The System of Nature

The system of nature, or Système de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde morals, or in the detailed German translation the system of nature or the laws of the physical and moral world is the work of reconnaissance and Paul Henri Thiry Encyclopaedists d ' Holbach, which first appeared in 1770. Denis Diderot took part in the stylistic revision of the manuscript.

D' Holbach assumes that it is possible moral laws as well as laws of nature recognize as true, and that they form a common system which enables people a satisfactory Knitting and happy life. The deviation from this ideal he goes back to error or fraud concerning the nature ( in particular on the natural needs ) and moral rules. The realization of the materialist truth turns his curse, which springs from ignorance of the nature. The cause of all things lies in the inherent movement, which manifests itself in the forms of inertia, attraction and repulsion of the atoms of matter (see Epicurean atomism ). The motion of the atoms or atomic complexes can be explained by the concept of mechanical causality, and thus dispense with any teleology.

Authorship and reception

The title page of the published beginning in 1770 edition as author Jean -Baptiste de Mirabaud ( 1675-1760 ), a member of the Académie française and as of publication London was called. The author tried to want to make clandestin Mirabaud's authorship of the reader even more believable, he enclosed by a biographical sketch of the now ten years late Secretary of the French Academy and a fictitious font directory auflistete. This behavior is understandable if you look at the implications and possible consequences of censorship at the time of Louis XVI. envisioned.

The actual author was the above-mentioned philosopher, reconnaissance and encyclopedist, place of printing was in Holland with the publisher Marc- Michel Rey. The fact that d' Holbach was the author penetrated, until two decades later, in public discourse. From 1752 to 1760 Paul Henri Thiry d' Holbach works mainly for the Encyclopédie; he translated and edited more than 400 posts on topics from mineralogy, mining science and of chemistry. At the same time collects Holbach materials for Humanities and ideology history, mainly from French and English sources. It follows for the decade 1760-1770, the impressive number of about 35, due to strict censorship almost exclusively in Holland published works. Characteristic items are about the unveiled Christianity (1761 ), Letters to Eugenie, or protection against the prejudices ( 1768), The Spirit of Judaism (1769 ).

The third decade of his work, from 1770 to 1780 culminating with his by posterity always highly publicized major works: Essay on prejudice (1770 ), System of Nature (1770, Volume 1 and Volume 2 completely on the Internet) Common sense ( 1772), the social system, or natural principles of morality and politics ( 1773), the universal morality, or the duties of man, based on his Nature ( 1776).

Jacques -André Naigeon regularly frequented the house of Baron d' Holbach and was also the Coterie associated holbachique, edited as secretary and he edited the texts, among other things, the Système de la Nature and thus helped in the clandestine dissemination of his writings. D' Holbach was concerned for his safety and that is why he never gave his own handwritten texts as a master of the house.

The nature of the system was an outlaw by the authorities to work, but that in the year of its first publication underwent a third edition. Circles of the French clergy their sheer hearing before the Parlement in Paris, the Attorney General Antoine -Louis Séguier, avocat général au Parlement de Paris held an indictment before the General Assembly. In the result, it came on Saturday August 18, 1770 a solemn burning of the book. A number of books have been published in order to refute his system of nature: Frédéric Samuel Ostervald a partnership of Neuchâtel publishing company, Société typographique de Neuchâtel ( STN) in 1771 published a pirated version of the system of nature, contrary to the proscription by parish chapter and the State Council. Ostervald was then forced to resign from his post as Banneret. But in 1782 he again received a seat on the Small Council, petit conseil.

• Abbé Rive: Lettres philosophiques contre le Système de la nature. Portfolio hebdomadaire de Bruxelles (1770 )
• Frédéric II de Prusse: Exam critique du livre intitulé: Système de la nature.
• Bergier: you matérialisme exam, ou Refutation you système de la nature, Humbolt, Paris ( 1771).
• Denesle, M. ( † 1767): prejuges the anciens et des nouveaux philosophes sur l' âme humaine. Vincent & Dehancy, Paris ( 1775)
• Giovanni Francesco Salvemini da Castiglione (1704-1791). Observations sur le système de la nature, Decker, Berlin ( 1779)
• Georg Jonathan Holland. Réflexions philosophiques sur le Système de la Nature, Paris ( 1773)
• Jean -Baptiste Duvoisin (1744-1813) published three articles in the years (1775 ), ( 1778) and (1780 )
• François Marie Arouet: Dictionnaire Philosophique. Philosophical Dictionary ( Dictionnaire Philosophique portatif ) a summary of Voltaire's anti- religious thinking, EA without imprint (presumably Cramer, Geneva ) ( 1764)

Or took the concept of "nature" in the center of their concerns:

• 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 sur ​​la fondé 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: Systeme de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organists first published in Latin in 1751 as Dissertatio de inauguralis metaphysica universali naturae Systemate under the pseudonym Dr. Baumann

Frederick II of Prussia as he accuses the unknown author before the Système de la nature that the author and his work on the nature and God, morality and religion, and about the states and princes leave the path of human experience and to the labyrinth system philosophy have exchanged.

Content

The Système de la Nature can be seen as a seminal work of philosophical materialism. Nature is so as a self- created or uncreated better - construed constant and eternal sum of matter and motion, which in turn is constantly changing - there is no deliberate creator. It forms a closed system, which is intended to encompass the laws of nature as well as eternal rules of morality.

In this work in two parts, a connection is created between the laws of the physical and human- moral world. First, the characteristics of the physical world are named and then create a link to human thought and its prerequisites. From their Résumé then also the criticism of the the original thinking influencing ideologies and religions joins. The nature, he determined as

" [ ... ] Le grand tout qui resulte de l' assemblage of différentes auxiliary materials, de leur différentes combinaisons, et que nous Movements of différents voyons dans l' univers [ ... ] "

" [ ... ] The big picture that emerges from the union of different materials from their various connections and from the various movements that we see in the universe. "

The first part with a total of seventeen chapters dealt with in the first five chapters of the material nature, the object of the physical explanation of nature, then the following chapters of the nature of man.

The movement is a matter (or different materials) inherent property. In nature there is nothing but matter that moves and is in the process involved in a consistent sequence of cause and effect. The human notions of order and disorder are not caused by one scheduling and regulatory Instanz.Der man is a product of nature and therefore bound by their laws, its human nature. In this nature both individual virtue as social morality must be bound. For D' Holbach, there was no dualism, ie a contrast between matter versus spirit or soul versus body, but he was committed to a consistent monism.

Humans have senses that ultimately determine his mental nature. Matter is determined empirically, than what the senses can affizieren. D' Holbach developed a system of a sensualist, monistic materialism. Thus, there are no innate ideas or innate instincts, and no a priori access to natural or moral laws. Sensual perceptions, habits and upbringing determine its spiritual nature. D' Holbach position is therefore in a double sense deterministic, in the last instance have the principles of Newtonian mechanics universal validity for the entire physical events, but also for the people in their physical, corporeal subject to the laws of nature. D' Holbach therefore declared free will is an illusion. In fact, man is moved by interests, this follows his actions. Morally relevant, therefore, is primarily an education about the natural interests that each individual possesses and the use of knowledge to its conflict-free realization.

The intellectual skills and processes would by d' Holbach modes of the human body, that is, certain ways of being or modes of action which arise from functional anatomy. This applied to analyze it. One of the basic skills of the people is the feeling. Basically, he derives all intellectual and subsequently also the moral faculties of the excitability of the impressions of the outer world. As he describes the sense organs of the body by which the brain, also an internal organ, is modified. The modifications he calls sensations, perceptions, ideas.

" [ ... ] Changes, and considered by itself, hot sensations; they are called perceptions, when the internal organ perceives or is informed of them; they're called ideas when the internal organ these changes relates to the subject matter that has caused them. Every sensation is thus only one of our organs mentioned Vibration; every perception is continuation of this shock to the brain; every idea is the image of the object from which emanate the sensation and perception. From this it is apparent that we still can have neither ideas nor sensations perceptions when our senses are not affected. [ ... ] "

In d' Holbach ethics to individuals, the self-interest and the benefit brought on the basis of physical laws in a systematic relationship as the central interests of self-preservation, which lucky.

" [ ... ] In other words, the actions of man are never free; they are always necessary consequences of their temperament, their received from outside ideas, true or false concepts that make the people of happiness, and finally encouraged by their example, education and daily experience experience strengthened beliefs. [ ... ] "

In these philosophical constructs is no room for religious certain expectations of the people. And out with the resultant moral consequences to unrealistic expectations and demands derived.

By the nature of science to man now conveys this knowledge, it puts him in a position to seek his fortune in the present, though, by searching it in society without sacrificing its own interests. Faith in God, however, comes from a fear of humans to nature and its laws, and is the sign of the non- enlightened people. Education, so the insight into the conditions of the physical world, led to acceptable laws and education and people from the darkness of ideologies, religions and their institutions such as church and despots would liberate.

D' Holbach had a high level of knowledge and education on these issues. So he tried to develop his philosophy in harmony with the known facts of nature and the scientific knowledge of his time, for example, cites the experiments of John Needham as proof that life itself had its own can develop without about the intervention of a deity.

Construction

The work is divided into two parts, the first in seventeen, the second in fourteen chapters.

Reviews, translations and appreciation in German-speaking

In his autobiographical story from my life. Poetry and Truth wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also d' Holbach System of Nature:

"We did not understand how such a book could be dangerous. It seemed to us so gray, so cimmerisch so deathlike that we struggled to endure his presence, that we previously shuddered as a specter (...). If, however, this book has brought us some damage, so it was that we were all philosophy, but especially of metaphysics cordially gram and remained, but on the other hand, living knowledge, Learn, Do and densities threw down to us only the more vivid and passionate. "

Goethe began to read d' Holbach System of Nature in 1771 in Strasbourg, but they did not bring to an end.

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 revised edition, Frankfurt / Leipzig 1791 ( Part 1, Part 2).

Translations

• System of nature. Wigand, Leipzig 1841 (online).

• System of nature or by the laws of the physical and the moral world ( = Suhrkamp paperback books science. 259). 1st edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1978 ( translated by Fritz -Georg Voigt ), ISBN 3-518-07859-3.