Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715—1771)

helvetius

French philosopher; born in Paris January, 1715; died there Dec. 26,
1771. He studied at the College Louis-le Grand, and in 1738 received
the lucrative post of farmer-general, which, however, he soon
exchanged for the position of chamberlain to the queen. Tiring of the
idle and dissipated life of the court, he married in 1751, and retired
to a small estate at Vore, in Perche, where he devoted himself chiefly
to philosophical studies. He visited England in 1764, and the
following year he went to Germany, where he was received with
distinction by Frederick II. He was one of the Encyclopedists, and
held the skeptical and materialistic views common to that school of
philosophy. His principal works are: De l'esprit (Paris, 1758; Eng.
transl., De l'Esprit: or, Essays on the Mind, London, 1759), which,
condemned by the Sorbonne and publicly burned at Paris, was translated
into most European languages, and read more than any other book of the
time; and the posthumous De l'homme, de ses facultes intellectuelles
et de son Mucation (2 vols., London, 1772; Eng. transl., A Treatise on
Man; his Intellectual Faculties and his Education, 2 vols.).