Atheist Identity and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century France by Lara

Atheist Identity and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century France by Lara Marie Apps A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History and Classics University of Alberta © Lara Marie Apps, 2016 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines atheist identity and ideology in eighteenth-century France up to 1776 through an analysis of numerous atheist texts, including several little- known clandestine works and the more familiar books of Jean Meslier, Julien Offray de La Mettrie and the Baron d’Holbach. It departs from most previous historiography on pre-modern atheism by fusing intellectual- and cultural-historical approaches; most importantly, it incorporates gender analysis in the interpretation of atheist texts. This research demonstrates the importance of the eighteenth century to our understanding of the continuities and ruptures in the development of atheism. For eighteenth-century atheists, writing and sharing their views was a way of resisting repression, practicing atheism within a hostile environment, and changing the social imaginary by intervening in a discourse that dehumanized them. Further, the atheist texts express a sense of identity by defining atheists as different from other members of society in several specific ways, including intellectual and moral superiority. This identity re-humanized atheists but also excluded women and the common people, on the grounds that they were not capable of understanding virtuous atheism. Atheists thus claimed for themselves the positions of wise fathers and leaders. Finally, some atheist writers presented ideological visions of ideal societies, based on the core concepts of the materiality of the world, the necessity of organizing societies rationally in accordance with nature’s laws, and the subordination of individuality to the common good and social or moral order. The atheist ideology was essentially optimistic concerning human !ii progress, but its elitist and patriarchal aspects challenge the view of atheism as necessarily democratic and progressive. !iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many individuals and institutions have supported my research and progress through this doctoral program. I thank my co-supervisors, Professors Jeremy Caradonna and Andrew Gow for their advice and support; Professor Robert Smith for serving on my supervisory committee; and the arm’s-length examiners, Professors Jane Samson of the University of Alberta and Lori Beaman of the University of Ottawa, for their time and feedback on my work. Daniel Erin, John Manderscheid, François Pageau, Lianna Ryan and James White read early drafts of the dissertation chapters and provided valuable comments. I also wish to thank the staff at several libraries: the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections Library; the Newberry Library in Chicago; the Bibliothèque Mazarine; the Bibliothèque National, including the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal and the Bibliothèque de Richelieu; and the Archives of the Préfecture de Police in Paris. My studies have been funded by the University of Alberta, Athabasca University, Province of Alberta, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Last but by no means least, I thank all of my family for their life-long support. My husband Rob McCallion has supported and encouraged me through the various highs and lows of this process, and my children Declan and Katie have provided enthusiasm, distractions and a sense of perspective. This work is dedicated to the memory of my father, Paul George Apps (1945-2008). iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv List of Tables vii Chapter 1 Introduction Overview 1 Ideology, Belief and Unbelief 10 Sources 15 Historiography 23 Conclusion 58 Chapter 2 Of Monsters and Men: A Hostile Environment Overview 61 A Dehumanizing Discourse 71 The Intolerability of Atheism 95 Censorship 106 Conclusion 114 Chapter 3 Estrangement and Elitism: Atheist Identity Overview 116 Le Philosophe 124 Traité des Trois Imposteurs 128 Lettre de Thrasybule à Leucippe 138 !v Meslier’s Mémoire 145 Two Clandestine Dissertations 152 Réflexions sur l’existence de l’âme et sur l’existence de Dieu 159 La Mettrie’s Discours Preliminaire 162 Lettres à Eugénie and Système de la Nature 167 An Atheist Against Atheists 181 Conclusion 185 Chapter 4 Living in a Material World: Atheist Ideology Overview 189 Core Concept: A Material World 193 Jean Meslier 219 La Mettrie 226 Baron d’Holbach 233 Dom Deschamps 245 Conclusion 251 Chapter 5 Conclusion Summary 255 Final Thoughts 266 Bibliography 269 !vi LIST OF TABLES Eighteenth-Century Atheist Texts ………………………………………………… 22 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Overview “I didn’t know atheism had a history.” About halfway through my doctoral program, I agreed to be interviewed on a Calgary radio talk show about cuts to post-secondary funding. The host asked what I was studying. When I explained that I was researching the history of atheism, he responded with the statement above. There was no time during the program to explore what he meant, but I have thought about his remark often since then. He may have meant that atheism has not existed long enough to have a meaningful history, that it is an unchanging intellectual position, or that it has contributed nothing to history. He may also have meant that the idea of a history of atheism had never occurred to him; I have encountered this view frequently, and not only among lay audiences. Atheism has, however, become a fashionable topic recently, with several new books appearing within the last few years, and the understanding that it has a history appears to be gaining ground. It is still possible, nevertheless, for a very recent and otherwise valuable sociological analysis of !1 New Atheism to begin its historical background section with the Enlightenment and to treat that period as a kind of false start for atheism, with the real development waiting for Darwin’s work on evolution.1 Atheism’s history can in fact be traced back, as a shadowy but persistent presence in Western culture, to the ancient Greeks, who described theoretical atheism and gave us the word atheos. Classicist Tim Whitmarsh reminds us that the essential atheist arguments against religion and the existence of God/gods were formulated in the ancient world and that atheism was driven underground by the establishment of Christianity,2 suggesting that the story of atheism as an intellectual position may be one of long continuity rather than rupture. Considered as a social phenomenon, however, there are clear moments of discontinuity, such as the emergence of an open, systematic atheism into public view in the eighteenth century. This atheism appeared in several French works, some of which were clandestine manuscripts with a limited circulation,3 while others were published books that became “forbidden best-sellers.”4 The importance of these works does not lie in the originality of their ideas. Atheists almost certainly existed 1 Stephen LeDrew, The Evolution of Atheism: The Politics of a Modern Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 15-25. 2 Tim Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2015). 3 On clandestine literature in France, see e.g. the classic study by Ira O. Wade, The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938); Antony McKenna & Alain Mothu, eds., La Philosophie clandestine à l’Age classique (Paris: Voltaire Foundation, 1997); Robert Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995); and the various issues of La Lettre Clandestine, published annually by the University of Paris-Sorbonne. 4 Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995). I still find it incomprehensible that Christopher Hitchens’ The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Philadelphia: Da Capo, 2007) jumps from Spinoza to Hume, skipping over all of the French atheists and even the Traité des Trois Imposteurs, which one would have thought would be very much to Hitchens’ taste. !2 in medieval and Renaissance Europe, and many of the ideas contained in eighteenth- century atheist works were syntheses and adaptations from works by Lucretius, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, John Toland, Pierre Bayle, and other ancient and early modern thinkers. Atheism could not, however, be expressed openly in medieval and early modern Europe. What makes the eighteenth-century atheist texts so significant in the history of atheism is the fact that they represented atheists taking the risk of discovery and punishment in order to speak for themselves; they provide a window into a subjective dimension of committed atheism5 that is hidden or obscure in earlier periods. Why did these atheists take the risk of writing about their beliefs? This dissertation argues that the eighteenth-century atheists who produced these texts were attempting to change what Cornelius Castoriadis called the “magma of ‘social imaginary significations,’” by which he meant “the immensely complex web of meanings that permeate, orient, and direct the whole life of the society considered, as well as the concrete individuals that bodily constitute society.” These significations include spirits, God, state, money, virtue, sin, and other fundamental concepts.6 Charles Taylor’s more recent forumulation of the concept of the social imaginary describes

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