Helvétius, Claude-Adrien

Helvétius, Claude-Adrien

(born Jan. 26, 1715, Paris, France—died Dec. 26, 1771, Voré, Collines des Perches) French philosopher, controversialist, and patron of the philosophes. He is remembered for his hedonism, his criticism of the religious foundations of ethics, and his educational theory. His On the Mind (1758) immediately became notorious for its attack on all forms of morality based on religion. He held that all men are equally capable of learning—a belief that led him to argue against the position taken by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his work Émile—and that through education all human problems could be solved.