Baron d'Holbach : a Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France — A Reader’s Guide

A Dissertation's Architecture

The book's structure is immediately visible in its detailed table of contents, which lists chapters, an appendix of unpublished letters, and a two-part bibliography. This academic framework is not merely formal; it shapes how Cushing presents his evidence. Chapter I, "Holbach the Man," draws on early letters to John Wilkes and relationships with Diderot, Rousseau, Hume, and Garrick to construct a portrait. Chapter II catalogs Holbach's works, distinguishing translations of German scientific texts and English deists from original atheistic tracts like Le Christianisme devoilé and Théologie portative. Chapter III then focuses entirely on the Système de la Nature, its philosophy, and its refutations.

This tripartite structure allows Cushing to move from personal context to textual analysis, but it also means that the philosophical core is reached only after extensive biographical and bibliographical groundwork. Readers should note how the author uses the appendix—five unpublished letters to John Wilkes—as a primary source to support claims about Holbach's character and network.

Recurring Images of Attack and Defense

A striking image recurs throughout the excerpts: the assault on religion as a violent, unstoppable attack. Diderot's letter speaks of giving "l'assaut à la barrière de la religion" and turning "regards menaçants" from heaven to earthly sovereignty. Cushing picks up this martial language, describing Holbach's work as part of an "attack on religion that preceded and helped to prepare the French Revolution." The metaphor of breaking barriers and directing threats appears again in Voltaire's reaction, where he calls the Système "un ouvrage de ténèbres" and "un péché contre la nature."

This imagery of assault and defense is mirrored in the list of refutations Cushing provides—eleven works explicitly directed against the Système de la Nature, from Abbé Rive's Lettres philosophiques to Frederick II's Examen critique. The study thus presents intellectual history as a battlefield, with Holbach's materialism as the target of a coordinated counterattack.

Movement Between Circles: Paris and Strasbourg

Cushing's narrative moves between two distinct intellectual circles: Holbach's Parisian salon, frequented by Diderot, Rousseau, and Hume, and the university circle at Strasbourg where Goethe encountered the Système de la Nature. The contrast is sharp. In Paris, Voltaire's letters seethe with bitterness; he accuses Holbach's circle of "caresser les gens en place, et d'abandonner ceux qui n'y sont plus." In Strasbourg, Goethe and his peers find the book "harmless and uninteresting," its atheistic twilight casting a veil over the beauty of the earth.

This geographical and generational shift highlights a key tension in the study: the same text that provoked Voltaire's fury was dismissed by young romantics as "die echte Quintessenz der Greisenheit"—the true quintessence of old age. Cushing uses this juxtaposition to illustrate the rapid romantic reaction that obscured the clarity of eighteenth-century issues. The movement between these scenes gives the study a dynamic, comparative quality.

The Weight of the Bibliography

The bibliography occupies a prominent place in the book's structure, divided into two parts: editions of Holbach's works in chronological order and a general bibliography. This is not a mere appendix; it reflects Cushing's method of building his argument on a foundation of primary and secondary sources. The list of refutations alone—eleven titles with full publication details, including prices like "40 sols broché"—demonstrates a meticulous attention to the material history of ideas.

Readers should pay attention to how Cushing uses these bibliographic details to support his claims. For example, the inclusion of Frederick II's Examen critique among the refutations signals the political stakes of Holbach's atheism. The bibliography also serves as a roadmap for further research, listing works by Bergier, Castillon, and others that Cushing engages with in the text. This scholarly apparatus is integral to the study's argument, not a decorative afterthought.

Cushing's study is best approached as a work of intellectual history that privileges documentation over narrative. The detailed table of contents and extensive bibliography reward readers who follow the footnotes and endnotes. Pay particular attention to the appendix of unpublished letters, which offers direct access to Holbach's voice. The book's value lies less in its conclusions than in the network of sources it assembles—a network that reveals how radical ideas traveled through letters, refutations, and salons in the decades before the French Revolution.

Reading about Holbach’s quiet certainty among his fierce friends, I kept thinking how some ideas just settle in you, unasked. Later, I found a gentle companion in The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics — Story, Setting & Ideas, where old thoughts feel less like arguments and more like shared rooms we can sit in. That lingering stayed with me.