Paul Thiry d'Holbach | |
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Born | Paul Heinrich Dietrich 8 December 1723 |
Died | 21 January 1789 | (aged 65)
Resting place | Saint-Roch, Paris |
Other names | Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach |
Era | 18th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | French materialism |
Main interests | Atheism, determinism, materialism |
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (French: [dɔlbak]; 8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), known as d'Holbach, was a Franco-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He helped in the dissemination of "Protestant and especially German thought", particularly in the field of the sciences,[1] but was best known for his atheism,[2] and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770) and The Universal Morality (1776).