The Mask of Politeness: Voltaire, Jung, and the Philosophical Problem of the Social Self

This treatise examines Voltaire’s critique of social politeness as a philosophical problem of authenticity, extending his analysis through Carl Jung’s concept of the persona and Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical framework. Voltaire’s observations on the hypocrisy embedded in Enlightenment-era manners reveal a structural tension between social performance and genuine selfhood that anticipates modern psychological and sociological accounts of masking. The paper argues that politeness functions not merely as a social lubricant but as a cultural technology—a systematized apparatus of concealment that produces compliance while suppressing the philosophical self. Drawing upon the Double Helix of Understanding (Boether, 2025), the concept of Philosophical Neglect (Boether, 2026), the Masked Self framework (Boether, 2025), and the Sougy Personality Type Spectrum (Boether, 2026), this treatise advances an original thesis: that the mask of politeness represents a socially mandated form of existential inauthenticity whose costs have been systematically underestimated by both philosophical and psychological traditions. The analysis demonstrates that Voltaire’s satirical fragments, when read through the lens of Jungian depth psychology and contemporary philosophical-psychological consilience, constitute a prescient diagnosis of a condition that remains endemic to modern social life. Implications for education, therapeutic practice, and the cultivation of authentic selfhood are discussed.