Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach was a philosopher, translator,and prominent social figure of the French Enlightenment. In hisphilosophical writings Holbach developed a deterministic andmaterialistic metaphysics, which grounded his polemics againstorganized religion as well as his utilitarian ethical and politicaltheory. As a translator, Holbach made significant contributions to theEuropean Enlightenment in science and religion. He translated Germanworks on chemistry and geology into French, summarizing many of theGerman advances in these areas in his entries in Diderot’sEncyclopedia. Holbach also translated important English works onreligion and political philosophy into French. Holbach remains bestknown, however, for his role in Parisian society. The close circle ofintellectuals that Holbach hosted and, in various ways, sponsoredproduced the Encyclopedia and a number of revisionary religious,ethical, and political works that contributed to the ideological basisfor the French Revolution. Despite the radical views of many membersof his coterie, however, Holbach’s broader visiting guest listincluded many of the most prominent intellectual and political figuresin Europe. His salon, then, was at once a shelter for radical thoughtand a hub of mainstream culture.

• 1. Biography
• 2. Metaphysics: Matter and Motion, Cause and Effect
• 3. Ethics: Virtue for the Sake of Happiness
• 4. Political Theory: Ethocracy
• Bibliography
  • Primary Literature: Selected Works of Holbach
  • Other Primary Sources
  • Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Biography

Holbach was born in 1723 in Edesheim. He was raised in Paris,principally by his uncle, Franciscus Adam d’Holbach, andattended the University of Leiden from 1744 to 1748 or 1749. Holbachparticularly enjoyed the parties there. It is likely that, at least atfirst, the dinners Holbach gave in Paris were modelled on the partieshe attended at Leiden. In 1749, Holbach married his second cousin,Basile-Geneviève d’Aine. About 1753 or 1754 both hisuncle, Franciscus, and his father in law died, leaving Holbach aconsiderable fortune.

Holbach used his great wealth to throw the dinner parties for which heis famous. He owned a house in Paris in rue Royale, Butte Saint-Roch,which, generally, had a guest list restricted to seriousintellectuals, and a chateau at Grandval where, in addition to hiscoterie, Holbach also hosted social friends and relatives.Holbach’s coterie included intellectuals who, although theirpositions varied on many issues, shared at least a willingness toentertain views that many would have thought too radical to bediscussed in social settings. The coterie met from the 1750s into the1780s. The group evolved over time, but its core members, Alan Korshas argued, were Denis Diderot, the encyclopedist; the diplomat andcultural critic Friedrich-Melchior Grimm; the naturalistCharles-Georges Le Roy; the writer and critic Jean-FrançoisMarmontel; the historian and priest abbéGuillame-Thomas-François Raynal; the doctor Augustin Roux; thepoet and philosopher Jean-François de Saint-Lambert; the writerJean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard; the pamphleteer François-Jean,chevalier de Chastellux, the pamphleteer abbé AndréMorellet; and the philosopher Jacques-André Naigeon. Many ofthese men were, like Holbach, avowed atheists and many also pushedradical, even revolutionary political agendas. So the generalcharacter of his coterie might suggest that Holbach was a figure onthe fringe of Parisian society, a kind of eccentric parvenu with ataste for scandal.

However, Holbach managed, despite what one might expect, to keep hiscoterie firmly in the mainstream of European society. French nobles,as well as ambassadors from countries across Europe—Denmark,England, Naples, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Wurtemburg, andSweden—attended his dinners. So did prominent intellectuals ofall kinds, including, at different times and with different degrees ofenthusiasm, the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, themathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, the historian EdwardGibbon, the writer Horace Walpole, the chemist Joseph Priestley, thesocial critic Cesare Beccaria, the philosopher Nicolas-AntoineBoulanger, the statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin, the actorDavid Garrick, the philosopher Claude-Adrien Helvétius, thephilosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith, and the novelistLaurence Sterne. Holbach was known in France not primarily as apolitical radical but asle premier maîtred’hôtel de la philosophie. Many in Paris covetedinvitations to rue Royale, and Holbach’s house was the firststop for many prominent international visitors.

Holbach’s character must have been remarkable to have maintaineda salon in which the espousers of political and religious reform metso freely and so often with visitors who either cannot have beenaccustomed to such open dialogue or who were themselves parts of theestablishment under attack. Indeed Rousseau, who himself came to feelunwelcome by the coterie, nevertheless memorializes Holbach inLanouvelle Heloïse, as the paradoxical figure, Wolmar, anatheist who nonetheless embodies all of the Christian virtues. Inaddition to his good character, Holbach’s generosity at table(his dinners and especially his wine were famously good) and insupporting many of his acquaintances may explain his success at beingboth a pillar and a critic of society. Perhaps, also, Holbach was notin the eyes of many of his contemporaries as clearly a radical as someother members of his coterie. He did publish some of the mostnotorious works of the French Enlightenment, includingLeChristianisme dévoilé (ChristianityUnveiled),Système de la nature (System ofNature) andLe Bon Sens (Common Sense). Thesebooks evoked long and heated responses from such notable figures asVoltaire, abbé Bergier, and Frederick the Great;System ofNature andCommon Sense were condemned by the parliamentof Paris and publicly burned. Holbach, however, was not in his owntime as notorious as his books. He was careful always to publishanonymously, so that those who did not know him or who did not care tothink of him in that way, might have remained at least partiallyignorant of his religious and political views.

Holbach’s coterie met for thirty years, from the early 1750suntil about 1780. During that time his first wife died and he marriedher younger sister, Charlotte Suzanne d’Aine, with whom he hadfour children. Holbach wrote prolifically throughout this time.According to Vercruysse, Holbach authored or coauthored over fiftybooks and over four hundred articles. He died in 1789.

2. Metaphysics: Matter and Motion, Cause and Effect

The metaphysical position with which Holbach is most often associatedis a negative one: atheism. Although indeed Holbach devotes the entiresecond volume ofSystème de la nature and all ofLe Bon Sens to the defense of atheism and the criticism ofparticular claims about God, his views do not hold great philosophicalinterest. They emphasize well worn topics such as the problem of evil,the impossibility of discussing intelligibly what is unknowable, thesuspect psychological origins of religious belief, and the confusionof traditional descriptions of God in terms that are simply thenegation of genuine descriptive terms: for example, to say that God isinfinite is just to deny that God is finite. None of these argumentsis unique to Holbach or especially well presented by him. His positivemetaphysics, on the other hand, has been somewhat overshadowed by hislong and loud expressions of atheism, and it will be the focus of thisdiscussion.

Holbach takes nature to consist in matter and motion and nothing else.Nature is known to us, when it can be known, as a sequence of causesand effects:

The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists,presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplationnothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes andeffects. [System of Nature, 15]

Holbach’s metaphysics, then, is mechanistic, in that any correctexplanation of an event will refer only to matter, motion, and thelaws which describe their combination. Holbach’s ambitiousattempt to draw from this sparse metaphysics answers to questionsoften thought to involve something more than this, hisSystème de la nature, is badly marred, in some places,by over-simplification and, in others, by dogmatism. Indeed Goethe inhis memoirs (Dichtung und Wahrheit, Volume 9, 490–492)credits the account of nature in this work with forever turning himaway from French philosophy. Nevertheless, Holbach’s metaphysicsdoes form the basis for his engaging religious, ethical, and politicalviews, and it does so by means of an innovative recasting of atraditional account of the properties of matter.

Holbach’s account of matter may best be understood against thebackground of the Lockean account, which is more familiar and fromwhich in large part it is developed. (Israel 2006 traces the sourcesof the views of Holbach and the coterie in detail.) On Locke’saccount of bodies (Book 2, Chapter 8 of hisEssay), allbodies possess “real” or “primary” qualities(solidity, extension, figure, number, and motion). Real qualities arethose which are “inseparable” from the bodies themselves.To take Locke’s example (Essay 2.8.9), a grain of wheatwill have solidity, extension, figure and so on when it is intact, andit will retain these properties whatever happens to it. Lockedistinguishes primary qualities from powers in bodies to producesensations in observers, which he calls secondary qualities. Secondaryqualities, for example, are color, sound, taste, and so on. Because hehesitates to call secondary qualities real qualities, it is clear thatLocke takes them to have a metaphysical status different from that hegives primary qualities.

There may be several different ways of accounting for Locke’sdistinction between primary and secondary qualities. The importantaspect of the distinction for the present discussion is that onLocke’s view we ought always to explain a secondary quality interms of a primary quality by which it produces the relevant sensationin us. Colors, sounds, smells and so on are on Locke’s accountpowers that a body has as a result of its particular shape, motion,and so on which produce the relevant sensations in observers:“[Secondary qualities] are only Powers to act differently uponother things, which Powers result from the different Modifications ofthose primary qualities” (Essay 2.8.23). For example,in arguing that some, apparently more genuine properties of fire, suchas heat, are really on the same footing with qualities such as thetendency to melt wax that are more obviously relational, Locke holdsthat each of these qualities alike are powers that a body has invirtue of its primary qualities to produce certain effects[my emphasisadded]: “…the power in fire to produce a new color, orconsistency in wax or clayby its primary qualities is asmuch a quality in fire, as the power it has to produce in me a newidea or sensation of warmth or burning” (Essay 2.8.10).For Locke, then, all bodies have primary qualities, and any secondaryqualities that they have are to be understood in terms of the primaryqualities that produce them.

Holbach maintains something like Locke’s distinction betweenprimary and secondary qualities, but he does not insist that theproperties of bodies that Locke calls secondary qualities, areproperties that bodies possess in virtue of particular primaryqualities. Matter, for Holbach, is whatever makes up bodies and causesthe sense impressions that we have of them. Matter, in general, may besaid to have properties in the sense that there are some propertiesthat anything which is matter will possess. These properties areroughly the Lockean primary qualities (with the important exception ofmotion, of which more below). However, Holbach holds that matter is aclass, rather than a particular thing, since different objects maypossess different properties as well:

A satisfactory definition of matter has not yet beengiven…[Man] looked upon it as a unique being…whilst heought to have contemplated it as agenus of beings, of whichthe individuals, although they might possess some common properties,such as extent, divisibility, figure, etc., should not, however, beall ranked in the same class, nor comprised under the samedenomination.

So we may say that both a fire and a building have extent,divisibility and so on, but that a building has some properties, suchas grayness, that fire lacks and that fire has some properties, suchas luminance, that the building lacks. It may be that some of theproperties that some but not all particular bodies have are to beunderstood in terms of primary qualities, but Holbach does not insiston this point. The properties which Locke called secondary qualitiesare not distinguished from primary qualities by the fact that they arerightly understood in terms of them. Rather, the only distinctionbetween these properties and primary qualities is that primaryqualities are in all matter alike and secondary qualities are in onlysome bodies. Of fire, for example, Holbach writes:

Fire, besides these general properties common to all matter, enjoysalso the peculiar property of being put into activity by a motionproducing on our organs of feeling the sensation of heat and byanother, which communicates to our visual organs the sensation oflight. [System of Nature, 24]

Fire, in other words, besides having figure, extension and the otherproperties of matter in general, has also the “peculiar”properties of heat and luminance. These further properties are,metaphysically, no different from the properties common to all matter,on Holbach’s view, and they belong to fire in just as basic andjust as mysterious a way as its extent and figure.

Holbach’s choice of example reflects a likely familiarity withcriticisms of the Lockean basis for the distinction between primaryand secondary qualities found in the writings of Berkeley andHolbach’s friend and correspondent, Hume. Both of these authorsuse the example of the feeling of pain in heat (Berkeley,ThreeDialogues I; HumeTreatise 1.4.4, 3) as a first step indemonstrating the mind-dependence of all properties of body alike andso of casting into doubt any supposed difference in kind betweenprimary and secondary qualities.

Holbach’s recasting of the distinction between primary andsecondary qualities in terms of properties that matter possessesuniversally and properties that only some bodies possess helps him toavoid the Berkeleyan criticism of the distinction. Holbach neverclaims, as Locke does, that properties such as color and sound have ametaphysical status different from that of the primary qualities.Lockean secondary qualities are, for Holbach, basic, inexplicablequalities of matter on a par with extension and solidity anddistinguished from them only on the grounds that they are possessed bysome bodies and not others. Because Holbach allows that some matterpossesses qualities that other matter does not possess, his notion ofmatter is more varied than Locke’s. For Locke, all matter ishomogenous, in the sense that it possesses all of the primaryqualities and no other real qualities besides. For Holbach, matter isheterogenous. It is a

genus of beings, of which the individuals, although they might possesssome common properties, such as extent, divisibility, figure, etc.,should not, however, be all ranked in the same class, nor comprisedunder the same general denomination. [System of Nature, 3]

The heterogeneity of matter in Holbach’s metaphysics puts him ata disadvantage to the traditional Lockean view, in a sense.Locke’s account of matter, if true, is simpler and has greatexplanatory power: the full panoply of sensations that we encounterare to be explained by an account of our sensory organs, a short listof primary qualities, and the laws which govern their interaction.Holbach, on the other hand, requires separate explanations for eachperceived property. He promises an explanation of all phenomena interms of matter and motion, but delivers not even a framework for suchan explanation.

In another sense, though, the heterogeneity of matter is helpful toHolbach’s project. Materialistic accounts of human nature areoften thought to fail just because human beings seem to haveproperties, such as thought and freedom, that matter does not have. Inmaking matter a genus of varied beings, Holbach creates a viewflexible enough to accommodate an account of human nature more robustthan that of many other materialists:

…Man is, as a whole, the result of a certain combination ofmatter, endowed with particular properties, competent to give, capableof receiving, certain impulses, the arrangement of which is calledorganization, of which the essence is, to feel, to think, to act, tomove, after a manner distinguished from other beings with which he canbe compared. Man, therefore, ranks in an order, in a system, in aclass by himself, which differs from that of other animals, in whom wedo not perceive those properties of which he is possessed. [Systemof Nature 15]

Holbach’s naturalism requires that human nature be understood interms of laws and that human action be comprehended under universaldeterminism. But it allows that, in many ways, human beings may differin kind from other bodies, even animals, and it allows that humanbeings may have many properties, notably thought, that havetraditionally been denied to matter.

The heterogeneity of matter in Holbach’s account contributes tothe vagueness of that designation. Matter can to some extent beunderstood in the ordinary sense of anything that has extention,figure, and so on. However, because matter also may or may not haveany number of properties not ordinarily understood to belong tomatter, such as thought, it is not entirely clear what may not bematter. Motion is likewise and for similar reasons a vague term inHolbach. Where matter is understood simply as extension and some othervery simple properties, motion may be thought of in similarly simpleterms, as a velocity, acceleration or, perhaps, as an impulse with acertain direction. Once matter is thought of, after the manner ofHolbach, as something with properties which are perhaps best notunderstood in spatial terms, its motion may be much more difficult todefine. Although he sometimes speaks of matter and motion in narrowersenses, Holbach’s tendency is simply to identify matter andmotion with the general terms cause and effect. Holbach typicallyidentifies bodies with causes and motions with effects, but he alsoallows that motions may be causes:

Acause is a being which puts another in motion, or whichproduces some change in it. Theeffect is the change producedin one body by the motion or presence of another. [System ofNature 16]

To understand human beings and human society in terms of matter andmotion, then, is simply to understand them in terms of causes andeffects. Holbach’s naturalism in ethics and political theoryextends to a commitment to ground those disciplines in an account ofhuman nature understood in terms of lawlike regularities, mostimportantly, psychological laws. But Holbach is not a naturalist inthe stricter sense of attempting to understand human beings in termsof the same laws that explain the rest of nature. Determinism isuniversal, in Holbach’s view, but different sorts of bodies mayhave peculiar properties that require peculiar explanations. Despitehis avowed materialism, Holbach does not demand the sorts of reductiveexplanations of mental events that materialism might ordinarily seemto require.

3. Ethics: Virtue for the Sake of Happiness

Holbach’s ethics is naturalistic in the sense described. Likehis major influence in this area, Spinoza, he undertakes to explainhuman beings with the same clarity and rigor that others explaingeometry (Eléments de la morale universelle, Preface).The laws that Holbach depends upon in accounting for human nature areprimarily psychological laws and may be peculiar to human beings. ForHolbach, like Spinoza and Hobbes, holds that each person seeks his ownpreservation (System of Nature, 40; cf, Spinoza’sEthics IIIp9 and Hobbes’sDe Homine, Chap.11—Holbach’s is still the most widely available Frenchtranslation of the latter). As both of these authors do, Holbachassociates the ends of action also with happiness, so that happinessand self-preservation are, in his ethics, generally speaking related,and an individual’s interest is understood by Holbach in termsof either (and where he distinguishes between them, both) of these.

Ethics on Holbach’s account, then, amounts to enlightenedself-interest, vice to a failure to recognize the means to one’sinterest, and moral rules to hypothetical imperatives which dictatethe means to happiness or self-preservation:

[Man] was ignorant of his true interests; hence his irregularities,his intemperance, his shameful voluptuousness, with that long train ofvices to which he has abandoned himself, at the expense of hispreservation, at the risk of his permanent felicity. [System ofNature, 14]

Because people desire what morality provides, they will as a matter ofcourse be motivated to do what is moral, provided they know what thatis. The ignorance that Holbach describes here, however, is what causespeople to fail to act rightly. So what ethics requires is aninvestigation into ignorance: In what respects are people ignorant?What are the most dangerous forms of ignorance? How is ignorance to beovercome?

One of the most dangerous kinds of ignorance, on Holbach’sanalysis, is an ignorance of nature and, in particular, of the causesof good and evil in it. Like Spinoza, Holbach argues that we tend topersonify nature, projecting our interests and purposes onto matterthat is, in fact, different from us (System of Nature, App.17; cf, Spinoza’sEthics I, App.). This produces, onHolbach’s account, the belief in God and other religious beliefs(such as the belief in heaven and hell and immortality) which in turncause us to pursue self-preservation in misguided ways:

The ignorance of natural causes created Gods, and imposture made themterrible. Man lived unhappy, because he was told that God hadcondemned him to misery. He never entertained a wish of breaking hischains, as he was taught, that stupidity, that the renouncing ofreason, mental debility, and spiritual debasement, were the means ofobtaining eternal felicity. [System of Nature, 349–350]

Holbach was notorious in the 18th century for his atheism and for hiscriticisms of Christianity. Indeed today these topics most frequentlyengage philosophers and historians who study Holbach (see Kors 2005and Fonnesu 2006, for example), and Holbach continues to be a hero ofdefenders of atheism, including the popular philosopher Michel Onfrey.There is no doubt that a great deal of what Holbach wrote wasinflammatory and intended to be so. However, the fact that at leastsome of his polemics, furious though they may have been, arose in thecontext of developing an account of virtue should mitigate theimpression of Holbach as a purely destructive thinker or (merely) alover of scandal. His criticism of religion, and of Catholicism inparticular, is founded at least in part in the conviction thatreligion is the source of vice and unhappiness and that virtue canonly be fostered in people who seek to preserve themselves in theworld of their immediate acquaintance:

Renounce your vague hopes; disengage yourself from overwhelmingfears…do not attempt to plunge your views into an impenetrablefuture… …Only think then, of making yourself happy inthat existence which is known to you; if you would preserve yourself,be temperate, moderate, and reasonable; if you seek to render yourexistence durable, do not be prodigal of pleasure; abstain fromeverything that can be harmful to yourself or others. [System ofNature, 162; cf. Spinoza’sEthics IVP42C2S]

Holbach’s ethics, as Rousseau recognized, is not nearly asrevisionary as his theology. As this passage makes clear, hisconception of human virtue is quite traditional. Preservation andhappiness, as Holbach conceives them, involve most of the samepractices that the religious views Holbach denounces require foreternal preservation and felicity. Perhaps the principal practicaldifference between morality as Holbach conceives it and the Christianmorality as Holbach understands it lies in the self-abnegation Holbachfinds valued in Christian morality. For Holbach, temperance,moderation and so on are virtues that one acquires out of a love forpleasure and life. On the other hand, he takes these virtues, as theyare understood traditionally, to involve an unhealthy denial ofone’s love for wine, food and other familiar pleasures.Temperance and moderation, for Holbach are the best means to theenjoyment of wine and food, whereas in the views he criticizes theyare virtues by which we deny the value of such enjoyment.

4. Political Theory: Ethocracy

Holbach’s political theory, which he developed for the most partafter his metaphysics and ethics, extends his ethical views to thestate. Having described human interest as happiness and preservationin theSystem of Nature andCommon Sense in 1770 and1772, Holbach went on to develop a notion of the just state or, to usehis own term, “ethocracy,” founded for the purposes ofsecuring the general welfare. This theory is presented in severalworks published during the 1770s,La politique naturelle(Natural Politics, 1773),Système social(The Social System, 1773),La morale universelle(Universal Morality, 1776), andEthocratie(Ethocracy, 1776). Holbach’s foundational view is thatthe most valuable thing a person seeking self-preservation can do isto unite with another person: “Man is of all beings the mostnecessary to man” (Système social, 76; cf.Spinoza’sEthics IVP35C1, C2, and S). Society, when itis just, unites for the common purpose of preservation and thesecuring of welfare, and society contracts with government for thispurpose.

Holbach’s theory of social contract has two stages. The first issocial. When individuals realize that others are the greatest helps totheir own welfare, they make a pact with one another, uniting in orderto obtain personal and proprietary security and other benefits ofsociety (Universal Morality 1.86;PolitiqueNaturelle, 1.1). To strike such a pact is part of eachperson’s reason:

Help me…and I will help you with all my talents..work for myhappiness if you want me to concern myself with yours…Securefor me advantages great enough to persuade me to give up to you a partof those which I possess. [Politique Naturelle 1.1,Ladd’s translation]

This social contract, the contract between individuals in society, isnever broken.

The second stage of the social contract is more narrowly political. Itis a contract that society, in order to secure the general welfare,strikes with a sovereign power, usually understood by Holbach to be aking limited, or at least informed by, a body of electedrepresentatives (La politique naturelle 3.17). This secondsocial contract for Holbach, as for Locke, may be broken. Holbach is athoroughgoing utilitarian: where the government fails to secure thegeneral welfare, which consists principally in securing property andbasic freedoms such as the freedoms of speech and religion, societyhas a right to revolution (La politique naturelle, 4.5).

Perhaps because of the less cautious advocacy of right to revolutionamong other members of his coterie, particularly Naigeon, or perhapsbecause he criticized the kings of his time so fiercely, Holbach issometimes regarded as an advocate of revolution. Holbach’sdiscussion is tentative, however. He describes the right inLapolitique naturelle (4.5 ff.) as a product of the naturalinstinct for self-preservation. Like Hobbes (Leviathan, XXIX,23), Holbach expects that obedience to a sovereign will break downwhere individuals feel the need to secure their own lives. This isalso why sovereigns need to take care to look after citizens’welfare and education. Where they fail to do these things, citizenscome to be ruled not by reason but by passion, and revolution results.Holbach’s right to revolution, then, is less an advocacy ofrevolution than a warning to avoid the conditions that lead to it.

Bibliography

Primary Literature: Selected Works of Holbach

• Le Christianisme dévoilé, Nancy, 1761.
• Système de la nature, 2 volumes, London,1770.
• System of Nature, translated by H.D. Robinson, New York:Burt Franklin, 1970.
• Le Bons Sens, London, 1772.
• La Politique naturelle, London, 1773.
• Système social, 3 volumes, London, 1773.
• La Morale universelle, 3 volumes, Amsterdam, 1776.
• Éthocratie, Amsterdam, 1776.

Other Primary Sources

• Bergier, abbé,Examen du matérialisme, 2volumes, Paris, 1769.
• Goethe, J.W. von,Werke, 14 volumes, Hamburg, 1967.
• Hobbes, ThomasLeviathan, Edwin Curley (ed.),Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
• Locke, John,An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,Peter Nidditch (ed.), Clarendon: Oxford, 1975.
• Spinoza, Benedictus,Spinoza Opera, Volume 2, CarlGebhart (ed.), Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925.

Secondary Literature

• Blank, Andreas, 2016, “D’Holbach on Self-Esteem,Justice, and Cosmopolitanism,”Eighteenth-CenturyStudies, 49(4): 439–453.
• –––, 2017, “D’Holbach on self-esteemand the moral economy of oppression,”British Journal forthe History of Philosophy, 25(6): 1116–1137.
• –––, 2020, “D’Holbach on(Dis-)Esteeming Talent,”Journal of Modern Philosophy,2(1): 10. doi:10.32881/jomp.70
• Curran, Mark, 2012,Atheism, Religion and Enlightenment inPre-Revolutionary Europe, Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
• Darnton, Robert, 1991,Edition et Sédition:L’Univers de la Littérature Clandestine au XVIIIeSiècle, Paris: Gallimard.
• –––, 1992, “Une Speculation surl’Irreligion: LeSystème de la nature ded’Holbach,” inGens de Lettres: Gens du Livre,Robert Darnton (ed.), Paris: Odile Jacob, pp. 220–244.
• Devellennes, Charles, 2014, “Utility contra utilitarianism:Holbach’s international ethics,”Journal ofInternational Political Theory, 10(2): 188–205.
• –––, 2016, “D’Holbach Radical:contrat social et éthocratie dans la pensée politique dubaron,” inLes lumiers radicales et le politique, MariaGarcia-Alonso (ed.), Paris: Honore Champion, pp. 321–340.
• –––, 2020,Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier,D’Holbach, Diderot, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress.
• Fonnesu, Luca, 2006, “The Problem of Theodicy,” inThe Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Philosophy(Volume 2), Knud Haakonssen (ed.), New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, pp. 749–778.
• Galvani, Enrico, 2020, “Luxury, Mystification, andOppressive Power in d’Holbach’s PhilosophicalWritings,”Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2(1): 7.doi:10.25894/jmp.2089
• Gourdon, Emilie and Michael LeBuffe, 2019, “Holbach,”inA Companion to Atheism and Philosophy, Graham Oppy (ed.),Oxford: Wiley, pp. 28–42.
• Hämäläinen, Hasse J., 2021, “MoralConscience’s Fall from Grace: An Investigation into ConceptualHistory,”Intellectual History Review, 31(2):283–299.
• Israel, Jonathan, 2006,Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy,Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011,Democratic Enlightenment:Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2017 “Rousseau and d’Holbach:The Revolutionary Implications of la philosophieanti-Thérésienne,” inThinking with Rousseau:From Machiavelli to Schmitt, Helena Rosenblatt and PaulSchweigert (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.149–174.
• Kors, Alan, 1976,D’Holbach’s Coterie,Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2005, “Atheism and Scepticism in theLate French Enlightenment,” inScepticisme etmodernité, Marc André Bernier and SébastienCharles (eds.), Saint-Étienne: Publications del’Université de Saint-Étienne.
• Ladd, Everett C., Jr., 1962, “Helvétius andd’Holbach,”Journal of the History of Ideas,23(2): 221–238.
• Llana, James, 2000, “Natural History and theEncyclopédie,”Journal of the History ofBiology, 33(1): 1–25.
• Mori, Gianluca, 2021,Early Modern Atheism from Spinoza tod’Holbach, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
• Nicoli, Laura (ed.), 2022,The Great Protector of Wits: Barond’Holbach and His Time, Leiden: Brill.
• Onfray, Michel, 2007,Atheist Manifesto: The Case againstChristianity, Judaism, and Islam, Jeremy Leggatt (trans.), NewYork: Arcade Publishing.
• Sandrier, Alain, 2004,Le style philosophique du barond’Holbach: conditions et contraintes du prosélytismeathée en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIesiècle, Paris: Honore Champion.
• Sciuto, Ruggero, 2023,Determinism and Enlightenment: TheCollaboration of Diderot and d’Holbach, Liverpool:Liverpool University Press.
• Topazio, Virgil W., 1956,D’Holbach’s MoralPhilosophy: Its Background and Development, Geneva: Institut etmusée Voltaire.
• Treuherz, Nick, 2016 “The diffusion and impact of Barond’Holbach’s texts in Great Britain,1765–1800,” inRadical Voices, Radical Ways,Laurent Curelly and Nigel Smith (eds.), Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, pp. 125–148.
• Vercruysse, J., 1971,Bibliographie descriptive desécrits du baron d’Holbach, Paris: Lettresmodernes.

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

• English translations of a number of Holbach’s works, from Project Gutenberg.
• Digital d’Holbach, an excellent and rapidly developing collection of resources, from the Voltaire Foundation.

Related Entries

Locke, John |Spinoza, Baruch