It contains a rebuttal to some of the arguments made by Helvétius in his posthumously published work, De l'Homme (On Man).
[1][2][3] Jean Claude Adrien Helvétius, 1715-1771, was a philosopher and one of the Encyclopedists; his main work, 'De L'Esprit' (1758), was condemned by the Pope, the Parlement and the Sorbonne, and was publicly burned.
[5][6] The two shared a common acceptance of philosophical materialism, and in many respects their views on metaphysics were identical.
Although Helvétius was not a contributor to the Encyclopédie, he was a personal friend of Diderot and other writers, and the authorities did not parse the difference.
[11] In spite of their philosophical kinship, these differences highlight the nuanced debates and disagreements that were present among Enlightenment thinkers.