Le Militaire philosophe

Militaire philosophe, Le. Appellation of both an anonymous author and his work, one of the most important clandestine manuscripts, probably dating from 1705-10, entitled Diffcultés sur la religion proposées au père Malebranche. The author, an officer with a technical training, knew Malebranche's Recherche de la vérité well and turned its rationalism against Christian apologetics, attacking all the arguments devised by Malebranche and many others to prove the truth of Christianity. The work's final part (omitted in a truncated version published by Holbach) expounds a complete system of deism in which God is transcendent justice.

[Christopher Betts]