Talk:Jean Meslier

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• I've recently read Meslier's Testament, and question the authenticiy of the attributed quote. I don't recall him saying that, and it seems out of character. In The Testament, he consistently defines his political ideal in terms of the enlightened despot.
  • Pazouzou 18:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC) I've always this was written by Denis Diderot, the encyclopedist.
    • The Oxford dictionary of quotations says

I remember, on this matter, the wish made once by an ignorant, uneducated man…He said he wished…that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of priests. For myself…I wish I could have the strength of Hercules to purge the world of all vice and sin, and to have the pleasure of destroying all those monsters of error and sin [priests] who make all the peoples of the world groan so pitiably.

Testament (ed. R. Charles, 1864) vol. 1, ch. 2

A lot of the versions of the testaments published like the one on Gutenberg are apparently only part of the larger testament which was in three seperate manuscripts. MeltBanana

It depends on which version you read. Voltaire's version is heavily edited. I have read a German translation based on Meslier's original text and there something rather close to the quote does indeed appear in chapter 2. I attempt to translate from German to English, maybe someone who has access to the French original can do a better job: "This reminds me of the wish that was once uttered by a man who neither knew science nor had education, but who obviously was not lacking judgment for appraising correctly all the obscene grievances and despicable despotisms which I am incriminating here; his wish and the manner in which he expressed his thought show that he was quite sharp-witted and had penetrated deep enough into this abominable mystery of malice of which I am talking, as he recognized so well the initiator and promoter. He wished that all the great and noble of the earth be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests. This expression will not fail to appear brute, uncouth and shocking, but one will have to admit that it is frank and naive; it is brief but expressive, as it says enough with few words what such people deserve." Now, one may speculate whether Meslier actually referred to himself with this attribution, as he does not quote a source. He does, however, in a footnote cite two examples where kings killed all priests in their kingdom. --Stefan heinzmann 13:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

• Durant (Story of Civilization, vol. 9, p.611) gives the years of Meslier's life as 1678-1733. --cxl9

This guy became a priest at the age of 11? Andrew Levine 21:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Authorship question

The preface to the Project Gutenberg e-text of a 1900ish English translation of Le bon sens claims that it was written by Baron d'Holbach and not by Meslier. I'm looking into this while cleaning up the Wikiquote article on Holbach, which contains a number of quotes from this translation, and I'm wondering whether the quotes are correctly attributed. Since I'm not involved in this field, I have to ask, what is the current scholarship on this question? 121a0012 03:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

d'Holbach didn't publish anything openly under his own name in his lifetime, including "Good Sense". --Dannyno 12:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Le bon sens was indeed written by d'Holbach, and the text is not actually that of Meslier, but rather d'Holbach's formulation of Meslier's points in his own words. It is certainly not a source for quotations you can attribute to Meslier. If you want to quote Meslier, you will have to go back to his own text, not d'Holbach's, and even Voltaire's version is questionable in this respect, altough it is closer to the original. The problem is that Meslier's own prose is quite heavy-going and repetitive. Voltaire called it the style of a coach horse. --Stefan heinzmann 13:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this not a translation of Meslier? http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/meslier/1729/testament.htm (12th May 2008)

Quote

The well-known quote:

"I would like, and this would be the last and most ardent of my wishes, I would like the last of the kings to be strangled by the guts of the last priest"

is often attributed to Meslier; it does not appear in his Testament, however, and is completely atypical of his style.

This is not quite true, because in his "Testament" Meslier actually refers to a man who

"wished that all the bigwigs of the earth and all noblemen should be hanged and strangled with the bowels of the priests."

(ch. II, my transl. from the German transl., 1st ed. 1976, which is based on the critical French complete edition, 1970-1972)

In German:

"Dies erinnert mich an den Wunsch, den ein Mann einmal äußerte, (...). Er wünschte, dass all die Großen der Erde und alle Adligen mit den Gedärmen der Priester erhängt und erwürgt werden sollten."

(Meslier, Jean. Das Testament des Abbé Meslier: Die Grundschrift der modernen Religionskritik. Ed. Hartmut Krauss. 2nd ed. Osnabrück: Hintergrund, 2005 [Reprint of the 1st ed., Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976]. ch. II, p. 74)

Editorius 20:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Since everyone seems to agree that this is a genuine quotation which does appear in the Testament, I've changed the page, using what seems to be the correct version of the quote. Singinglemon (talk) 00:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Meslier the deathbed Deist

I reverted the edits by User:71.142.236.120. I apologise first of all for calling the previous edits a joke, but I generally believed that someone who deleted all the referenced content from the page in order to assert that Meslier was really a Deist was just having a bit of fun. The edits were justified with this quote:

I will finish by begging God, so outraged by that sect, to deign to recall us to natural religion, of which Christianity is the declared enemy. To that simple religion that God placed in the hearts of all men, which teaches us that we only do unto others what we want to have done unto us. Then the universe will be composed of good citizens, of just fathers, of submissive children, of tender friends. God gave us this religion in giving us reason. May fanaticism no longer pervert it! I die more filled with these wishes than with hopes.

This quote comes from the end of this translation from www.marx.org: [1] of Voltaire's abridged version of Meslier's testament. Voltaire was apparently only interested in representing Meslier as a Deist, so he deliberately omits any of Meslier's atheist arguments. More importantly I can find no evidence that there was any death-bed plea in favour of Natural Religion in Meslier's testament. One can check the final words of the testament: [2] Singinglemon (talk) 00:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi I've got a user name now so lets start by acknowledging that Voltaire is fairly trustable though marx.org is not.

Thanks for the French version but wikipedia and me perfer one in English.

And don't take it personally but I'm going to change it back till I can see a version in English that doesn't have that end. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Artscanist (talk • contribs) 04:32, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Voltaire is not reliable, so let's not acknowledge that at all, actually. There are reliable sources saying his versions of the Testament are not reliable. The legend that Meslier was not really an atheist is repeated in McGrath's Twilight of Atheism. My solution would be to refer to the passage but make clear with proper citation that it comes from Voltaire's abridgement and is not found in the Testament itself.

The passage does not appear in the 1972 French critical edition, which I have consulted and which should be cited here. Also, one of the few English language studies of Meslier, Voltaire and Jean Meslier, by Andrew R. Morehouse, published by Yale University Press, 1936, comments directly on the passage in question.

Morehouse notes that none of the original three manuscripts of the Testament have survived, only copies of those three manuscripts. The Amsterdam (or Charles) version by van Giessenburg (available here: vol. 1: [3]; vol. 2: [4]; vol.3: ) is based on one of those copies which ended up in Holland. Now, there were many extracts (Extraits) of the Testament, including Voltaire's.

Morehouse discusses another such Extrait and comments:

He gives the impression of having used a complete manuscript of the Testament and in addition Voltaire’s Extrait, or a similar Extrait. His paraphrase of both is well done. Noteworthy is the conclusion, which is in part a paraphrase and in part a reproduction of Voltaire’s final paragraph, and differs from anything found in Charles. (p.26-27).

The meaning of that is plain. Voltaire's final paragraph is not found in the Charles/van Giessenberg edition (and nor is in the 1972 French critical edition). Other sources, which we can dig out I'm sure, make it clear that Voltaire deliberately represented Meslier as pretty much a deist, not as an atheist (of course, Voltaire was anti-atheist).

It is therefore not legitimate to use Voltaire's version as though it were accurate. It's not and the literature says it isn't. I will make a few changes to the text for now but then I'm coming back when I have time to rewrite that entire section using reliable sources.

--Dannyno (talk) 20:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Not also wikipedia policy on use of non-English sources: wp:VUE: "sources in other languages are acceptable where an English equivalent is not available." This is the case until the Prometheus edition is published in September. --Dannyno (talk) 21:35, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

So the question is, do we want the full quote in the text at all, or is that wp:UNDUE? We can refer to the conclusion of Voltaire's Extrait without having to reproduce the whole text. Mention the issue and move on, might be best? --Dannyno (talk) 22:14, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind if it is quoted with information on its unreliability. Hopefully the section on his Thought can be substantially expanded with other quotes of Meslier, giving a much more detailed account of Meslier's views, which will show how and why he refuted the Deist notion of god as well.

What I find really odd is that User:Artscanist keeps deleting the referenced content from the page about Meslier refuting the god of the deists. This might be fine if the information came from some atheist tract, but it is actually from the The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-century Philosophy, which is a very sober and standard university textbook. Some people have actually read Meslier's Testament, and know what it says. Singinglemon (talk) 16:36, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Verifiable sources win every time. The more of those we have the better. --Dannyno (talk) 16:58, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Meslier's date of birth

Both English and French Wikipedia cite Meslier's year of birth as 1664; they disagree, however, over the date - the former puts it at 15 January and the latter at 15 June. On the other hand, the website marxists.org that includes the English translation of Meslier's works and testament claims he was born in 1678. However, it seems that the year of death cited on that site (1733) is wrong, since French Wikipedia includes a reference that proves he died between June 27 and July 7, 1729. --Rastko Pocesta (talk) 07:36, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I have cited Morehouse and Meslier as translated by Shreve. Morehouse notes that Meslier was baptised on 15 June 1664. The birthdate is cited as 15 January in Shreve's translation. --Dannyno (talk) 22:29, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Organized religion

I don't think the phrase should be Wikilinked, as it's unlikely that what he said that was translated as "organized religion" resembles what our article is about. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:52, 17 April 2014 (UTC)