An 18th-century Paris Café-philo

We have approached the topic of Atheism numerous times in our previous discussions, coinciding with the rise of the celebrity writers and scientists the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, to Steven Hawking...

Just discovered a delightful new publication, Wicked Company: Freethinkers and Friendship in Pre-Revolutionary Paris by Philipp Blom (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010), tracing the story behind a scandalous Paris salon – our earliest model of Café-philo, where philosophers met to eat and drink and deny the existence of God and the soul – run by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach. Its members included Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and their contemporaries.

See review from The Economist, 28 October 2010