The Great Protector of Wits

Baron d'Holbach and His Time
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-43578-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Französisch, Band 339, 342 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 635 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History

The Great Protector of Wits provides a new assessment of baron d’Holbach (1723–1789) and his circle. A challenging figure of the European Enlightenment, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach was not only a radically materialistic philosopher, a champion of anticlericalism, the author of the Système de la nature – known as ‘the Bible of atheists’ –, an idéologue, a popularizer of the natural sciences and a prolific contributor to the Encyclopédie, but he also played a crucial role as an organizer of intellectual networks and was a master of disseminating clandestine literature and a consummate strategist in authorial fictions. In this collective volume, for the first time, all these different threads of d’Holbach’s ‘philosophy in action’ are considered and analyzed in their interconnection.

Contributors to this volume: Jacopo Agnesina, Nicholas Cronk, Mélanie Éphrème, Enrico Galvagni, Jonathan Israel, Alan Charles Kors, Mladen Kozul, Brunello Lotti, Emilio Mazza, Gianluca Mori, Iryna Mykhailova, Gianni Paganini, Paolo Quintili, Alain Sandrier, Ruggero Sciuto, Maria Susana Seguin, and Gerhardt Stenger.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nicolì, Laura

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 18. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Alternative Glaubensformen Agnostizismus, Atheismus, Säkularer Humanismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Über Autor(innen)

Laura Nicolì is Research Fellow at Fondazione 1563 (Turin) and Voltaire Foundation (Oxford). She holds a PhD in History of Philosophy from “La Sapienza” and EPHE. Her monograph, Les Philosophes et les dieux. Le polythéisme en débat dans la France des Lumières, is in press.