Tartuffe, Swift and Voltaire In his own way, Moliere's Tartuffe represents one aspect of the Enlightenment, if only a negative one, since he is a purely self-interested individual who cares only about advancing his own wealth and status. He is a fraud, a con artist and a hypocrite who puts on a show of religion but is really only interested in stealing Orgon's estate -- and his wife. Orgon is too foolish to understand this until the end, although his wise and cunning servant Dorine understands Tartuffe's intentions almost immediately. In this case, the uneducated servant is far more intelligent and clever than her master, who even seems callously indifferent to the illness of his wife. By the standards of the time, Orgon is a very incompetent head of household and a poor ruler and governor, in choosing a corrupt and scheming advisor who only intends to destroy his estate and leave him homeless. He only pretends to serve the interests of his master while in reality serving his own. Moliere was not a radical democrat who opposed the monarchy, but rather thought that an absolute ruler should be enlightened, just and rational. He was a supporter of the Sun King Louis XIV and even presented plays in his honor, including Tartuffe. Indeed, in the play Orgon is saved by the direct intervention of the king, who has Tartuffe arrested and then returns his estate to him. In this case, the King Louis XIV is portrayed as an enlightened despot who already knows about Tartuffe's long criminal...

Orgon's characteristics are just the opposite, although the king also recalls that he remained loyal to him during the recent civil wars against the rebellious aristocracy, and so therefore intervenes on his behalf. .
One of the many ironies in Book IV of Gulliver's Travels is that the horses in charge of the island (the Houyhnhnms) are far more civilized and rational than the mass of ape-like humans they call Yahoos, who they regard as for only for slave labor or extermination. Although the Houyhnhnms are amazed that he can speak and wear clothing, they treat him as a more or less civilized Yahoo capable of holding a reasonable discussion on various topics. They are an example of the Enlightenment, in fact, and are governed only by logic, reason and practical calculations of utility, rather than emotions, ethics or religion. Gulliver comes to admire them so much that even after he is expelled from the island and forced to return to his own kind, he prefers the company of horse to humans. Whether Swift intended them to be admirable or not is another question, since they also lack compassion either for themselves or the Yahoos and Swift may well have intended this to be a satire of the British Empire and its treatment of slaves…