Machine man and other writings
By: Julien Offray de La Mettrie ; translated and edited by Ann Thomson.
Contributors: Thomson, Ann.
Series: Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 179
Subjects: Materialism.; Mechanism (Philosophy).
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. xxix-xxx) and index.