The Abbé Claude Yvon (15 April 1714 – November 1791) was a French encyclopédiste, a savant who contributed to the Encyclopédie[1] edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert.
There he made a poor living as a teacher at the Sorbonne, preparing students for their exams, and wrote several anonymous works.
[2] The apparently harmless articles attracted the attention of the official controllers of the philosophical press, who notified the advocate-general, Omer Joly de Fleury.
[2] Yvon was suspected of contributing to a controversial thesis published in 1752 by Jean-Martin de Prades, and fled to Holland to avoid the storm.
[4] From the Dutch Republic he did not move to Berlin as stated in some articles,[5][6] , but to Liège, where he assisted Pierre Rousseau in producing the Journal Encyclopédique.
When Rousseau moved to Bouillon Yvon continued his journalistic activities and contributed to the periodicals of Jean-Henri Maubert de Gouvest.
In this book he argued that all religions were naturally intolerant and would attack their enemies, but that civil society should be tolerant of those who disagreed with the religious leaders.
In 1763, Marc-Michel Rey in Amsterdam published a letter from Yvon answering some of Rousseau's criticisms of the Church, and more followed in the ensuing years.
He said that after making reckless personal attacks on religion and government, things sacred to all people, Rousseau was unrealistic in expecting no outrage against his views.