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Atheism in the Age of the Enlightenment

Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach (b. 1723 - d. 1789) was a German-French author, philosopher and encyclopedist, best-known for his book The System of Nature. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, Germany but lived and worked mainly in Paris. He is most famous as being one of the first self-described atheists in Europe.

Contents 1 D'Holbach's salon 2 Bibliography 2.1 Works 2.2 Secondary literature 2.2.1 English 2.2.2 French

D'Holbach's salon

D'Holbach's Coterie

Although he spent much of his time at his country estate at Grandval, d'Holbach used his wealth to maintain one of the more notable and lavish Parisian salons, which soon became an important meeting place for the contributors to the Encyclopédie. Meetings were held regularly twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, in d'Holbach's home in rue Royale, butte Saint-Roche between approximately 1750 - 1780. Visitors to the salon were exclusively males, and the tone of discussion high-brow, often extending to topics more extensive than those of other salons. This, along with the excellent food, expensive wine, and a library of over 3000 volumes, attracted many notable visitors. Among the regulars in attendance at the salon—the coterie holbachique -- were the following: Diderot, Grimm, Condillac, Condorcet, D'Alembert, Marmontel, Turgot, La Condamine, Raynal, Helvétius, Galiani, Morellet, Naigeon and, for a time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The salon was also visited by prominent British intellectuals, amongst them Adam Smith, David Hume, John Wilkes, Horace Walpole and Edward Gibbon.

D'Holbach was known for his generosity, often providing financial support discreetly or anonymously to his friends, amongst them Diderot. It is thought that the virtuous atheist Wolmar in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse is based on d'Holbach.

Holbach died in Paris on 21 January 1789, a few months prior to the French Revolution. His authorship of his various anti-religious works did not become widely known until the early 19th century.

Bibliography

Works

• Le Christianisme dévoilé, ou Examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne (Christianity unveiled: being an examination of the principles and effects of the Christian religion) published in Nancy, 1761
• La Contagion sacrée, ou Histoire naturelle de la superstition, 1768
• Lettres à Eugénie, ou Préservatif contre les préjugés, 1768
• Théologie Portative, ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne, 1768
• Essai sur les préjugés, ou De l'influence des opinions sur les mœurs & le bonheur des hommes, 1770
• Système de la nature ou des loix du monde physique & du monde moral (The System of Nature, or Laws of the Moral and Physical World), published 1770 in 2 volumes in French under the pseudonym of Mirabaud. vol.1 text, vol.2 text at Project Gutenberg, en français.
• Histoire critique de Jésus-Christ, ou Analyse raisonnée des évangiles, 1770
• Tableau des Saints, ou Examen de l'esprit, de la conduite, des maximes & du mérite des personages que le christiannisme révère & propose pour modèles, 1770
• Le Bon Sens, published 1772 (Good Sense: or, Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural). This was an abridged version of The System of Nature. It was published anonymously in Amsterdam.
• Politique Naturelle, ou Discours sur les vrais principes du Gouvernement, 1773
• Système Social, ou Principes naturels de la morale et de la Politique, avec un examen de l'influence du gouvernement sur les mœurs 1773
• Ethocratie, ou Le gouvernement fondé sur la morale (Ethocracy or Government Founded on Ethics) (Amsterdam, 1776)
• La Morale Universelle, ou Les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la Nature, 1776 en français, PDF file.
• Eléments de morale universelle, ou Catéchisme de la Nature, 1790
• Lettre à une dame d'un certain âge

Secondary literature

English

• David Holohan (Translator), Christianity Unveiled by Baron d'Holbach: A Controversy in Documents, (Hodgson Press, 2008).
• Max Pearson Cushing, Baron d'Holbach: a study of eighteenth-century radicalism in France (New York, 1914).
• Alan Charles Kors, D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris (Princeton University Press, 1976).
• Alan Charles Kors, "The Atheism of D'Holbach and Naigeon," Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
• John Lough, "Helvétius and d'Holbach", Modern Language Review, Vol. 33, No. 3. (Jul., 1938).
• T. C. Newland, "D'Holbach, Religion, and the 'Encyclopédie'", Modern Language Review, Vol. 69, No. 3, (Jul., 1974), pp. 523–533.
• Virgil W. Topazio, D'Holbach's Moral Philosophy: Its Background and Development (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1956).
• Everett C. Ladd, Jr., "Helvétius and d'Holbach," Journal of the History of Ideas (1962) 23(2): 221-238.
• Virgil V. Topazio, "Diderot's Supposed Contribution to D'Holbach's Works", in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, LXIX, 1, 1954, pp. 173–188.
• S. G. Tallentyre (pseud. for Evelyn Beatrice Hall), The Friends of Voltaire (1907).
• W. H. Wickwar, Baron d'Holbach: A Prelude to the French Revolution (1935)
• G. V. Plekhanov, Essays in the History of Materialism (trans. 1934)
• John Lough, Essays on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert (London : Oxford University Press, 1968)

French

• René Hubert, D'Holbach et ses amis (Paris: André Delpeuch, 1928).
• Paul Naville, D'Holbach et la philosophie scientifique au XVIIIe siècle. Rev. ed. Paris, 1967
• J. Vercruysse, Bibliographie descriptive des écrits du baron d'Holbach (Paris, 1971).
• A. Sandrier, Le style philosophique du baron d'Holbach, Honoré Champion (Paris, 2004).