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Meslier, Jean, 1664-1729We have 1 book for this author.
 Jean Meslier (1664 – 1729), was a Catholic priest who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text denounces all religion, and argues the superiority of atheist morality. Life and worksJean Meslier was born January 15, 1664, in Mazerny in the Ardennes. He began learning Latin from a neighborhood priest in 1678 and eventually joined the seminary; he later claimed, in the Author's Preface to his Testament, this was done to please his parents. At the end of his studies, he took Holy Orders and, on January 7, 1689, became priest at Étrépigny, in Champagne. One public disagreement with a local nobleman aside, Meslier was to all appearances generally unremarkable, and he performed his office without complaint or problem for forty years. When Meslier died, there were found in his house three copies of a 633-page octavo manuscript in which the village curate denounces religion as "but a castle in the air", and theology as "but ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system". A materialist, Meslier denies the existence of the soul; he also dismisses the notion of free will. In Chapter V, the priest writes, "If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all"; Meslier does think of him, however, for several hundred pages more, in which he calls God "a chimera" and argues that the supposition of God is not prerequisite to morality. In fact, he concludes that "[w]hether there exists a God or not [...] men's moral duties will always be the same so long as they possess their own nature". Voltaire often mentions Meslier in his correspondence, calling the atheist "a good priest", telling his daughter to "read and read again" Meslier's only work, and saying that "every honest man should have Meslier's Testament in his pocket." However, he described Meslier as writing "in the style of a carriage-horse". Various edited abstracts of the Testament were printed, condensing the multi-volume original manuscript and sometimes adding material not written by Meslier. Voltaire's edition changed the thrust of Meslier's arguments so that he appeared to be a deist - like Voltaire - rather than an atheist. QuoteThe well-known quote: «Je voudrais, et ce sera le dernier et le plus ardent de mes souhaits, je voudrais que le dernier des rois fût étranglé avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre.»
is often attributed to Meslier; it does not appear in his Testament, however, and is completely atypical of his style. Diderot, who wrote in his poem Les Éleuthéromanes that men who lack ropes to hang their kings should weave some from priest's entrails, is a more likely source, unless the quote comes from one of the many Abstracts of the Testament that were circulated during the Revolution, often with drastic revisions to suit the political temperament of the times. Abstracts were popular because Meslier's Testament is, after all, very long, and would have been prohibitively expensive to print and bind in its entirety, and it is not written in a style easily understood by the uneducated; it is also rather too relaxed to serve as propaganda, convinced, as the author was, that reason and common sense - certainly not violence - were the solutions to fraudulent religion. See also
External links
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Onfray40.htm
This biographical information was gathered from the Jean_Meslier page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksSuperstition In All Ages (1732) Common Sense |
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