Ruggero Sciuto: Determinism and Enlightenment The Collaboration of Diderot and d’Holbach

 

Determinism and Enlightenment

The Collaboration of Diderot and d’Holbach

Published on10 April 2023336 pages5 imagesOxford University Studies in the EnlightenmentEighteenth-Century StudiesVoltaire FoundationISBN:9781802077674 (Paperback) |eISBN:9781802079890 (PDF)

This book examines Diderot’s and d’Holbach’s views on determinism to illuminate some of the most important debates taking place in eighteenth-century Europe. Insisting on aspects of Diderot’s and d’Holbach’s thought that, to date, have been given scant, if any, scholarly attention, it proposes to restore both thinkers to their rightful position in the history of philosophy. The book problematises Diderot’s and d’Holbach’s atheism by showing their philosophy to be deeply rooted in the Christian tradition and offers a more nuanced and historicised interpretation of the so-called “Radical Enlightenment”, challenging the notions that this movement can be taken to be a perfectly coherent set of ideas and that it represents a complete break with “the old”. By examining Diderot’s and d’Holbach’s works in tandem and without post-romantic assumptions about originality and single authorship, it argues that the two philosophers’ texts should be taken as the product of a fascinating collaborative form of philosophical enquiry that perfectly reflects the sociable nature of intellectual production during the Enlightenment. The book further proposes a fresh interpretation of such crucial texts as the Système de la nature and Jacques le fataliste et son maître and unveils a key web of concepts that will help researchers to better understand Enlightenment philosophy and literature as a whole.
Table of contents

List of Abbreviations

List of figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: One question, two thinkers

1.1: Determinism

1.2: Diderot

1.3: D’Holbach

2: Linking everything together

2.1: Diderot and d’Holbach

2.2: D’Holbach and determinism

2.3: Diderot and determinism

3: Synopsis

3.1: Building blocks

3.2: Of Individuals and Societies

3.3: Determinism, complexity, and atheism

4: Further aims of this book

5: N.B.

5.1: Determinism vs fatalism

5.2: Corpora and chronology

Chapter I: Three Fundamental Principles

1: Background

1.1: The Causal Principle

1.2: The Causal Principle under attack

1.3: The Principle of Sufficient Reason

1.4: Causal Principle, Principle of Sufficient Reason, and Cosmological Argument

1.5: Hume’s criticisms of the Cosmological Argument

1.6: The Nihil ex Nihilo Principle

2: Diderot and d’Holbach

2.1: Diderot, d’Holbach, and the Nihil ex Nihilo Principle

2.2: Diderot, d’Holbach, and the Causal Principle

2.3: For the sake of determinism and science

2.4: Diderot, d’Holbach, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

2.5: Causa sive ratio

2.6: Cause and reason in Diderot’s and d’Holbach’s writings

2.7: Why do Diderot and d’Holbach endorse the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

3: Conclusion

Chapter II: Causal Necessitation

1: Background

1.1: Causal Necessitation

1.2: Causal and Logical Necessitation

1.3: The argument from essence

1.4: The argument from total cause

1.5: No Necessary Connection Arguments

2: Diderot and d’Holbach on Causal Necessitation

2.1: Suites et effets nécessaires

2.2: Additional evidence

2.3: Causal Necessitation in the moral world

2.4: Diderot and d’Holbach on the equivalence of Causal and Logical Necessitation

2.5: D’Holbach and the argument from essence

2.6: Diderot: the argument from essence and the argument from ‘cause une’

3: Causal Necessitation and theology

3.1: The reasons behind it all

4: Conclusion

Chapter III: Laws of Nature

1: Background

1.1: Laws of nature in eighteenth-century France

1.2: The Top-Down View

1.3: The Bottom-Up View

1.4: Spinoza

2: D’Holbach and the laws of nature

2.1: D’Holbach and the Bottom-Up View

2.2: D’Holbach and the Top-Down View

2.3: D’Holbach’s compromise

3: Diderot and the laws of nature

3.1: Two arguments against Diderot’s belief in the laws of nature

3.2: A glance at the texts

3.3: Diderot and mathematics

3.4: Diderot and the Bottom-Up View

4: Conclusion

Chapter IV: Moral Freedom

1: Background

1.1: ‘Liberté naturelle’, ‘liberté civile’, and ‘liberté politique’

1.2: Moral freedom

1.3: The Alternative Possibilities Model

1.4: The Source Model

1.5: Moral Freedom and determinism

2: Diderot and d’Holbach on Moral Freedom

2.1: Diderot and d’Holbach on the Source Model

2.2: Internal and external causes

2.3: External causes

2.4: Internal causes

2.5: Internal and external causes reconsidered

2.6: Diderot and d’Holbach on the Alternative Possibilities Model

2.7: Outright rejection of Moral Freedom

2.8: Moral responsibility

3: Conclusion

Chapter V: Individuals and Society

1: A deterministic theory of human life

1.1: Machines de chair

1.2: Pensées décousues

1.2: Dreaming

1.3: Madness

1.4: Scientific discoveries

1.5: Artistic production

1.6: Aesthetic experience

2: No man is an island

2.1: Love

2.2: Machines d’hommes

2.3: Causal Necessitation and Laws of Nature

2.4: Of climate and rulers

2.5: Social change in a deterministic world

Conclusion

Chapter VI: Paradoxes of Determinism

1: Determinism and complexity

1.1: Diderot and complexity

1.2: D’Holbach and complexity

1.3: Against the Argument from Design

1.4: Determinism vs complexity

1.5: A complex theory of determinism

2: Of Predictability, chance, (dis)order, and atheism

2.1: Determinism and predictability

2.2: Determinism and chance

2.3: Determinism or (dis)order

2.4: Diderot and d’Holbach’s atheism reconsidered

3. Jacques le fataliste et son maître

3.1: Les chainons, le grand rouleau, et le dieu de Malebranche

3.2: The mirage of freedom and the Leibnizian God

3.3: Jacques, Hume, and superstition

Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Pre-1850 sources

Post-1850 sources