  Perhaps because of the less cautious advocacy of right to revolution among other members of his coterie, particularly Naigeon, or perhaps because he criticized the kings of his time so fiercely, Holbach is sometimes regarded as an advocate of revolution. Holbach’s discussion is tentative, however. He describes the right in La politique naturelle (4.5 ff.) as a product of the natural instinct for self-preservation. Like Hobbes (Leviathan, XXIX, 23), Holbach expects that obedience to a sovereign will break down where individuals feel the need to secure their own lives. This is also why sovereigns need to take care to look after citizens’ welfare and education. Where they fail to do these things, citizens come to be ruled not by reason but by passion, and revolution results. Holbach’s right to revolution, then, is less an advocacy of revolution than a warning to avoid the conditions that lead to it.