Determinism and Enlightenment

Ruggero Sciuto is a Leverhulme Early Career Researcher at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where his research focuses on eighteenth-century French literature and philosophy as well as on early modern diplomacy. He is the director of Digital d’Holbach, a born-digital critical edition of d’Holbach’s works, and a collaborator on the Oxford edition of Voltaire’s Complete Works.

List of Abbreviations
List of figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: One question, two thinkers

1.1: Determinism

1.2: Diderot

1.3: D’Holbach

2: Linking everything together

2.1: Diderot and d’Holbach

2.2: D’Holbach and determinism

2.3: Diderot and determinism

3: Synopsis

3.1: Building blocks

3.2: Of Individuals and Societies

3.3: Determinism, complexity, and atheism

4: Further aims of this book

5: N.B.

5.1: Determinism vs fatalism

5.2: Corpora and chronology

Chapter I: Three Fundamental Principles

1: Background

1.1: The Causal Principle

1.2: The Causal Principle under attack

1.3: The Principle of Sufficient Reason

1.4: Causal Principle, Principle of Sufficient Reason, and Cosmological Argument

1.5: Hume’s criticisms of the Cosmological Argument

1.6: The Nihil ex Nihilo Principle

2: Diderot and d’Holbach

2.1: Diderot, d’Holbach, and the Nihil ex Nihilo Principle

2.2: Diderot, d’Holbach, and the Causal Principle

2.3: For the sake of determinism and science

2.4: Diderot, d’Holbach, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

2.5: Causa sive ratio

2.6: Cause and reason in Diderot’s and d’Holbach’s writings

2.7: Why do Diderot and d’Holbach endorse the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

3: Conclusion

Chapter II: Causal Necessitation

1: Background

1.1: Causal Necessitation

1.2: Causal and Logical Necessitation

1.3: The argument from essence

1.4: The argument from total cause

1.5: No Necessary Connection Arguments

2: Diderot and d’Holbach on Causal Necessitation

2.1: Suites et effets nécessaires

2.2: Additional evidence

2.3: Causal Necessitation in the moral world

2.4: Diderot and d’Holbach on the equivalence of Causal and Logical Necessitation

2.5: D’Holbach and the argument from essence

2.6: Diderot: the argument from essence and the argument from ‘cause une’

3: Causal Necessitation and theology

3.1: The reasons behind it all

4: Conclusion

Chapter III: Laws of Nature

1: Background

1.1: Laws of nature in eighteenth-century France

1.2: The Top-Down View

1.3: The Bottom-Up View

1.4: Spinoza

2: D’Holbach and the laws of nature

2.1: D’Holbach and the Bottom-Up View

2.2: D’Holbach and the Top-Down View

2.3: D’Holbach’s compromise

3: Diderot and the laws of nature

3.1: Two arguments against Diderot’s belief in the laws of nature

3.2: A glance at the texts

3.3: Diderot and mathematics

3.4: Diderot and the Bottom-Up View

4: Conclusion

Chapter IV: Moral Freedom

1: Background

1.1: ‘Liberté naturelle’, ‘liberté civile’, and ‘liberté politique’

1.2: Moral freedom

1.3: The Alternative Possibilities Model

1.4: The Source Model

1.5: Moral Freedom and determinism

2: Diderot and d’Holbach on Moral Freedom

2.1: Diderot and d’Holbach on the Source Model

2.2: Internal and external causes

2.3: External causes

2.4: Internal causes

2.5: Internal and external causes reconsidered

2.6: Diderot and d’Holbach on the Alternative Possibilities Model

2.7: Outright rejection of Moral Freedom

2.8: Moral responsibility

3: Conclusion

Chapter V: Individuals and Society

1: A deterministic theory of human life

1.1: Machines de chair

1.2: Pensées décousues

1.2: Dreaming

1.3: Madness

1.4: Scientific discoveries

1.5: Artistic production

1.6: Aesthetic experience

2: No man is an island

2.1: Love

2.2: Machines d’hommes

2.3: Causal Necessitation and Laws of Nature

2.4: Of climate and rulers

2.5: Social change in a deterministic world

Conclusion

Chapter VI: Paradoxes of Determinism

1: Determinism and complexity

1.1: Diderot and complexity

1.2: D’Holbach and complexity

1.3: Against the Argument from Design

1.4: Determinism vs complexity

1.5: A complex theory of determinism

2: Of Predictability, chance, (dis)order, and atheism

2.1: Determinism and predictability

2.2: Determinism and chance

2.3: Determinism or (dis)order

2.4: Diderot and d’Holbach’s atheism reconsidered

3. Jacques le fataliste et son maître

3.1: Les chainons, le grand rouleau, et le dieu de Malebranche

3.2: The mirage of freedom and the Leibnizian God

3.3: Jacques, Hume, and superstition

Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Pre-1850 sources

Post-1850 sources