Baron d'Holbach
EnlightenmentFrenchMaterialist
The most uncompromising materialist of the age, who hosted Europe's boldest minds and denied that anything exists but matter in motion.
From his Paris salon, the most famous table of the Enlightenment, d'Holbach fed and provoked Diderot, Hume, and half the thinkers of Europe. Under cover of anonymity he wrote the System of Nature, the era's frankest statement of atheistic materialism: there is only matter and motion, no soul apart from the body, no purpose written into things, and morality is simply what serves human happiness in this one life. Even allies found it bleak, yet its insistence that the universe needs no author to be understood pushed the secular thought of the century to its limit.
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Words
“If we go back to the beginnings, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in the Palatinate
Born at Edesheim in Germany, he settled in Paris and made his home the most famous salon of the age.
The Thursday Dinners
Hosted weekly dinners where Diderot, d'Alembert, and Grimm argued that nature alone explains the world.
The System of Nature
Published anonymously the era's boldest statement of materialism and atheism: only matter, only motion, no purpose written into things.
Good Sense
Published a plain-spoken catechism of atheism for ordinary readers, asking why priests should stand between humanity and nature.