Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Traité sur la tolérance
Religious tolerance is not a courtesy to be granted by the majority but the natural right of every human being — the Calas case shows what its denial costs
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Traité sur la tolérance (Late (the campaign-treatise of the Ferney period)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Traité sur la tolérance
The 1762 Calas execution, the 1763-65 rehabilitation campaign, the long historical comparison of tolerant and intolerant societies.
Space
Traité sur la tolérance
Toulouse as the scene of the Calas affair; the broader European space within which the question of tolerance was being decided.
Matter
Traité sur la tolérance
The body of Jean Calas broken on the wheel — the materiality of intolerance's violence; the bodies of those killed in religious wars across European history.
Observer
Traité sur la tolérance
Voltaire as the public-intellectual campaigner; the enlightened reading public the treatise aimed to mobilise.
Energy
Traité sur la tolérance
The polemical-political energies of the Calas campaign; the institutional energies of clerical reaction.
Information
Traité sur la tolérance
The Calas trial record, the historical comparisons, the natural-rights principles as the discrete content of the argument.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The campaign succeeded: Calas's posthumous rehabilitation was granted in 1765 by the Conseil du Roi. The Traité became one of the founding texts of modern human-rights advocacy. Modern criticism has noted that Voltaire's "tolerance" remained partial — his views on Jews were sometimes anti-Semitic, and his treatment of Catholicism could shade into a different intolerance. The historical place of the Traité in modern liberal-political thought is nonetheless secure.