Julien Offray de La Mettrie 1709 – 1751
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and Enlightenment philosopher whose uncompromising materialism made him one of the most controversial thinkers of his age. Forced into exile first to the Netherlands and then to the court of Frederick the Great, he produced Man a Machine, an extension of the Cartesian doctrine of animal automata to human beings, and Anti-Seneca, a naturalist treatise on happiness that scandalized his Enlightenment colleagues with its frank hedonism. He died at forty-two, reportedly from indigestion brought on by enjoying too much pheasant pate.
Key facts
- Nationality
- French
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Enlightenment
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Julien Offray de La Mettrie:
“Man is a machine.”
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Attributed to Julien Offray de La Mettrie:
“The soul is but the engine of the body.”
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Attributed to Julien Offray de La Mettrie:
“Pleasure and pain are the springs of action.”
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Attributed to Julien Offray de La Mettrie:
“Whether what we call mind is matter that thinks, or some immaterial principle, we cannot finally say; but the difference does not change what we observe.”
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Attributed to Julien Offray de La Mettrie:
“Materialism, far from undermining virtue, is its only honest foundation.”