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Baron d'Holbach

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Paul Henry Thiry, baron d'Holbach (1723 - 1789)[1] was an homme de lettres, philosophe and encyclopédiste. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, Germany.

D'Holbach's mother (née Holbach) was the daughter of the Prince-Bishop's tax collector. His father, Johann Jakob Thiry, was a wine-grower. The young Paul Henry's studies were financed by his uncle, Franz Adam Holbach, who had become a millionaire by speculating on the Paris stock-exchange.

D'Holbach had one of the more notable salons in Paris. It was one of the most important meetingplaces for contributors to the Encyclopédie. Meetings were held regularly twice a week from approximately 1750 - 1780. The tone of discussion among the visitors was more argumentative and covered more diverse topics than that of other salons. This, along with other features including excellent food, expensive wine, and a library of over 3000 volumes, attracted many notable visitors. Among the regulars in attendance at the salon were: Diderot, Grimm, Jean-François Marmontel, D'Alembert, Helvétius, Ferdinando Galiani, and André Morellet. The salon was also well-frequented by British intellectuals: Adam Smith, David Hume, Horace Walpole, Edward Gibbon, amongst others.

For the Encyclopédie he compiled and translated a large number of articles on chemistry and mineralogy, chiefly from German sources. He attracted more attention, however, in the department of, philosophy. In 1767 Christianisme dévoilé appeared, in which he attacked Christianity and religion.

This was followed up by other works, and in 1770 by a still more open attack in his most famous book, Le Système de la nature, in which it is probable he was assisted by Diderot. Denying the existence of a deity, and refusing to admit as evidence all a priori arguments, Holbach saw in the universe nothing save matter in spontaneous movement. What men call their souls become extinct when the body dies. Happiness is the end of mankind. "It would be useless and almost unjust to insist upon a man's being virtuous if he cannot be so without being unhappy. So long as vice renders him happy, he should love vice." The restraints of religion were to be replaced by an education developing an enlightened self-interest. The study of science was to bring human desires into line with their natural surroundings. Not less direct and trenchant are his attacks on political government, which, interpreted by the light of after events, sound like the first distant mutterings of revolution.

Holbach exposed the logical consequences of the theories of the Encyclopaedists. Voltaire hastily seized his pen to refute the philosophy of the Système in the article "Dieu" in his Dictionnaire philosophique, while Frederick the Great also drew up an answer to it. Though vigorous in thought and in some passages clear and eloquent, the style of the Système is diffuse and declamatory, and asserts rather than proves its statements. Its principles are summed up in a more popular form in Bon Sens, on idées naturelles opposees aux idées surnaturelles (Amsterdam, 1772), In the Système social (1773), the Politique naturelle (1773-1774) and the Morale universelle (1776) Holbach attempts to rear a system of morality in place of the one he had so fiercely attacked, but these later writings had not a tithe of the popularity and influence of his earlier work. He published his books either anonymously or under borrowed names, and was forced to have them printed out of France. The uprightness and sincerity of his character won the friendship of many to whom his philosophy was repugnant. JJ Rousseau is supposed to have drawn his portrait in the virtuous atheist Wolmar in the Nouvelle Héloise.


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  1. d'Holbach's exact date of birth is not known, although he was baptised on December 8, 1723. Various literature about d'Holbach give conflicting death dates. Some state that he died on January 21, 1789, while others give the date June 21, 1789. For more details on which references claim which date, see here.

Literature

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