Oppose absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings

Holbach was the intellectual forerunner of the French Revolution, what Engels called one of those "very revolutionary" great men who inspired people's minds for the coming revolution. Throughout his life, he always adhered to democracy and opposed autocracy. In his writings, he relentlessly attacked the French autocracy, pointing out that it was an unfair social system "based on lust, willfulness, and the individual interests of certain figures who ruled society."

Under an autocratic system, the monarchs themselves become the absolute masters of society, and the law is only a manifestation of their "partiality". He angrily denounced the power of the absolutist monarch as "a kind of violence, a kind of usurpation, a kind of obvious tyranny." "Holbach ruthlessly denounced the extravagance and decadence of the dynasty and the determinism of the despotic system, pointing out that the court was the center of the depravity of the people, and that the autocracy was the root cause of the desolation of the countryside, the desolation of the land, and the famine of the people. Autocratic rule inevitably leads to revolution, and revolution against autocracy is justified.

Social Contract Theory

Holbach was deeply influenced by the "social contract theory" and the idea of popular sovereignty of Rousseau and others. Rejecting the nonsense of "divine authority of kings", he pointed out that the state has its origin in the social contract, and that societies composed of all the contractors "often retain an absolute authority", that is, the sovereignty of the state should belong to all the people, and that the common will of the people is the law. He pointed out that the leader and the monarch are only "the trustees of a greater or lesser part of the power of society, and not its absolute masters, nor the owners of the state." "The monarch should obey the law, not that the law should obey the monarch. The people could limit or cancel the powers they had delegated to the monarch at any time if they wished. Holbach's socio-political views, which reflected the democratic demands of the third estate of the people, represented by the bourgeoisie, against absolute monarchy, contributed to the arrival of the French Revolution.

materialism

Holbach was a materialist. Starting from a materialist view of nature and epistemology, he categorically denied the existence of the idea of God. Only matter is the only real existence, and only what can be perceived by our senses can we be sure of its existence. Since the idea of God is immaterial and cannot be perceived by our senses, it certainly does not exist.

Holbach's materialist ideas have a distinct anti-authoritarian character, and their sharp edge is directed at the Catholic Church, the spiritual pillar of the French autocratic system, and its monopoly on people's spiritual world. Holbach hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that the Catholic Church was an accomplice of absolutism, and that the princes "established their great power and exalted titles over God Himself." On the one hand, religion gives absolute monarchs the power to act arbitrarily and deify their power, and on the other hand, it persuades the people to be content with the rule of the autocratic system, which plays a role that violence cannot do. Thus, "despotism, tyranny, the corruption and privilege of the princes, and the blindness of the people" are "all to blame for the notion of religion and the vile flattery of the clergy." ”

At that time, the monks and nobles in France, both belonging to the privileged hierarchy, were the social basis of the autocracy. In his writings, Holbach ruthlessly tore away the veil of hypocrisy of the monks, exposing their greed, cruelty, and all sorts of ugliness in broad daylight. "The Catholic Church plunders the people so that they may be saved, and it impoverishes the people so that they may repudiate earthly happiness and be happy in the world," he pointed out bitterly. "Holbach's philosophical writings, like daggers and spears, pierced the privacy of the monks and discredited them. Holbach's materialist ideas were highly praised by Lenin because of their militant nature: "The sharp, vivid, and brilliant political treatises written by the philosophers of the eighteenth century wittily and openly attacked the monasticism that prevailed at that time." Materialism

The world is unified in matter. Philosophical research should take as its starting point the things of nature, which is the sum of material things, and motion is the form of material existence. He defined matter as: "Something that stimulates our senses in any way." He systematically criticized religion theoretically, opposed all forms of religion, and believed that man is a part of nature, and that the soul and body of man coexist and die. Religion preaches an afterlife and so on that are fictional, and it is proposed that ignorance and fear are the root causes of religion. He denied that there was contingency, explained all natural and spiritual phenomena from the mechanical point of view of mechanics, and showed a fatalistic tendency. Thinking that everything in the world is inevitable and cannot be otherwise. Unlucky can only say "fate should be like this". In terms of social outlook, he acknowledges the decisive role of the environment in the formation of personality, but points out that "opinions dominate the world".

Progressive

Holbach was mainly engaged in philosophical activities throughout his life, and was one of the representatives of French mechanical materialism in the eighteenth century.

Holbach's materialist view of nature was heavily influenced by Cartesian physics. Like Descartes, he also pointed out that matter and its motion are the only beings in the universe. He said: "The universe, the aggregate of all that exists, provides us everywhere with nothing but matter and motion. He pointed out that everything in the universe is made of matter, not only inanimate things, but also human beings are "an organic whole organized by different matter."

At that time, there were some idealists who did not deny the existence of the material world verbally, but pointed out that there was a higher spiritual primordial above the material world, which created and formed the material world. In response to this idealist view, Holbach argues that it is completely wrong to "attribute the creation and formation of matter to a spiritual thing." Matter cannot be destroyed, and it cannot be created. Therefore, there is no and cannot be a spiritual primordial as the creator of the world above the material world. Not only is spirit unable to create the material world, but it is also the product of a certain stage of material development, a function of the human body organized by various different substances. Holbach's views adhered to the materialist principle of the primacy of matter and the secondness of spirit.

Holbach's epistemology inherits the positive side of Locke's theory of sensation and discards the second nature that Locke pointed out as a subjective product. Cognition originates from sensory experience and is a reflection of the objective world. If we depart from sensory experience and block the channel that reflects the objective external world, we will not have any understanding from the subjective itself.

Therefore, all ideas of man are acquired from experience, and even axioms such as "the whole is greater than the part" are "always acquired." Starting from the materialist reflection theory, Holbach criticized the idealist transcendentalism of Descartes's claim that man has "innate ideas", which holds that "ideas can be generated from the human soul itself without reflecting objective external things", which is completely religious bias.

While Holbach attaches importance to sensory experience, he also gives a certain place to rational cognition. He has seen that although sensation is the basis of cognition, perceptual cognition is still superficial and superficial, and only by rising to rational cognition can man grasp the essence of objective things. To a certain extent, he overcame the one-sidedness of empiricists who only focus on feelings and theorists who only focus on reason.

limitations

Due to the constraints of the times, Holbach's materialist philosophy had metaphysical and mechanistic characteristics. In terms of the concept of nature, Holbach did not reach a truly scientific understanding of the concept of matter. What he meant by motion was mechanical displacement. Man is also "a very complex machine, composed of a large number of substances, which changes according to various properties, proportions, and modes of activity."

In terms of epistemology, he did not understand the decisive role of practice in cognition, and regarded cognition as a purely negative reflection of subjectivity to objectivity.

In terms of the concept of history, he regarded ideas and motives as the ultimate cause of historical development, and believed that an idea, transmitted through language, could "produce a revolution within a country, or even have an impact on the whole world." This is how Alexander decided the fate of Asia, and this is how Muhammad changed the face of the land." His view of history is clearly idealistic.

Despite these shortcomings, Holbach's philosophy was one of the outstanding materialists of the eighteenth century, and his ideas enriched the treasury of materialist philosophy. In the history of the development of European materialism, Holbach occupies an important place.