System of nature
The system of nature or Système de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral or in the detailed German translation the system of nature or of the laws of the physical and moral world is a work of the enlightener and encyclopaedist Paul Henri Thiry d ' Holbach , which first appeared in 1770 . Denis Diderot took part in the stylistic revision of the manuscript.
D'Holbach assumes that moral laws as well as natural laws can be recognized as true, and that these form a common system that enables people to live a contented and happy life. He attributes the deviation from this ideal to errors or delusions about nature (especially about natural needs) and about moral rules. The knowledge of the materialistic truth averts the bad blessings that arise from ignorance of nature. The cause of all things lies in their inherent motion , which shows itself in the forms of inertia , attraction and repulsion of the atoms of matter (see Epicurean atomism ). The movement of the atoms or atomic complexes can be explained by the concept of mechanical causality and thus lack any teleology .
Authorship and Reception
The title page of the edition published in early 1770 named Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud (1675-1760), a member of the Académie française and the place of publication London as the author . The author clandestinely tried to make Mirabaud's authorship even more credible to the reader by adding a biographical sketch of the secretary of the French Academy, who had died ten years ago, and listing a fictitious list of publications. This action becomes understandable when one looks at the effects and possible consequences of the censorship at the time of Louis XVI. envisioned.
The actual author was the above-mentioned philosopher, enlightener and encyclopaedist , the place of its printing was in Holland with the publisher Marc-Michel Rey . The fact that d'Holbach was the author did not enter public discourse until two decades later. From 1752 to 1760 Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach worked mainly for the Encyclopédie ; he translates and edits well over 400 articles on topics from mineralogy, mining and chemistry. At the same time, Holbach collects materials on the history of ideas and ideas, mainly from French and English sources. This results in the impressive number of over 35 works for the decade from 1760 to 1770, almost exclusively published in Holland because of the strict censorship. Characteristic titles are, for example, Christianity unveiled (1761), Letters to Eugenie , or means of protection against prejudice (1768), and Der Geist des Judentums (1769).
The third decade of his oeuvre, from 1770 to 1780, culminated with his main works, which have repeatedly received strong attention from posterity: Experiment on Prejudice ( 1770 ), System of Nature (1770, Volume 1 and Volume 2 completely online), Common sense ( 1772 ), The social system, or natural principles of morality and politics ( 1773 ), The universal morality, or man's duties, based on his nature ( 1776 ).
Jacques-André Naigeon frequented the Baron d'Holbach's house and was also associated with the Coterie holbachique , as a secretary he edited and edited its texts, including the Système de la Nature, and thus helped with the clandestine distribution of his writings. D'Holbach was concerned about his safety and that is why he never gave his own handwritten texts for printing from the house.
The system of nature was a work ostracized by the authorities, but already saw a third edition in the year of its first publication. Circles of the French clergy obtained a hearing before the Parlement in Paris, at whose plenary session the Prosecutor General Antoine-Louis Séguier , avocat général au Parlement de Paris, gave an indictment speech. As a result, the book was ceremoniously burned on Saturday, August 18, 1770. A number of books have been published to refute his system of nature : Frédéric Samuel Ostervald, one of the partners in the Neuchâtel publishing house, the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN) , published a pirated print of the system of nature in 1771 , contrary to the ostracism of parish chapters and Council of State. Ostervald then had to resign from his office as a banneret . In 1782 he was given a seat on the Small Council, petit conseil .
- Abbé Rive : Lettres philosophiques contre le Système de la nature. Portfolio hébdomadaire de Bruxelles (1770)
- Frédéric II de Prusse : Examen critique du livre intitulé: Système de la nature.
- Bergier : Examen du matérialisme , ou Réfutation du système de la nature. Humblot, Paris 1771.
- Denesle, M. († 1767): Préjugés des anciens et des nouveaux philosophes sur l'âme humaine. Vincent & Dehancy, Paris 1775.
- Giovanni Francesco Salvemini da Castiglione (1708–1791): Observations sur le système de la nature. Decker, Berlin 1779.
- Léger Marie Deschamps Lettre sur l'esprit du siècle. 1769 and Voix de la raison contre la raison du temps. 1770.
- Georg Jonathan of Holland : Réflexions philosophiques sur le Système de la nature. Paris 1773.
- Jean-Baptiste Duvoisin (1744–1813) published three texts in 1775, 1778 and 1780.
- François Marie Arouet : Dictionnaire philosophique. Philosophical dictionary (Dictionnaire philosophique portatif) a summary of Voltaire's anti-church thinking, EA without imprint (probably Cramer, Geneva) 1764.
Or put the concept of "nature" at the center of their considerations:
- Jean-Baptiste-René Robinet : De la nature. 1st edition. Amsterdam 1761.
- Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales (1741–1816): De la Philosophie de la nature, ou Traité de morale pour l'espèce humaine tiré de la philosophie et fondé sur la nature. 3 vol. Arkstée & Merkus, Amsterdam 1770.
- Étienne-Gabriel Morelly : Code de la nature. 1755.
- Denis Diderot : Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature. 1754.
- Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis : Systems de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organists. initially in Latin in 1751 as Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate under the pseudonym Dr. Baumann publishes
Frederick II of Prussia, for example, accuses the unknown author of the Système de la nature that the author, with his work on nature and God, morality and religion, as well as states and princes, abandons the path of human experience and opposes the labyrinth of System philosophy.
content
The Système de la Nature can be seen as a fundamental work of philosophical materialism . Nature is thus understood as a self-created or better uncreated - there is no intentional creator - constant and eternal sum of matter and movement, which in turn is constantly changing. It forms a closed system that should include both the laws of nature and the eternal rules of morality.
In this work, which is divided into two parts, a connection is created between the laws of the physical and the human-moral world. First the characteristics of the physical world are named in order to then create a transition to human thinking and its conditions. Their résumé then also includes a critique of the ideologies and religions that influence original thinking. He defines nature as
"[...] le grand tout qui résulte de l'assemblage des différentes matières, de leur différentes combinaisons, et des différents mouvements que nous voyons dans l'univers [...]"
"[...] the big picture that results from the union of the various substances, from their various connections and from the various movements that we see in the universe."
The first part, with a total of seventeen chapters, deals with material nature, the object of the physical explanation of nature, in the first five chapters;
Movement is an inherent property of matter (or various substances). In nature there is nothing more than matter that moves and is involved in a consistent sequence of cause and effect. The human concepts of order and disorder do not arise from a planning and regulating authority. Man is a product of nature and is therefore bound to its laws, his human nature . Both individual virtue and social morality must be tied to this nature. For D'Holbach there was no dualism , i.e. a contrast between matter versus spirit or soul versus body , rather he was committed to a consistent monism .
Humans have sense organs that ultimately determine their spiritual nature. Matter is determined empirically as that which can affect the senses . D'Holbach developed a system of sensualistic , monistic materialism. Thus there are no innate ideas or innate instincts, and also no a priori access to natural or moral laws. Sensory perceptions, habits and upbringing determine his spiritual nature. D'Holbach's position is thus deterministic in a double sense in the last instance the principles of Newtonian mechanics have universal validity for all physical events, but also for human beings in their physical corporeality, subject to the laws of nature. D'Holbach therefore declares free will to be an illusion. In fact, people are moved by interests, and their actions follow them. Morally relevant, therefore, is above all an explanation of the natural interests that every individual possesses and the use of knowledge for their conflict-free realization.
According to d'Holbach, intellectual abilities and processes would be modes of the human body, i. H. certain modes of being or modes of action that functionally result from the anatomy. This just needs to be analyzed. One of the basic human skills is feeling . Basically, he derives all intellectual and consequently also moral abilities from the excitability for the impressions of the outside world. As senses, he describes the organs of the body by means of which the brain, also an internal organ, is modified. He calls the modifications sensations, perceptions, ideas.
“[...] Changes, considered in and of themselves, are called sensations ; they are called perceptions when the internal organ perceives them or is informed by them; they are called ideas when the internal organ relates these changes to the object that produced them. Every sensation is therefore only a shock communicated to our organs; every perception is a continuation of this shock to the brain; every idea is the image of the object from which sensation and perception proceed. From this it can be seen that we can have neither sensations nor perceptions nor ideas if our senses are not affected. [...] "
In d'Holbach's ethics , self-preservation , the happiness of the individual, self-interest and benefit are systematically linked on the basis of physical laws as central interests .
“[…] In other words, man's actions are never free; they are always necessary consequences of their temperament, their ideas received from outside, the true or false concepts people have of happiness, and finally their beliefs reinforced by example, upbringing, and daily experience. [...] "
In these philosophical constructs there is no room for people's religious expectations. And from the moral consequences derived from this, unrealistic expectations and demands are derived.
By now imparting this knowledge to man, natural science enables him to strive for happiness in the present, namely by seeking it in society without sacrificing his own interests. Faith in God, on the other hand, comes from a fear of man towards nature and its laws and is the sign of the unenlightened man. Enlightenment, i.e. the insight into the conditions of the physical world, led to acceptable laws and education and would free people from the darkness of ideologies, religions and their institutions such as the church and despots.
D'Holbach had a high level of knowledge and education on these topics. So he tried to develop his philosophy in harmony with the known facts of nature and the scientific knowledge of his time and cited, for example, the experiments of John Needham as proof that life could have developed independently without the intervention of a deity.
construction
The work is divided into two parts, the first into seventeen, the second into fourteen chapters.
|
|
Appreciation in the German-speaking area
In his autobiographical story From my life. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also wrote poetry and truth about d'Holbach's system of nature :
“We didn't understand how such a book could be dangerous. It seemed so gray, so Cimmerian, so deadly that we had difficulty withstanding his presence, that we shuddered at it like a ghost (...). If, however, this book has done us some damage, it was that we were and remained deeply angry with all philosophy, especially metaphysics, but on the other hand only threw ourselves all the more vividly and passionately into living knowledge, experience, doing and poetry . "
Goethe had begun reading d'Holbach's System of Nature in Strasbourg in 1771 , but did not finish it.
expenditure
Contemporary
- Système de la nature ou Des loix du monde physique et du monde moral . London 1770. ( Part 1 , Part 2 ).
- System of nature, or of the laws of the physical and moral world. 2nd, improved edition. Frankfurt / Leipzig 1791. ( Part 1 , Part 2 ).
Translations
- System of nature . Wigand, Leipzig 1841. (online) .
- System of nature or of the laws of the physical and moral world (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbücher Wissenschaft . Volume 259 ). 1st edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 .
literature
- Paul Jansen: Philosophy. In: Peter-Eckhard Knabe (Ed.): France in the Age of Enlightenment. dme-Verlag, Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-922977-15-4 , pp. 78-79.
- Erich Köhler: Lectures on the history of French literature. Edited by Henning Krauss and Dietmar Rieger. Volume 5.1. University Library, Freiburg i. Br 2006, p. 52. (PDF)
- James Llana: Natural History and the Encyclopédie. In: Journal of the History of Biology. 33 (1), 2000, pp. 1-25.
- Wolf Lepenies: The End of Natural History. Change of cultural self-evident in the sciences of the 18th and 19th centuries. (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbücher Wissenschaft. 227). Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07827-5 .
- Georgi Walentinowitsch Plechanow : Contributions to the history of materialism. Holbach Helvetius Marx. Neuer Weg publishing house, Berlin 1946, p. 10 f.
- Roselyne Rey: Dynamique des formes et interprétation de la nature. In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie. Volume 11, Numéro 11, 1991, pp. 49-62. (on-line)
- Virgil W. Topazio: D'Holbach's Conception of Nature. In: Modern Language Notes. Volume 69, Number 6, 1954, pp. 412-416 ( JSTOR 3039742 ).
Web links
- Joseph Daniel Bryan: The Creation of a Radical System: Baron d'Holbach's Système de la Nature and the Enlightenment in Tension. (PDF; 457 kB). Raleigh, North Carolina 2008. (Under the direction of Dr. K. Steven Vincent). A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.
- Criticism of religion of the Enlightenment
- monticello.org Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
- Virgil W. Topazio: D'Holbach, Man of Science. In: The Rice University Studies. Volume 53, Number 4, 1967, pp. 63-68.
- Virgil W. Topazio: Culture and the Age of Enlightenment. In: The Rice University Studies. vol. 63, no. 1, 1977, pp. 125-133.
Individual evidence
- ^ Max Pearson Cushing: Baron D'holbach A Study Of Eighteenth Century Radicalism. (Original 1886). Kessinger Pub., 2004, ISBN 1-4191-0895-6 , pp. 39-49.
- ↑ Michael Hunter, David Wootton: Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. (1992). Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011. doi: 10.1093 / acprof: oso / 9780198227366.001.0001
- ^ Max Pearson Cushing: Baron D'holbach A Study Of Eighteenth Century Radicalism. (Original 1886). Kessinger Pub. Co. 2004, ISBN 1-4191-0895-6 , pp. 39-49.
- ^ Robert Darnton: The Business of Enlightenment: Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800: Publishing History of the "Encyclopedie", 1775-1800. Harvard University Press; 1987, ISBN 0-674-08786-0 , p. 39 f.
- ^ Consortium of European Research Libraries. Monsieur De Nesle
- ↑ Eric Puisais: Léger-Marie Deschamps, un philosophe entre Lumières et oubli. Société chauvinoise de philosophie, Harmattan, 2001, ISBN 2-7475-0309-7 , p. 68 f.
- ^ II Friedrich: Critique of the system of nature. In: Friedrich Volz: The works of Frederick the Great. (see note 24), Volume 7, pp. 258–269, precisely p. 262f.
- ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. First published Fri Sep 6, 2002.
- ↑ a b Olga Rubitschon: Materialistic Ethics. In: Annemarie Pieper (Ed.): History of the newer ethics. Volume 1, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-8252-1701-9 , pp. 102-123, on d'Holbach in particular, pp. 116-120.
- ↑ Paul Thiry d'Holbach: System of nature or of the laws of the physical and moral world. (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbücher Wissenschaft. 259). Translated into German by Fritz-Georg Voigt. 1st edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 , p. 24.
- ↑ a b Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch, Friedrich Ueberweg, Johannes Rohbeck: Outline of the history of philosophy: The philosophy of the 18th century. 2 half volumes. Schwabe-Verlag, Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-7965-2445-5 , p. 564.
- ^ Paul Thiry d'Holbach: System of nature. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 , p. 17.
- ^ Gerhard Schurz: Lecture notes on epistemology. (PDF; 606 kB). 1995, p. 49.
- ↑ Friedrich Albert Lange: History of Materialism. (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbücher Wissenschaft. 70). 1st edition. Volume 1, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-518-07670-1 , p. 397.
- ^ Paul Thiry d'Holbach: System of nature. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 , p. 92.
- ^ Paul Thiry d'Holbach: System of nature. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 , p. 96.
- ^ Paul Thiry d'Holbach: System of nature. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 , p. 169.
- ^ Hermann Sauter: Holbach, Paul T (h) iry von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , pp. 510-512 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ Hermann Sauter: The Palatine Baron Paul Tiry von Holbach, a central figure of the French Enlightenment. Special edition of the Literary Association of the Palatinate for its members. (1972), pp. 14-16.
- ↑ According to nature's system. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07859-3 .
- ↑ Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, text in French, online (PDF; 2.0 MB)
- ^ Gero von Wilpert : Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 , p. 482.