Claude Adrien Helvétius | |
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| Born | (1715-01-26)26 January 1715 |
| Died | 26 December 1771(1771-12-26) (aged 56) Paris, France |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 18th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Utilitarianism French materialism Sensualism |
| Main interests | Ethics · Political philosophy |
Claude Adrien Helvétius (/hɛlˈviːʃəs/;[1]French:[klodadʁijɛ̃ɛlvesjys]; 26 January 1715[2] – 26 December 1771) was a Frenchphilosopher,freemason[3] andlittérateur.
Claude Adrien Helvétius was born inParis, France, and was descended from a family of physicians, originally surnamedSchweitzer (meaning "Swiss" in German; Latinized asHelvétius). His great-grandfatherJohann Friedrich Schweitzer known as "Helvetius", was a Dutch physician and alchemist, of German extraction. His grandfatherAdriaan Helvetius introduced the use ofipecacuanha;[4] his fatherJean Claude Adrien Helvétius was first physician toMarie Leszczyńska, queen of France. Claude Adrien was trained for a financial career, apprenticed to his maternal uncle in Caen,[5] but he occupied his spare time with poetry. Aged twenty-three, at the queen's request, he was appointed as afarmer-general, a tax-collecting post worth 100,000 crowns a year. Thus provided for, he proceeded to enjoy life to the utmost, with the help of his wealth and liberality, his literary and artistic tastes - he attended, for example, the progressiveClub de l'Entresol. As he grew older, he began to seek more lasting distinctions, stimulated by the success ofPierre Louis Maupertuis as amathematician, ofVoltaire as apoet, and ofMontesquieu as a philosopher.[6] His wife,Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius, maintained a salon attended by the leading figures of theEnlightenment for over five decades.
In 1758 Helvétius published his philosophicalmagnum opus, a work calledDe l'esprit (On Mind), which claimed that all human faculties are attributes of mere physicalsensation, and that the only real motive is self-interest, therefore there is no good and evil, only competitive pleasures. Itsatheistic,utilitarian andegalitarian doctrines raised a public outcry, and theSorbonne publicly burned it in 1759, forcing Helvétius to issue several retractions.
In 1764 Helvétius visited England, and the next year, at the invitation ofFrederick the Great, went toBerlin, where the king paid him much attention.[6]
After 10 years, when he thought his fortune sufficient, he gave up the post of farmer-general, and retired to a country estate in France, where he employed his fortune in the relief of the poor, the encouragement of agriculture and the development of industries.[6] For this he won the admiration of many of the philosophers.
Helvétius' family lived alternately onChâteau de Voré (Collines des Perches,Loir-et-Cher) and their Parisian townhouse at therue Sainte-Anne.
Religiously, Helvétius was aDeist, albeit a "most indifferent" one.[7]
He died in Paris on December 26, 1771.
A work found in his papers calledDe l'homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation (On Man), was published in 1773.
Helvétius' philosophical studies ended in the production of his famous bookDe l'esprit (On Mind). It was first published in 1758 and was intended to be the rival ofMontesquieu'sThe Spirit of the Laws, with Helvétius arguing strongly against Montesquieu's theory that climate influenced the character of nations.
The work attracted immediate attention and aroused the most formidable opposition, especially from the dauphinLouis, son of KingLouis XV. The Advocate GeneralJoly de Fleury condemned it in theParlement of Paris in January 1759. TheSorbonne condemned the book, while the priests persuaded the court that it was full of the most dangerous doctrines. The book was declared to be heretical – so atheistic that it was condemned by Church and State and was burned. Helvétius, terrified at the storm he had raised, wrote three separate and humiliating retractions. In spite of his protestations of orthodoxy, the book was publicly burned by the Paris hangman.[8]
It had far-reaching negative effects on the rest of thephilosophes, in particular,Denis Diderot, and the work he was doing on theEncyclopédie. The religious authorities, particularly theJesuits and the new Pope, began to fear the spread of atheism and wanted to clamp down on the 'modern thought' hard and quickly.De l'esprit became almost a scapegoat for this.[5]
This great publicity resulted in the book being translated into almost all the languages of Europe. Voltaire said that it lacked originality.Rousseau declared that the very benevolence of the author gave the lie to his principles.Grimm thought that all the ideas in the book were borrowed fromDiderot.Madame du Deffand felt that Helvétius had raised such a storm by saying openly what everyone thought in secret.Madame de Graffigny claimed that all the good things in the book had been picked up in her own salon.[6]
Helvétius' philosophy belongs to the Egoist school:
This view of man was largelyHobbesian – man is a system deterministically controllable by a suitable combination of reward and punishment, and the ends of government are to ensure the maximization of pleasure.
"All men," Helvétius maintained, "have an equal disposition for understanding."[10] As one of the French Enlightenment's manyLockean disciples, he regarded the human mind as a blank slate, but free not only from innate ideas but also from innate natural dispositions and propensities. Physiological constitution was at most a peripheral factor in men's characters or capabilities. Any apparent inequalities were independent of natural organization, and had their cause in the unequal desire for instruction. This desire springs from passions, of which all men commonly well organized are susceptible to the same degree. We thus owe everything to education.Social engineering is therefore an enterprise unconstrained by the natural abilities of men.
This natural equality applied to all men in all nations, and thus the differences in national characteristics were not the result of innate differences between the people therein, but rather a byproduct of the system of education and government. "No nation," wrote Helvétius, "has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment."[11]
This radically egalitarian aspect of Helvétius' philosophy causedDiderot to remark that if it were true,De l'esprit might just as well have been written by Helvétius' dog keeper.[citation needed]
Since all men have the same natural potential, Helvétius argued, they all have the same ability to learn. Thus, education is the method by which to reform society, and there are few limits to the drastic social improvements that could be brought about by the appropriate distribution of education. Although people seem to possess certain qualities in greater abundance than their neighbours, the explanation for this comes 'from above' – it is caused by education, law and government. "If we commonly meet in London, with knowing men, who are with much more difficulty found in France," this is because it is a country where "every citizen has a share in the management of affairs in general."[12] "The art of forming men," he concludes, "is in all countries [...] strictly connected to the form of the government", and thus education via governmental intervention is the method of reform.[13]
The crux of his thought was that publicethics has a utilitarian basis, and he insisted strongly on the importance of culture and education in national development.[14] His thinking can be described as unsystematic.[by whom?]
The original ideas in his system are those of thenatural equality of intelligences and theomnipotence of education, neither of which gained general acceptance, though both were prominent in the system ofJohn Stuart Mill.Cesare Beccaria states that he was largely inspired by Helvétius in his attempt to modify penal laws. Helvétius also exerted some influence on the utilitarianJeremy Bentham.
The materialistic aspects of Helvétius, along withBaron d'Holbach, had an influence onKarl Marx, the theorist ofhistorical materialism andcommunism, who studied the ideas of Helvétius inParis and later called the materialism of Helvétius and d'Holbach "the social basis of communism".[15]
German philosopherJohann Georg Hamann vigorously opposed Helvétius's rationalistic doctrines.[16]
British philosopherIsaiah Berlin listed Helvétius, along withHegel,Fichte,Rousseau,Saint-Simon andMaistre as one of the six "enemies of freedom" who constituted the ideological basis for modernauthoritarianism, in his bookFreedom and Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty.[17]
His poetic ambitions resulted in the poem calledLe Bonheur (published posthumously, with an account of Helvétius's life and works, byJean François de Saint-Lambert, 1773), in which he develops the idea that true happiness is only to be found in making the interest of one person that of all.[6]
A work calledDe l'homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation, found among his manuscripts, was published after his death. There is a complete edition of the works of Helvétius, published at Paris, 1818.[18]
For an estimate of his work and his place among the philosophers of the 18th century seeVictor Cousin'sPhilosophie sensualiste (1863); PL Lezaud,Résumés philosophiques (1853);FD Maurice, in hisModern Philosophy (1862), pp. 537 seq.; J Morley,Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (London, 1878); DG Mostratos,Die Pädagogik des Helvétius (Berlin, 1891);A Guillois,Le Salon de Madame Helvétius (1894); A Piazzi,Le idee filosofiche specialmente pedagogiche de C. A. Helvétius (Milan, 1889);Georgi Plekhanov,Beiträge zur Geschichte des Materialismus (Stuttgart, 1896); L Limentani,Le teorie psicologiche de C. A. Helvétius (Verona, 1902); A Keim,Helvétius, sa vie et son œuvre (1907);[18]Isaiah Berlin, "Helvétius" inFreedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy, (Oxford, 2002), pp. 11–26.
Helvetius himself was a Deist – a most indifferent Deist
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Attribution:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Helvétius, Claude Adrien".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 254–255.| Archives at | ||
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