On the Apologie de l’ennui, of Baron d’Holbach

Abstract

In a short writing entitled Apologie de l’ennui et des ennuyeux, Holbach, under an apology, repudiates the figure of ennuyeux. The portrait of the customs drawn by the Baron is accompanied by a philosophical critique that goes back to the original causes of both the propagation and the universality of boredom. Such a reflection the Baron had already undertaken in La Moral Universelle, which allows to make a reading of Apologie as an inverted criticism, through a blunt condemnation of boredom, this understood as a permanent dissatisfaction of human nature.