It is a tragedy of history, the author concludes, that Voltaire and Rousseau won the battle of ideas, whereas Diderot was reduced to the rank of editor of the encyclopedia, and Holbach was forgotten utterly.Even today, and even in secular western Europe, the bald and confident atheism and materialism of Diderot and Holbach seems mildly shocking.
He sketches the early lives of Diderot, Holbach, Rousseau and other players in the drama, and describes the philosophy they hammered out.
Holbach hosted salons for his contemporaries in which they would gather to discuss political, religious, and philosophical ideology.
According to some sources, the nickname "Big Bertha" was bestowed on the guns in honour of Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Holbach, owner of the Krupp firm.
It is revealing that when Raynal confronted the Revolution itself (Diderot, Holbach and Helvétius, having received church burials, were dead), he didn't like what he saw.
The thinkers of the Parisian Enlightenment (she focuses on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvétius, Holbach and a few lesser figures) are rationalists, hostile to religion and adherents of a universalism that Himmelfarb finds disingenuous.
Holbach wrote prolifically throughout this time.
Holbach particularly enjoyed the parties there.
Holbach was born in 1723 in Edesheim.
However, Holbach managed, despite what one might expect, to keep his coterie firmly in the mainstream of European society.
So the general character of his coterie might suggest that Holbach was a figure on the fringe of Parisian society, a kind of eccentric parvenu with a taste for scandal.
