Eléments de la morale universelle, ou catéchisme de la nature
Contributions
- Paul Henri Dietrich d'Holbach
- author
- Guillaume Debure
- publisher
Related resources
- has translation
- Elementi della morale universale, o sia catechismo della natura. Del fu sig. barone di Holbach, membro delle accademie di Pietroburgo, Manheim, e Berlino. Traduzione dal francese translation
Summary (extracted citations)
Notice: "Morality is a science whose principles are capable of a demonstration as clear and rigorous as those of calculus and geometry. The elements of this so necessary science can be put within the reach of the simplest of men, and even children. In order to make this truth felt we here give the principles of natural morality in a fashion that renders them capable of being taught to all. They shall serve to make known whether, as some men claim, virtue is naught but a chimera, or if morality is founded on man’s nature and his real interests, whatever his opinions or his prejudices". Bookseller’s Notice : This work, composed in 1765, is truly that of the respectable philosopher whose name it bears: it is his family who gave us the autograph manuscript, and it is on their word that we publish it. … Q: Does the sovereign have legitimate rights over his subjects? A: He has rights over them as long as he is necessary for their happiness. Q: What are the obligations of subjects towards a sovereign who occupies himself with their happiness? A: To faithfully obey him, to be inviolably attached to him, to second his useful points of view, to defend him, to lend him assistance, to collaborate with him in what he has done for the good of the nation. Q: What interest do the subjects have in fulfilling these obligations? A: The reasons for their obedience, their love, their gratitude, and their assistance are the advantages a vigilant sovereign procures for them: in loving him, in defending him they love and defend the instrument of their happiness. Q: Do subjects have rights over the sovereign? A: They have the right to demand from him justice, the peaceful enjoyment of their rights, and the recompense due all those who second his viewpoint by usefully serving the fatherland. Q: Does a citizen have the right to judge the conduct of his sovereign? A: No. Only society has the right to judge if its leader is harming it, if he governs in accordance with the laws. Society’s sentiments should decide this and regulate his conduct. Q: Does a subject have the right to punish a sovereign who fails in his obligations? A: No. It is up to the state as a body to judge and punish the sovereign. It is from society that he holds his power and it is society alone that has the right to deprive him of it. A subject who arrogates to himself the right to punish his sovereign is a criminal and unjust usurper, since he exercises a right that society did not grant him. Q: And so the obligations of the sovereign and the subjects are reciprocal? A: There are no obligations between men that are not reciprocal. No man has the right to bind or obligate others towards him without being bound and obligated himself towards them. And as we said, rights, in order to be just, must be founded on the good we do: any other right is the effect of tyranny, injustice, and force. Q: But what if society, itself oppressed, does not procure for its members any of the advantages they have the right to expect? A: Since the goal of any political society is a greater sum of strength, of happiness, and pleasure for all of those who compose it, we can separate ourselves from that society where we find ourselves more unhappy than if we lived alone or in another society. Q: So is there a society that can make all its members happy? A: Society fulfills its commitment to them when it constantly sees to the means of assuring to all members their property, to everywhere strengthening the foundations of civil and political freedom; in a word, when it maintains them in all their just rights. Q: Can society not deprive its members of their legitimate rights? A: No. It is only useful when it preserves them; it can only take from them the power to harm their associates, a power that is never a right, but a real injustice. Example: All men are free, but society has the right to take from them their liberty, which ceases to be one of their rights when they make use of it to harm their associates. Q: What is liberty? A: It is the right that every man in society has to do – for his own happiness – all that does not harm that of his associates. Q: So liberty is founded on justice? A: Yes. Reason approves it; it ceases to approve it as soon as it causes harm: from that point it becomes license, an injustice that society has the right to punish. Q: What do you mean by punish? A: Punishing someone means making them unhappy, it means depriving them of the advantages they would have the right to enjoy if they had rendered themselves useful to their associates. Punishments are just and necessary since they are the means of making society happy, and of inspiring fear in those who would like to trouble it through harmful acts. Q: What do we call acts useful to our associates? A: We call them just, good, honest, and virtuous; and we call unjust, dishonest, vicious and criminal those that are harmful to them. Q: Given that, what is virtue? A: It’s a habitual or permanent disposition to do what is useful to the men with whom we live in society. Q: Why do you say habitual? A: Because a passing act can be useful without our being virtuous for having done it. Virtue supposes a constant determination to do good. Q: What do you call useful? A: I call useful that which contributes to assuring man a solid and permanent happiness. In fact, we can do harm in procuring a passing pleasure whose results are dangerous; and we can be useful by making felt a passing ill from which happiness results. A surgeon performs a useful operation though he causes a momentary pain." Taken from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/holbach/1765/catechism.htm.
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Notes
Written around 1765 but published posthumously. The other philosophe to publish a Catechism during the Revolution was Saint-Lambert in 1797.