Laura Nicolì

Si presenta in questo volume una versione italiana del saggio introduttivo alla prima edizione critica, che sarà pubblicata all’interno del progetto Digital d’Holbach della Voltaire Foundation, dell’opera "La Contagion sacrée, ou Histoire naturelle de la superstition" del barone Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach (1724-1789). Pubblicata nel 1768 in forma anonima e presentata fittiziamente come una traduzione della "Natural History of Superstition" (1709) di John Trenchard, "La Contagion sacrée" è in realtà un’opera originale. Il saggio intende metterne in luce le peculiarità tanto nel quadro della produzione holbachiana quanto in quello più ampio del dibattito settecentesco sull’origine e la natura della religione. "La Contagion" viene collocata nel suo contesto, ne vengono presentati i contenuti e vengono affrontate le questioni preliminari (in parte ancora aperte) della sua attribuzione e data di composizione. Se ne propone quindi un’interpretazione complessiva, esplorando l’uso che d’Holbach fa delle sue fonti e proponendo un confronto con il modo in cui tratta temi analoghi in altre opere. Infine, si offre un repertorio bibliografico inedito in cui si dà notizia dei manoscritti noti, delle edizioni a stampa, delle traduzioni dell’opera e della bibliografia di riferimento.

The following are three online Appendices to my essay ‘“Aussi hardi … qu’aucun philosophe en France”: The Eighteenth-Century French Reception of Hume’s Essays’, in Max Skjönsberg and Felix Waldmann, eds., "Hume’s Essays: A Critical Guide" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2024). Appendix I: Chronology of Eighteenth-Century French Translations of Hume’s "Essays". Appendix II: Hume’s "Essays" in Eighteenth-Century French Periodicals. Appendix III: Some Other French Reuses and Responses to Hume’s "Essays".

The present essay provides an overview of the images of seventeenth-century philosophy in the "Rivista di storia della filosofia" (then retitled "Rivista critica di storia della filosofia") in the years 1946–1983. Founded in 1946 by Mario Dal Pra, the journal promoted a new anti-idealistic approach to the history of philosophy. Based on philological accuracy, this approach enhanced the complexity of history and the interdependence of different fields of knowledge. In particular, the unprecedented emphasis on the connections between science and philosophy entailed a preeminent place for empiricism in the "Rivista". This explains why this essay focuses on empiricist currents in seventeenth-century philosophy and especially on three of their representatives, namely Galileo Galilei, Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon.

Enlightenment approaches to pagan religions are various and complex. Ancient myths are considered like ridiculous fables or fascinating adventures. Some authors look at pagan rites like sad memories of the miserable past of mankind, others like a joyful expression of the passions. The nature itself of polytheistic religions is peaceful and tolerant according to some, ferocious and warmongering according to others. This article aims to show some aspects of the modern debate on paganism. In particular, it focuses on the question of polytheism’s supposed tolerance or intolerance to shed light on its theoretical and political issues in Eighteenth-century thought.

This paper proposes a re-interpretation of the article in the Encyclopédie on «Polythéisme» based on its sources, which have hitherto been largely ignored (Boureau-Deslandes, Houtteville) or underrated (Warburton, Bayle). These sources are identified, and the author's treatment of them is investigated (quotations, plagiarism, juxtapositions, alterations). The paper thereby aims to make a contribution to the question of the attribution of the article to the Abbé Yvon and brings to light some ideological implications of the eighteenth-century debate on polytheism and idolatry. On the basis of this research and of a short comparison with the entries «Dieux» and «Idole, Idolâtre, Idolâtrie», the paper attempts to demonstrate that the article «Polythéisme» should be considered as belonging to an essentially traditional cultural background.

In The Divine Legation of Moses (1738-1741) William Warburton developed a complex theory of writing, suggesting among other things a relationship between hieroglyphic writing and zoolatry. In the same years the abbé Pluche maintained a singular explanation of the origin of idolatry in his Histoire du ciel (1739). He stated that all pagan religions originally arose from the misinterpretation of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. By doing so, he extended the relationship between religion and writing to the entire explanation of idolatry. Warburton's theory of writing was set to obtain a great deal of fortune in France, but also its application to the history of pagan religions by Pluche found some illustrious followers: first among them was Condillac, who reinterpreted it in the light of his own theory of language on the one hand, and of the new Enlightenment's views about the history of religion on the other.

Cette étude porte sur les différentes positions qui, au cours du dix-huitième siècle, tombèrent sous la définition d'« évhémérisme » (théorie de l'origine des dieux par l'apothéose d'hommes). Des auteurs majeurs tels que Newton, Toland et Le Clerc sont pris en considération aussi bien que des mineurs comme Banier et Foucher, en vue d'une reconstruction historique du débat qui n'existait encore dans la littérature savante. En comparant les versions orthodoxes de l'évhémérisme avec ses versions hétérodoxes et athées, cette reconstruction montre les questions théologiques et philosophiques qui étaient impliquées par cette catégorie et qui roulaient autour du problème de la nature humaine de la divinité et du Christ.

La première partie de l'essai trace l'évolution de la réflexion de Bayle au sujet des religions païennes, à travers un examen lexicographique de ses écrits qui porte sur les mots « idolâtrie » et « polythéisme » : c'est seulement dans les œuvres les plus tardives de Bayle et dans des contextes spécifiques qu'on retrouve la seconde de ce deux notions. L'étude s'interroge donc sur les raisons de ce changement intervenu dans la terminologie philosophique baylienne et, dans la deuxième partie, montre la grande influence que l'introduction d'une réflexion philosophique sur le polythéisme par Bayle a eu sur les écrits des philosophes des Lumières au sujet du paganisme.

The "Natural History of Religion" has a special double connection with France. On the one hand, Hume relied on many French sources. On the other hand, his dissertation stimulated several reactions in France and played a decisive role in redirecting the philosophical debate on the origin and nature of religion. This paper aims to show: 1) what Hume owed to the French eighteenth-century debate about pagan religions (chiefly on primitive polytheism); 2) how this debt is not enough to question the novelty of Hume’s perspective; and 3) the gap existing between what is authentically new in Hume’s own perspective and what is perceived as new by French readers. In particular, the paper considers reviews, commentaries and works by the philosophes in order to show that eighteenth-century French readers completely ignored Hume’s thesis of flux and reflux of monotheism and polytheism. The paper argues that this misinterpretation derives from the conflict between two incompatible concepts of the role of progress in history.

In Eighteenth-century Europe a large debate on the origin and nature of polytheistic religions takes place. From the beginning of the century, this debate starts to unfold outside of the theological frame within which it has been confined earlier. Paganism stops being an issue of biblical exegesis to become a question of historical and then philosophical nature. My paper aims to shed light on some major steps of this change. It is shown that the gradual substitution of the orthodox model of original pure monotheism with that one of primitive polytheism changes the nature of the issue. From a corruption of the true original belief, polytheism becomes the first religious symptom of mankind. As a consequence, from the object of a specific question of theological or antiquarians’ interest, it becomes the focus of modern philosophical inquiry on the origin of religious belief in general. David Hume’s famous dissertation The Natural History of Religion (1757) has a pivotal role in this change: for the first time, the theory of primitive polytheism is clearly stated and largely defended by historical, logical, and anthropological arguments. Nevertheless, before the publication of Hume’s work, declarations, reasoning and evidences standing for the chronological primacy of polytheism on monotheism are to be found in some less-known passages by authors such as Pierre Bayle, Bernard de Fontenelle, Nicolas Fréret and Condillac. Firstly, my paper focuses on these writings, comparing their different approaches to the problem of ancient and modern heathenism. Secondly, it investigates their relationships with Hume’s dissertation, showing on the one hand what Hume owed to the French Eighteenth-century debate about polytheism, and on the other hand how this debt is not enough to question the novelty of his own perspective.

The subject of this thesis is the debate on the origin and nature of polytheism, which took place in France in the Eighteenth century. From the beginning of the century, this debate started to unfold outside of the theological frame within which it had been confined earlier. Polytheism stopped being an issue of biblical exegesis to become a question of historical and then philosophical nature. This thesis aims to shed light on the steps of this change. In particular, it is shown that the gradual substitution of the orthodox model of original pure monotheism with that one of primitive polytheism changed the nature of the issue: from a specific question mainly of antiquariansʼ interest, it became a philosophical inquiry on the origin and nature of religious belief in general. The first part of the thesis is about the researches on pagan religions conducted by antiquarians and historians: the main theories on the origin of paganism which arose in this context are examined (Euhemerism, allegorism, theories of the origin of idolatry from visual arts and writing signs), aiming to show that these theories paved the way to the reflection of philosophers, proposing a new historical approach to polytheism. The second part of the thesis deals with more strictly philosophical aspects of the debate, focusing on two key figures ‒ Pierre Bayle and David Hume ‒ and on two fundamental theoretical lines: a logical or gnoseological one, about what it means to conceive divinity as multiple; and an anthropological or psychological one, on the origin of the belief in several divinities.