Julien Offray de La Mettrie (* 25 December 1709 in Saint Malo; "† 11 November 1751 in potsdam) was a French physician and philosopher.

Biography

The young La Mettrie studies medicine and attains a doctorate. Subsequently, it practices eight years long as country doctor. it pulls 1742 into the French capital, where it publishes critical essays against the "“money greed"” of the physicians, who are forbidden after short time by the authority.

La Mettrie will dismiss because of its religion hostileness, which comes in its work "“Histoire natureal de (1745) to the expression, from its position as an army surgeon. Because of its materialism and atheism pursued, he flees later from France and from the Netherlands. Friedrichs IITH at its yard after lock Sanssouci arrives to 1748 after invitation. Here it meets among other things on Voltaire. In addition, it will formal member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences to Berlin, can not really freely publish here. As Zumutung it feels it, at the age of 39 years "“to creep learns"” to be supposed. Its desire to return to France cannot be fulfilled without serious danger for life and limb meanwhile and it dies to 1751, probably at a food poisoning.

Work and meaning

La Mettrie applies in particular with its writing "“L'homme machine"” (humans a machine, 1748) as important philosophers in the history of the materialism, although often alone the philosophical position of a mechanistical materialism concluded from this title is not applicable.

With reference to Descartes La Mettrie develops a strictly experience-oriented materialism, which excludes any metaphysical Vorannahmen or additions. Thus it determines the soul (when a central contention of the pre and early clearing-up) as discharge of complex bodily functions, which logically not only by their individual transformations (e.g. by physical malfunctions or by learning) is influenceable, but appears to a biological development thus also as result.

La Mettrie resists hasty systematic locking of the philosophical system of the clearing-up, which registers apart from pursuit by church and censorship also the Verachtung of the prominent French reconnaissance aircraft to him. In numerous medical and philosophical writings and argues he polemisiert in particular against the conceited conditions of the physicians as well as against all too mathematical-rationalistic variations of the reason. It opposes a individualistisch seeming affirmation of the sense joys, a criticism to that of him as traditionally regarded social moral. Straight ones thereby it tightens the enmity also the French reconnaissance aircraft (Voltaire, Diderot, getting brook), which hush up it over decades, then "“from the group to that philosophes excludes itself"” (Diderot 1782).

See also: Epikureismus, materialism, Friedrich II. (Prussia), Voltaire

Works

• Oeuvres of philosophiques, tome 1, Paris: Fayard 1984 ISBN 2-213-01839-1
• Oeuvres of philosophiques, tome 2, Paris: Fayard 1987 ISBN 2-213-01953-5
• Ouvrage de ou Machiavel EN Paris: Fayard 2002 ISBN 2-213-61448-2

German expenditure for work:

• Humans as machine, Nuremberg: LSR publishing house 1985, 1988, 2002 ISBN 3-922058-28-0
• Over the luck ("“anti- Seneca"”), Nuremberg: LSR publishing house 1985, 2002 ISBN 3-922058-30-2
• Philosophy and politics, Nuremberg: LSR publishing house 1987 ISBN 3-922058-29-9
• The art to feel Wollust Nuremberg: LSR publishing house 1987 ISBN 3-922058-31-0

Literature

• Alex Sutter: machines, Frankfurt/M: 1988 ISBN 3-610-08511-8
• Birgit Christensen: Irony and skepticism, peppering castle: King living & Neumann 1996 ISBN 3-8260-1271-2
• Ursula Pia Jauch: Beyond the machine, Munich: Hanser 1998 ISBN 3-446-19485-1

Related links

• detailed bibliography to La Mettrie and getting brook
• Secondary texts in the "“LSR project"”
• La Mettrie in the Bibliotheca Augustana

Articles in category "Julien Offray de La Mettrie"

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