From civil religion to natural politics: materialism and society in Rousseau and d'Holbach

• Grant number: 12/10776-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Maria das Graças de Souza
• Grantee: Thomaz Massadi Kawauche
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims at investigating d'Holbach's political thought, seeking to understand the relation between his writings and the writings of other materialists (Helvétius, La Mettrie, Diderot, for example), as well as the approaches - rather than the differences - with Rousseau's work. Besides, it is intended to point out, in a critical perspective, the limits of the "non-theological moral" concept in the System of Nature. The starting point is the opposition between Rousseau's concept of Civil Religion and d'Holbach's concept of Natural Politics: it will be observed developments and conditions of the relation between Religion and Politics in the theoretical framework of French Eighteenth Century. The analysis focuses the roots of society secularization (or laicization): process that, in the Eighteenth Century, was still a movement in which the relations between Morals and Politics were full of contradictions, arbitrariness and waywardness. (AU)