Resumen de D'Holbachs "Système de la nature": Materialistische Philosophie zwischen Wissenschaft und Weltanschauung
This article is dealing with some issues of the materialistic metaphysics of the Baron d’Holbach and its position between science and ideology. His main work, the Systeme de la nature, provides – as the subtitle indicates – a materialistic and totally atheistic view of the “laws of the physical and the moral world”. Part I starts with some remarks concerning the place of French materialism in the history of philosophy followed by a discussion of d’Holbach’s conviction that man is enslaved by his ignorance of nature in part II. D’Holbach claimed that men completely misunderstood the conditions of morality because of this ignorance. He developed a theory in which it is claimed that man is a part of the physical world. Part III scrutinises the reductionist method d’Holbach used to establish his materialistic attitude to the classical problems of metaphysics. Part IV discusses some aporias which are inherent in his reductionism concerning the deterministic approach to nature, the critique of religion as a sort of deception by priests and despots, and the concept of nature as oscillating between causal determination and a moral norm.
