Top questions
Who was Baron d'Holbach?
Baron d'Holbach was a French-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. Born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, in the Rhenish Palatinate, he lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He died in Paris in January 1789, a few months before the French Revolution.
What is d'Holbach best known for?
He was well known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous being The System of Nature (1770). All of his philosophical writings were published anonymously or under pseudonyms, usually printed in Amsterdam, and the authorship of his anti-religious works did not become widely known until the early nineteenth century.
What is The System of Nature about?
Published in 1770 under the name of Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud, The System of Nature denied the existence of a deity and saw the universe as nothing more than matter in motion, bound by natural laws of cause and effect. It has been called "the culmination of French materialism and atheism" and provoked a strong reaction.
What was d'Holbach's salon?
From about 1750 to 1790 d'Holbach used his wealth to maintain one of the more notable Parisian salons, an important meeting place for contributors to the Encyclopédie. It met twice a week at his home in the rue Royale. Regulars included Diderot and d'Alembert, and visitors included David Hume, Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin.
What did d'Holbach contribute to the Encyclopédie?
Between 1751 and 1765 he contributed some four hundred articles to the Encyclopédie, mostly on scientific subjects, and edited several volumes on natural philosophy. As a German who had become a naturalised Frenchman, he also translated many contemporary German works of natural philosophy into French.
How influential was d'Holbach?
The critic Faguet wrote that d'Holbach, more than Voltaire or Diderot, was the father of the philosophy and anti-religious polemics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His views influenced Marat, Danton, Priestley, Godwin, Shelley and Kant, and it is speculated that they influenced Karl Marx's historical materialism.
