HELVETIUS, CLAUDE ADRIEN (1 7 71), French philosopher and litterateur, was born in Paris in Jan. 1715, the son of the chief physician to Queen Marie Leczinska of France. In 1738, at the queen's request, he was appointed farmer-gen eral, a post of great responsibility and dignity. He proceeded to enjoy his leisure, producing a poem, Le Bonheur (published post humously, with an account of Helvetius's life and works, by C. F. de Saint-Lambert, 1773), in which he develops the idea that true happiness is only to be found in making the interest of one that of all, and his famous philosophical study, De l'esprit (1758, Eng. trans. by W. Mudford, 1807), intended to be the rival of Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois. This attracted immediate attention and aroused the most formidable opposition, especially from the dauphin, son of Louis XV. The Sorbonne condemned it as full of the most dangerous doctrines, and the author's three separate retractations did not save it from being publicly burnt. Voltaire said that it was full of commonplaces, and that what was original was false or problematical; Rousseau declared that the very benevolence of the author gave the lie to his principles. In 1764 Helvetius visited England, and the next year, on the invitation of Frederick II., went to Berlin. He then passed the remainder of his life quietly on his country estate in France. He died on Dec. 26, 1 7 71.
The three chief contentions in Helvetius's crudely hedonistic work are: (1) All man's faculties may be reduced to physical sensation, even memory, comparison, judgment. (2) Self-interest, founded on the love of pleasure and the fear of pain, is the spring of judgment, action, affection; self-sacrifice is prompted by the fact that the sensation of pleasure outweighs the accompanying pain; it is thus the result of deliberate calculation; we have no liberty of choice between good and evil; there is no such thing as absolute right—ideas of justice and injustice change accord ing to customs. (3) All intellects are equal; their apparent in equalities are due to the unequal desire for instruction, and this desire springs from passions, of which all men commonly well or ganized are susceptible to the same degree ; and we can, there fore, all love glory with the same enthusiasm and we owe all to education.
De l'homme, de ses facultes intellectuelles et de son education (1773, Eng. trans. by W. Hooper, 1777), a supplement to De l'esprit, is a polemic against the distinction between private and public interests. A complete edition of the works of Helvetius was published at Paris, 1818. See V. Cousin, Philosophie Sensualiste (1863) ; D. G. Mostratos, Die Ptldagogik des Helvetius (1891) ; A. Guillois, Le Salon de Madame Helvetius (1894) ; A. Piazzi, Le Idee filosofiche special mente pedagogiche de C. A. Helvetius (Milan, 1889) ; G. Plekhanov, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Materialismus (Stuttgart, 1896) ; L. Limentani, Le Teorie psicologiche di Helvetius (Verona, 1902) ; A. Keim, Helvetius, sa vie et son oeuvre (1907) ; J. B. Severac, Helvetius, in Les Grands Philosophes series (191o).