HOLBACH, PAUL HEINRICH DIETRICH, baron of. — Philosopher, born at Heidelsheim (Palatinate) in 1723, died in Paris, where he had settled from a young age, on 21 February 1789.
Author of various weak and tedious works on account of the coarse materialism that inspires them, H. entrusted his name above all to the Système de la nature (London [in reality Amsterdam or Leiden] 1770), written in collaboration with others. His intellect, brilliant at times, is more often pedantic, and always superficial. H.’s thought, which is largely influenced by the much-discussed doctrines of Lamettrie, Diderot, and other lesser exponents of French Enlightenment materialism, represents the crudest and most dogmatic expression of this materialism. Convinced that every form of spiritualism is the “fruit of a deliberate and self-interested policy of theologians,” H. can see in the world nothing but a corporeal nature, subject to necessary and physically determinable laws. Matter and motion are the sole constituent elements of the universe, for which no teleological interpretation is therefore possible. The so-called spiritual activities themselves represent nothing but some of the infinite modifications of material motion, while every concept of the Divinity demonstrates its own evident absurdity, according to H. (the true “fabricateurs de la divinité” are the theologians...). For an overall assessment, V. MATERIALISMO.