Baron D’Holbach was born in 1723 in Edesheim and he was raised in Paris by his uncle. Baron D’Holbach attended the University of Leiden in Leiden, Netherlands. He attended this school from 1744-1748. Baron D’Holbach is said to have really liked school and even was influenced by the parties he used to attend at the University, since he later went on to host parties inspired by these, himself, in Paris. Baron D’Holbach married his second cousin Basile-Genevieve d’Aine. Around the time of 1753, both his father-in-law and his uncle passed away, which left Baron D’Holbach with a great fortune.
With this great fortune, D’Holbach was very well known for throwing very elegant and prestigious dinner parties, which many famous and well known people of the time would attend. It is known that many of these philosophers and thinkers at these parties had opposing views and ideas, which made D’Holbach’s parties even more interesting and sometimes radical. Baron D’Holbach was able to keep these parties relevant and even got more well known people to attend, like French nobles and ambassadors from European countries. Some of the very well known people to have attended D’Holbach’s parties include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Edward Gibbon, Horace Walpole, Joseph Priestley, Cesare Beccaria, Nicolas-Antonie Boulanger, Benjamin Franklin, David Garrick, Clause-Adrien Helvetius, David Hume, Adam Smith, Laurence Sterne, among many other very important people at the time. This made Baron D’Holbach very well known in France due not only as a political radical but also as “le premier maître d’hôtel de la philosophie”.
Baron D’Holbach was very well known for having a remarkable character, since hosting these dinner parties which included many famous people of power with opposing views, could have generated controversies or even disputes among them. However, D’Holbach managed to maintain everything as an open ground for dialogue among the invited and prestigious people, and he was very well known for that. He was also seen as generous and supportive during these parties, which could be considered as an explanation to his great success.
Baron D’Holbach was a philosopher, translator, and a very prominent social figure around this time. D’Holbach developed a deterministic and materialistic metaphysics in his writings. There were many polemics due to his news against organized religion as well as his utilitarian ethical and political theory. Some of the most famous works published by D’Holbach include Le Christianisme devolie (Christianity Unveiled), Systeme de la nature (System of Nature), and Le Bon Sens (Common Sense). These writings provoked much heat among many other thinkers and notable figures, who responded with criticism, among these were Voltaire, abbe Bergier, and Frederick the Great. Both of his writings System of Nature and Common Sense were “condemned by the parliament of Paris and publicly burned”. However, Baron D’Holbach was always careful to remain anonymous in his writings and publications, as he didn’t want to ruin or damage his reputation due to his religious and political views.
D’Holbach’s parties continued and the people met for thirty years, from the 1750s until about 1780. His wife during the time passed away, so D’Holbach married her younger sister Charlotte Suzanne d’Aine and had four children together. D’Holbach wrote and contributed to many books and works (over fifty books and over four hundred articles). Baron D’Holbach later died in 1789.