Abstract
At first glance, the materialistic atheism of the late French Enlightenment appears philosophically dogmatic and wholly incompatible with philosophical scepticism. A closer examination of the works of Denis Diderot, the baron d’Holbach, and Jacques-André Naigeon, however, reveals that at their seemingly most dogmatic moments, they reflected significantly on “the weakness of the human mind” in ways that had important sceptical consequences. More importantly, when they examined the status of their own propositions, they concluded on behalf both of the impossibility of philosophical demonstration of their own foundational assumptions and of the impossibility of changing, in the ways they would have desired, the thinking and the behavior of the human species.
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Notes
- 1.
Alan Charles Kors, “Atheism and Scepticism in the Late French Enlightenment,” in Marc André Bernier and Sébastien Charles (eds.), Scepticisme et modernité, Saint-Étienne, Presses de l’Université Saint-Étienne, 2005, pp. 145–52.
- 2.
Denis Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques. Paul Vernière (ed.), Paris, 1964, pp. 280–4.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 313.
- 4.
Ibid., pp. 304–6.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 59.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 192.
- 7.
Denis Diderot, Œuvres romanesques. Henri Bénac (ed.), Paris, 1962, p. 499.
- 8.
Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, p. 364.
- 9.
Diderot, Œuvres romanesques, pp. 670–1.
- 10.
Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach, “Essai sur les préjugés; Système de la nature; Histoire critique de Jésus-Christ,” in Jean-Pierre Jackson (ed.), Œuvres philosophiques complètes, Paris, 1999, t. II, p. 158.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 159.
- 12.
Ibid., Système de la nature, passim. The opening sentence of Holbach’s preface to the Système is “L’homme n’est malheureux que parce qu’il méconnaît la Nature.” Ibid., p. 165.
- 13.
Ibid., pp. 168–9.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 179.
- 15.
Ibid., pp. 228–37.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 249.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 279 (and, indeed, passim).
- 18.
Ibid., pp. 300–2.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 594.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 635.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 586.
- 22.
Ibid., pp. 624–5.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 635.
- 24.
Holbach, Le Bon-Sens, ou Idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles, Londres, [Amsterdam], 1771, p. 141.
- 25.
See note 1.
- 26.
On Naigeon himself, whose life is little know, see Alan Charles Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton, 1976, pp. 27–9, 44–86, 199–200, 256–7, 286–7, 289–90.
- 27.
Jacques-André Naigeon, Mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur la vie et les ouvrages de D. Diderot, Paris, 1821, pp. 258–9.
- 28.
Jacques-André Naigeon, Philosophie ancienne et moderne, Paris, 1791, 3 vols., I, 1–2.
- 29.
Ibid., 2–4.
- 30.
Ibid., 3–4.
- 31.
Ibid., II, 724–738.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., 736, note 1. (See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (eds.), in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 3rd ed., 1975, p. 155, note 31.)
- 34.
Ibid., 737–8.
- 35.
Ibid. 749–56.
- 36.
Ibid., 368–70; see, in particular, note 1, pp. 368–9.
- 37.
In Denis Diderot, Correspondance, Georges Roth et al. (eds.), Paris, 1955–1970, 12 vols., VI, pp. 169–72.
- 38.
Naigeon, Mémoires sur Diderot, op. cit., 307–8.
- 39.
Ibid.
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Kors, A.C. (2013). An Uneasy Relationship: Atheism and Scepticism in the Late French Enlightenment. In: Charles, S., J. Smith, P. (eds) Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 210. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4810-1_15
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