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Life
The most uncompromising materialist of the age, who hosted Europe's boldest minds and denied that anything exists but matter in motion.
He argued that God is nothing but humanity's own best qualities, projected outward and mistaken for someone else, and handed the young Karl Marx a method he would turn on economics itself.
Connection
Baron d'Holbach religion explained from below Ludwig Feuerbach — Holbach's account of religion as a product of fear and ignorance prepares the ground for Feuerbach's more careful argument that God is human nature projected outward.
Ideas
Words
“If we go back to the beginnings, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods.”
“Man made God in his own image.”
“The turning point of history will be the moment man becomes aware that the only God of man is man himself.”
Key Moments
1723 CE
Born in the Palatinate
c. 1750 CE
The Thursday Dinners
1770 CE
The System of Nature
1772 CE
Good Sense
1841
Publishes The Essence of Christianity
1840s
Withdraws to rural isolation
Works
The System of Nature
The Essence of Christianity