The figures · Philosophers

Baron d'Holbach

Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach

D'Holbach made atheism and materialism public philosophical positions in eighteenth-century Europe.

BORN 1723 CE · Edesheim, Holy Roman EmpireDIED 1789 CE · Paris, FranceERA Enlightenment

NOTABLE CONTRIBUTION

Presented one of the most explicit Enlightenment defenses of atheistic materialism.

THE RECORD

System of Nature argued that nature, matter, and motion were sufficient explanations of reality.
His Paris salon connected radical Enlightenment thinkers and encyclopedists.
His work became a touchstone for later debates over religion, determinism, and morality without God.