Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51), author of Machine Man (1747), was the most uncompromising of the materialists of the eighteenth century, and the provocative title of his work ensured it a succès de scandale in his own time. It was however a serious, if polemical, attempt to provide an explanation of the workings of the human body and mind in purely material terms and to show that thought was the product of the workings of the brain (...) alone. This fully annotated edition presents a new English translation of the text together with the most important of La Mettrie's other philosophical works, translated into English for the first time, and Ann Thomson's introduction examines his aims and the scandalous moral consequences which he drew from his materialism. (shrink)

The first modern translation of the complete texts of La Mettrie's pioneering L'Homme machine and L'Homme plante, first published in 1747 and 1748, respectively, this volume also includes translations of the advertisement and dedication to L'Homme machine. Justin Leiber's introduction illuminates the radical thinking and advocacy of the passionate La Mettrie and provides cogent analysis of La Mettrie's relationship to such important philosophical figures as Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and of his lasting influence on the development of (...) materialism, cognitive studies, linguistics, and other areas of intellectual inquiry. (shrink)

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (November 23, 1709 - November 11, 1751) was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his work L'homme machine (published in this edition as "Man a Machine" but also published under the titles "Machine Man" and "The Human Mechanism"). This translation is the work of several hands. It is founded on a version made by Miss Gertrude C. (...) Bussey (from the French text in the edition of J. Assezat) and has been revised by Professor M. W. Calkins who is responsible for it in its present form. Mademoiselle M. Carret, of the Wellesley College department of French, and Professor George Santayana, of Harvard University, have given valued assistance; and this opportunity is taken to acknowledge their kindness in solving the problems of interpretation which have been submitted to them. It should be added that the translation sometimes subordinates the claims of English structure and style in the effort to render La Mettrie's meaning exactly. The philosophical and historical Notes are condensed and adapted from a master's thesis on La Mettrie presented by Miss Bussey to the faculty of Wellesley College. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Der französische Arzt und Philosoph La Mettrie (1709–1751) entwickelte in seiner berühmt-berüchtigten Kampfschrift von 1748 das Bild des auf die mechanischen Funktionsabläufe reduzierten Menschen und begründete damit eine materialistische Anthropologie. Die Ausgabe bietet neben dem kritisch edierten französischen Original eine vollständig neue Übertragung, die sich am Wortgebrauch der Zeit orientiert.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Julien Offray de La Mettrie, author of Machine Man, was the most uncompromising of the materialists of the eighteenth century, and the provocative title of his work ensured it a succès de scandale in his own time. It was however a serious, if polemical, attempt to provide an explanation of the workings of the human body and mind in purely material terms and to show that thought was the product of the workings of the brain alone. This (...) fully annotated edition presents an English translation of the text together with the most important of La Mettrie's other philosophical works translated into English, and Ann Thomson's introduction examines his aims and the scandalous moral consequences which he drew from his materialism. (shrink)

The first modern translation of the complete texts of La Mettrie's pioneering L'Homme machine and L'Homme plante, first published in 1747 and 1748, respectively, this volume also includes translations of the advertisement and dedication to L'Homme machine. Justin Leiber's introduction illuminates the radical thinking and advocacy of the passionate La Mettrie and provides cogent analysis of La Mettrie's relationship to such important philosophical figures as Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and of his lasting influence on the development of (...) materialism, cognitive studies, linguistics, and other areas of intellectual inquiry. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper assesses the influence of Descartes’s thought on Julien Offray de La Mettrie and Baron D’Holbach, two prominent materialist philosophers of the 18th century. While both agree on the aberrant and unintelligible character of the soul’s spirituality, their interpretation of the consequences of Cartesianism differ. To lay the ground for his own materialism, La Mettrie disingenuously describes Descartes as a crypto-materialist. D’Holbach, on the other hand, takes the mistake of dualism as the product of an (...) overly imaginative metaphysics. (shrink)

Anonymous. By Julien Jan Offroy de la Mettrie. The imprint is false; printed in Berlin.

This book is about how we make choices. It is a compelling analysis of the nature of free will, drawing together evidence from chemistry, literature, politics, history and beyond. Psychiatrist Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the Machine . Nunn concludes that a mechanistic view of the human brain, though once fruitful, is now moribund. He proposes a powerful alternative: that stories, recorded in (...) our memories throughout life, are the mediators of free choice. Nunn demonstrates how this original approach could reconcile the latest brain-imaging results and our seemingly contradictory intuition about decision making and responsibility. (shrink)

L'homme ne serait donc qu'une machine! Non seulement son corps ne serait qu'une mécanique biologique, mais son esprit lui-même ne serait qu'un phénomène d'ordre matériel... Reléguée au rang de chimère idéologique toute hypothèse d'une conscience immatérielle invitant à des considérations religieuses ou métaphysique (survie de l'âme, libre-arbitre...)! Cette thèse courageuse et avant-gardiste, émise en 1748 par La Mettrie, médecin et philosophe français, avait a priori tout pour séduire les penseurs des Lumières, alors en pleine contestation du magistère spirituel et (...) moral de l'Eglise et relais philosophiques de la révolution empirique et rationnelle du newtonisme. Ce fut pourtant le rejet, la condamnation et l'ostracisme général, de Voltaire aux Encyclopédistes ; et l'auteur dut s'exiler! Pourquoi une telle attitude? De quoi les Lumières ont-elles eu peur? En quoi la thèse de La Mettrie contrevenaient-elles à un non-dit intime de leurs discours? En rejetant le Dieu judéo-chrétien omniprésent dans le monde d'antan et législateur de la vie des hommes, les Lumières n'avaient-elles pas, en réalité, effectué un transfert de sacralité et de transcendance vers autre chose? Vers l'Esprit humain, la Raison cartésienne - restant ainsi prisonniers du paradigme idéaliste de la métaphysique platonicienne?... Marc Muller se propose, au travers d'une relecture de l'oeuvre de La Mettrie et plus particulièrement de L'Homme-Machine, de rechercher la clef de ce rejet apparemment paradoxal de la part des penseurs des Lumières et de leurs héritiers. Car, bien au-delà de la question analytique de la matérialité de l'esprit (res cogitans), La Mettrie nous invite à penser ce qui peut fonder l'être humain en tant que simple "homme-machine" et défendre une morale sociale immanente qui ne reposerait pas sur des dogmes métaphysiques et idéalistes - remise en cause du magistère moral des " intellectuels " qui s'avéra insupportable aux Penseurs des Lumières... (shrink)

This new anthology of early modern philosophy enriches the possibilities for teaching this period by highlighting not only metaphysics and epistemology, but also new themes such as virtue, equality and difference, education, the passions, and love. It contains the works of forty-three philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and Denis Diderot. It (...) also highlights the contributions of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Gabrielle Suchon, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, and Emilie Du Châtelet. (shrink)

"Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking (...) insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is _simply the best introduction to the subject now available_."_ —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of _The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters_ Contents:_ Chronology, Introduction _Chapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697_ _Idols, or false notions: _Francis Bacon, _The New Instrument_ _I think, therefore I am: _René Descartes, Discourse on Method _God, or Nature: _Baruch Spinoza, _Ethics_ _The system of the world: _Isaac Newton, _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ _He searched for truth throughout his life: _Pierre Bayle, _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ _Chapter Two - _The Learned Maid: 1638–1740 _A face raised toward heaven:_ Anna Maria van Schurman, _Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman_ _The worlds I have made:_ Margaret Cavendish, _The Blazing World_ _A finer sort of cattle:_ Bathsua Makin, _An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen_ _I warn you of the world:_ Madame de Maintenon, _Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr_, and _Instruction: On the World_ _The daybreak of your reason:_ Émilie Du Châtelet, _Fundamentals of Physics_ _Chapter Three - _A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695 _The chief criterion of the True Church:_ John Locke, _Letter on Toleration_ _Freedom from any superior power on earth:_ John Locke, _Second Treatise on Civil Government_ _A white paper, with nothing written on it:_ John Locke, _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ _Let your rules be as few as possible:_ John Locke, _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ _From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life:_ John Locke, _The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures_ _Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784_ _In the wilderness, they are reborn:_ Giambattista Vico, _The New Science_ _Without these Names, nothing can be known,_ Carl Linnaeus, _System of Nature_ _All the clouds at last are lifted:_ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, _The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind_ _A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge:_ Jean le Rond d’Alembert, _Preliminary Discourse_ _Dare to know! :_ Immanuel Kant, _What Is Enlightenment?_ _Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779_ _The narrow limits of human understanding:_ David Hume, _Anof a Book Lately Published_ _The soul is but an empty word:_ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, _Man a Machine_ _All is reduced to sensation:_ Claude Adrien Helvétius, _On the Mind_ _An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods:_ Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, _Common Sense_ _Let each believe that his own ring is real:_ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, _Nathan the Wise_ _Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764_ _This is the country of sects:_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Letters_ _Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes:_ Voltaire, _The Culture and Spirit of Nations_ _The best of all possible worlds:_ Voltaire, _Candide_ _Are we not all children of the same God?:_ Voltaire, _Treatise on Tolerance_ _If a book displeases you, refute it! :_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Dictionary_ _Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776_ _Things must be so ordered that power checks power,_ Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, _The Spirit of the Laws_ _Complete freedom of trade must be ensured:_ François Quesnay, _General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom_ _The nation's war against the citizen: Cesare_ Beccaria, _On Crimes and Punishments_ _There is no peace in the absence of justice:_ Adam Ferguson, _An Essay on the History of Civil Society_ _Led by an invisible hand:_ Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ _Chapter Eight - Encountering Others: 1688–1785_ _Thus died this great man:_ Aphra Behn, _Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave_ _Not one sins the less for not being Christian: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, _Embassy Letters_ _Do you not restore to them their liberty?:_ Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, _Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies_ _Some things which are rather interesting:_ Captain James Cook, _Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World_ _The inner genius of my being:_ Johann Gottfried von Herder, _Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind_ _Chapter - Nine Citizen of Geneva: 1755–1782_ _The most cunning project ever to enter the human mind: _Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality_ _The supreme direction of the General Will:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract _Two lovers from a small town at the foot of the Alps,_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Julie, or the New Heloise_ _Build a fence around your child’s soul:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Emile, or On Education_ _This man will be myself:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Confessions_ _Chapter Ten - Vindications of Women: 1685–1792_ _No higher design than to get her a husband:_ Mary Astell, _Reflections on Marriage_ _The days of my bondage begin:_ Anna Stanisławska, _Orphan Girl_ _A dying victim dragged to the altar:_ Denis Diderot, _The Nun_ _Created to be the toy of man:_ Mary Wollstonecraft, _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ _Man, are you capable of being just?:_ Olympe de Gouges, _Declaration of the Rights of Woman as Citizen_ _Chapter Eleven - American Reverberations: 1771–1792_ _I took upon me to assert my freedom:_ Benjamin Franklin, _Autobiography_ _Freedom has been hunted round the globe:_ Thomas Paine, _Common Sense_ _Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights:_ Thomas Jefferson and Others, _Declaration of Independence_ _A safeguard against faction and insurrection:_ James Madison, _Federalist No. 10_ _An end to government by force and fraud:_ Thomas Paine, _The Rights of Man_ _Chapter Twelve - Enlightenment's End: 1790–1794_ _A partnership of the living, the dead, and those unborn:_ Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ _The future destiny of the human species:_ Nicolas de Condorcet, _A Sketch of a Historical Portrait of the Progress of the Human Mind_ Texts and Studies, Index. 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This article discusses Du Châtelet’s challenging claim that entertaining illusions, especially illusions of being esteemed by posterity, is conducive to happiness. It does so by taking a contextualizing approach, contrasting her views with some Epicurean aspects of the views on illusions and happiness in Bernard de Fontenelle and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. I will argue for three claims: (1) Du Châtelet’s comparison between self-related illusions and illusions in the theater is vulnerable to objections deriving from some (...) distinctions that Fontenelle’s poetics draws between the role of illusions in the theater and the role of illusions in real life. (2) Examining Fontenelle’s analysis of the detrimental effects of self-related illusions indicates several respects in which Du Châtelet has underestimated the ambivalent nature of illusions. (3) Du Châtelet’s view that illusions are akin to sensations that are favorable to us problematically generalizes La Mettrie’s insight that some acts of the imagination have a quasi-perceptual nature. (shrink)

Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy: Series Editors, Karl Ameriks and Desmond M. Clarke. Ren Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies . Translated and edited by John Cottingham. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xlvi + 120. 25., 7.95 pb. ISBN 0-521-55252-4 (hb.). ISBN 0-521-55818-2 (pb.). Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality with A Treatise of Freewill . Edited by Sarah Hutton. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxxvi + 218. (...) 37.50 hb., 13.95 pb., ISBN 0-521-47362-4 (hb.). ISBN 0-521-47918-5 (pb.). Anne Conway: The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy . Translated and edited by Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxxix + 73. 35.00 hb., 12.95 pb. ISBN 0-521-47335-7 (hb.). ISBN 0-521-47904-5 (pb.). Julien Offray de La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings . Translated and edited by Ann Thomson. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxx + 179. 35.00 (hb.), 12.95. ISBN 0-521-47258-X (hb.). ISBN 0-521-47849-9 (pb.). (shrink)

This article discusses Du Châtelet’s challenging claim that entertaining illusions, especially illusions of being esteemed by posterity, is conducive to happiness. It does so by taking a contextualizing approach, contrasting her views with some Epicurean aspects of the views on illusions and happiness in Bernard de Fontenelle and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. I will argue for three claims: (1) Du Châtelet’s comparison between self-related illusions and illusions in the theater is vulnerable to objections deriving from some (...) distinctions that Fontenelle’s poetics draws between the role of illusions in the theater and the role of illusions in real life. (2) Examining Fontenelle’s analysis of the detrimental effects of self-related illusions indicates several respects in which Du Châtelet has underestimated the ambivalent nature of illusions. (3) Du Châtelet’s view that illusions are akin to sensations that are favorable to us problematically generalizes La Mettrie’s insight that some acts of the imagination have a quasi-perceptual nature. (shrink)

Christoph Otto von Schönaich hatte im März 1751 sein Epos Hermann, oder das befreyte Deutschland an Gottsched geschickt. Schönaichs Briefe des Bandes 17 dokumentieren Gottscheds intensive Beschäftigung mit dem Werk, das im September 1751 der Öffentlichkeit mit Gottscheds Einleitung als Nationalepos präsentiert wurde. Als Ratgeber oder Publizist unterstützte Gottsched auch weitere literarische Aktivitäten, so verdankt sich die erste deutsche Ausgabe der Satiren Antioch Dmitrijewitsch Kantemirs einer Anregung Gottscheds. Briefe aus Potsdam informieren über Publikationsvorhaben Julien Offray de La Mettries (...) und anderer Personen im Umfeld des preußischen Hofes. Eine Übersetzung der Poetik des Aristoteles hatte Gottsched 1730 mehrfach in Aussicht gestellt. Nach dessen höflicher Anfrage über den Stand der Dinge begrüßte Gottsched die Übersetzung, die Michael Conrad Curtius fertiggestellt hatte, wenn die Veröffentlichung auch erst 1753 gelang. Der Zürich-Leipziger Literaturstreit findet in mehreren Briefen Ausdruck. So ist einem Bericht des Schleusinger Rektors Johann Heinrich Hausmann zu entnehmen, dass kontroverse Debatten über Klopstocks Messias auch auf gymnasialer Ebene ausgetragen werden. Franz Ignaz (Gregorius) Rothfischer ist erstmals mit einem Brief vertreten, den er noch als Benediktiner unterzeichnet, während Briefe anderer Absender schon den spektakulären Konfessionswechsel erahnen lassen, dessen Vollzug in Leipzig im November 1751 die Öffentlichkeit bewegt. (shrink)

Les Journées maliotes organisées à l'École française d'Athènes les 2 et 3 novembre 2007 portaient sur l'organisation des espaces et l'exploitation des ressources, thèmes qui permettaient d'unir les approches effectuées ces dernières années selon deux échelles différentes, celle de l'agglomération et de l'urbanisme d'une part, celle de l'organisation du territoire d'autre part. Les contributions portent toutes sur des recherches en cours, dont la publication est récente ou proche. Elles sont publiées ici sous forme de résumés argumentés et reflètent fidèlement les (...) discussions qui les suivirent. (shrink)