillière
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