French materialism is the name given to a handful of French 18th century philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment, many of them clustered around the salon of Baron d'Holbach. Although there are important differences between them, all of them were materialists who believed that the world was made up of a single substance, matter, the motions and properties of which could be used to explain all phenomena.
Prominent French materialists of the 18th century include:
- Julien Offray de La Mettrie
- Denis Diderot
- Baron d'Holbach
- Claude Adrien Helvétius
- Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis
- Jacques-André Naigeon
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or materialism:
“Salad is roughage and a French idea.”
—U.S. grandmother. As quoted in “Once a Tramp, Always ...,” by M.F.K. Fisher (1969)
“The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)