Baron d'Holbach

Paul Thiry d'Holbach
Portrait by Alexander Roslin
Born
Paul Heinrich Dietrich

8 December 1723
Edesheim near Landau, Rhenish Palatinate (present-day Germany)
Died21 January 1789(1789-01-21) (aged 65)
Resting placeSaint-Roch, Paris
Other namesPaul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach
Era18th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolFrench 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).

  1. ^ The Enlightenment: History, Documents, and Key Questions. Abc-Clio. 10 November 2015. ISBN 9781610698467.
  2. ^ Cliteur, Paul (2010). The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 21. ISBN 978-1444335217. Retrieved 29 August 2013.