Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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Julien Offray, sieur de La Mettrie (born November 23, 1709 in Saint-Malo ; † November 11, 1751 in Potsdam ) was a French doctor, writer, pamphleteer and radical Enlightenment philosophe des Lumières.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie had himself portrayed as "Democritus ridens", as a laughing Democritus , by the Prussian engraver Georg Friedrich Schmidt around 1750/1751. The engraving is furnished with an epigram by his friend, the court actor Damien Desormes.

"Sous ces traits vifs, tu vois le Maître
Des jeux, des ris & des bons mots
Trop hardi d'avoir de son être,
Osé débrouiller le Cahos [sic],
Sans un Sage il étoit la victime des sots."

In these lively features you see the master of the
game, of laughter and of bon mot;
He was so bold as to dare
to decipher the questions of being Out of Chaos
Without a wise man he would have been the victim of the stupid.

He gained fame above all for his consistently materialistic image of man, which is why he was considered an enfant terrible , the “whipping boy of the French Enlightenment ”. In allusion to his monistic , mechanistic worldview and his blatantly atheistic - naturalistic martial arts script L'Homme-Machine (Machine Man), 1748, which was bold for the time , his nickname "Monsieur Machine" , that of the "médecin-philosophe", spread the doctor and philosopher, himself gladly used in his later works. Because of his polemical criticism of doctors and his “godless” philosophical publications, he had to flee France and then even from the comparatively more tolerant Netherlands. Frederick the Great offered him, "the most ostracized author on the continent", asylum and employed him in Sanssouci as his personal doctor and reader. He was also a guest at the round table in Sanssouci.

In 1748, while in exile in Prussia, “Monsieur Machine” published what he personally considered to be his main work: About happiness or the highest good, “Anti-Seneca” (“Discours sur le bonheur ou Le Souverain Bien, Anti-Sénèque”). The atheistic and amoralistic theses he advocated in the foreword of this book: “Against religion - negation of sin” aroused the general outrage of the supposedly “free-spirited, enlightened” round table of the philosopher King Frederick the Great. Censorship came and La Mettrie feared for his life again. In August 1751, in the foreword to the 3rd edition of the “Discours sur le bonheur”, he wrote of his fear that he would die as a philosophical martyr like Socrates once did :

«Qui m'assurera qu'un jour la ciguë ne sera pas la récompense de mon courage philosophique? »

"Who guarantees me that one day the hemlock cup wo n't be the reward of my philosophical courage?"

- Bernd A. Laska (ed.): About happiness or the highest good (»Anti-Seneca«). P. 93.

Three months later, on November 11, 1751, the "strange" end of the famous doctor de la Mettrie, which the fabulous satirist had self-ironically hinted at in a fictional autobiography of the same name in 1750. The philosopher suffered a tragicomic death ( pate death ) at the age of only 42 - with attested good health :

“The cause of death has never been clarified. It was popularly rumored that the hedonist had fallen victim to his appetite. "

- Bernd A. Laska: La Mettrie - a deliberately unknown acquaintance. In: Enlightenment and Criticism. 14/2008, p. 73.

Life

Herman Boerhaave
Portrait of the famous polymath, medic and botanist
on a postage stamp from the Netherlands Post (1928). From 1734/1735 the doctor La Mettrie perfected his medical knowledge at Boerhaave in Leiden. He translated seven major works by Boerhaaven from Latin into French.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie was born in 1709 as the son of a wealthy textile merchant in St. Malo , Brittany . He attended a Jansenist school, studied medicine in Paris from 1725 and obtained his doctorate in Rennes in 1733 . He first practiced as a country doctor, then went to Leiden in the Netherlands , where he worked for Herman Boerhaave , the leading physician in Europe at the time , and translated his writings from Latin into French. In 1734 he returned to Saint Malo and settled there as a doctor. He married in 1739 and had a daughter in 1741.

In 1742 he went to Paris, where he practiced as a doctor. In addition to his medical practice, he still found time to write critical essays on the professional deficits and "business practices" of the doctors established there.

From 1743 to 1744 La Mettrie took part in the War of the Austrian Succession in the service of Duke Louis de Gramont .

In 1746 some of his provocative writings, including "The Natural History of the Soul" ("L'Histoire naturelle de l'âme"), in which he denied the independence and immortality of the soul, as well as his satires on charlatanry and the ignorance of doctors, were per Court order banned and publicly burned. Although they appeared anonymously, their author no longer felt safe in France. La Mettrie fled - without his family - from France to the more tolerant Dutch university town of Leiden . There he wrote the work that made him famous: "L'Homme-Machine" (1748). This "scandalous" treatise put him in danger even in the liberal Netherlands, where banned books were printed for all of Europe. He had to flee again, including leaving the Netherlands.

The natural scientist Pierre Louis Maupertuis , also born in Saint-Malo and president of the Royal Prussian Academy since 1746 , obtained asylum in Potsdam at the “ Solomon des Nordens ” for La Mettrie, who was persecuted in France and the Netherlands and who had published radical atheist writings .
King Friedrich II. Round table of Sans-souci . “Imagined” oil painting by Adolph von Menzels , 1850: Friedrich II. (Center back) with Voltaire (second left from the king), who is debating across the table with Francesco Algarotti (on the second chair right from the king), and La Mettries (very front right). Is the food that you see on La Mettrie's plate an allusion to his alleged penchant for gluttony , the fateful “truffled pheasant pie”, after which this “Philosophe des Lumières” died at the age of 42? be?

In 1748, through the mediation of his Maloese compatriot Maupertuis , who had been President of the Royal Prussian Academy since 1746 , he received an invitation from Frederick II to his Potsdam residence, Sanssouci . There he became the king's personal physician and reader as well as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and should be able to publish freely. Soon, however, a subtle form of censorship was imposed on it. When in his “Discours sur le bonheur” (1748), also known as “Anti-Sénèque” , he praised the Epicurus system and warned against unnecessary remorse, he was able to use this “scandalous” work, which he himself considered to be his main work 1750 only by disguising it as an introduction to a translation of Seneca's De vita beata . The result was a lasting resentment at court, but - since tolerance was upheld - without direct sanctions for La Mettrie.

“In order to finally discipline the unruly 'protégé' - while preserving the free-spirited face - he was prompted to make his philosophical testament. La Mettrie, who had only been writing for five years and was just forty years old, prepared the edition of his “Œuvres philosophiques”, for which a single volume was sufficient. The writings to be included were "L'Homme-Machine", "Histoire naturelle de l'Âme", "L'homme-plante", "Les Animaux plus que machines", "Réflexions philosophique sur l'origine des animaux". The writing "La Volupté" ... and of course the "Anti-Sénèque", which he even considered to be his main philosophical work, could not be included. "

- Bernd. A. Laska: Philosophy and Politics , LSR, Nuremberg 1987, pp. VIII – IX.

The unruly Breton wrote two additions to his Œuvres philosophiques edition: on the one hand, an introduction (“Discours préliminaire aux Œuvres philosophiques”), “which is actually an independent treatise”, and secondly, he expanded his “Réflexions philosophiques sur l 'origine des animaux' - under the new title 'Système d'Épicure' - from 41 to 93 paragraphs.

In 1750 the “Œuvres philosophiques” appeared shortly before the wicked author's death. Several posthumous editions followed at short intervals

1752 Prussian King took to the general surprise to La Mettrie early Pastetentod (1751) attempt to maligned because of his pamphlets and satires of the doctors and philosophers World hedonistic and sensationalist radical Enlightenment , "of his time was far ahead" to rehabilitate. To this end, Frederick II personally wrote a laudation in 1752 , the famous "Éloge de La Mettrie" . In his eulogy, Friedrich the Great emphasized La Mettrie's cheerful disposition and his epicurean lifestyle. As one of La Mettrie's merits, Frederick II emphasizes that the doctor-philosopher “courageously carried the shining torch of empiricism into the darkness of metaphysics ” ( “Il porta hardiment le flambeau de l'expérience dans les ténèbres de la métaphysique” ) and that as a “philosophe des Lumières”, that is, as an enlightener, he represented the thesis that thinking is an organ function of the body, that the spiritual is a function of matter: “Que la faculté de penser n'étoit qu'une suite de l'organization de la machine ...; et il ne trouva que de la mécanique où d'autres avoient supposé une essence supérieur à la matière. "

Voltaire , who was again at the court of Frederick at this time, reports:

“At that time, a doctor named La Mettrie lived in Berlin, the most outspoken atheist of all medical faculties in Europe, otherwise a cheerful, funny, carefree man, in theory as well-trained as any other of his colleagues and in practice undeniably the worst doctor on earth. Thank God he didn't practice. He had made fun of the whole Paris faculty and had written a lot of suggestive things against the doctors that they would not forgive him. They had obtained an arrest warrant against him. La Mettrie had therefore withdrawn to Berlin, where his exuberance was amusing; besides, he wrote and printed every imaginable cheek about morality. The king liked his books, who made him - not his doctor, but his reader. La Mettrie told the king everything that came to his mind; one day after reading it, he told him how jealous people were of the favor I enjoyed and of my position. Don't worry, the King said to him, you squeeze the orange and throw it away when you have drunk the juice. La Mettrie did not fail to bring me this beautiful apophthegma , which would have been worthy of a Dionys of Syracuse . "

- Voltaire : Memoirs

Tragicomic "pie death"

In 1750, La Mettrie had his last work "L'Art de jouir", a manifesto of Epicurism, published in French and in German "The art of feeling lust" despite all bans in Berlin.

Monsieur Machine died shortly afterwards, in November 1751, at the age of only 42, under unknown circumstances. Ironically, the registered date of death is 11/11, the start of Carnival. La Mettrie died “ on that day when the fools have a run - a stair joke of history, if you want to believe it. "

According to legend, the "whipping boy of materialism" died that everyone is finely finished and hated Mr. machine at the age of 42 years with certified good health on a "gastronomic accident", after eating an oversized, truffled pheasant pate, which he:

“With the intention of showing off his ability to enjoy himself. The story is presumably made up, but of course it fits perfectly with the extremely negative and hateful image that was made of the radical materialist and atheist La Mettrie in bigoted courtly and bourgeois circles. "

- Holm Tetens in his epilogue to the Reclam edition: Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Man a machine (Reclam 18146), p. 103, ISBN 978-3-15-018146-1 .
Silver jug ​​with pate
Still life by Willem Claeszoon Heda

However, Voltaire also takes up the story of the pie in his memoires , according to which La Mettrie died as he lived: “ I am very pleased, said the King to us, for the peace of his soul; we burst out laughing, and so did he. " Voltaire continues:" It was said that he confessed before he died; the king was indignant; he studied carefully whether that was true; He was assured that it was a hideous slander and that La Mettrie had died as he had lived, denying God and the doctors. His Majesty was satisfied, wrote his funeral oration on the spot, had it read out on his behalf by Darget, his secretary, at the public meeting of the Academy, and put it to a joy-girl whom La Mettrie had brought from Paris when he was his wife and children left a pension of 600 livres. "

Not least because of hints made by the ironic and mocker La Mettrie in several places, the suspicion repeatedly arose that the provocateur had been poisoned:

«Qui m'assurera qu'un jour la ciguë ne sera pas la récompense de mon courage philosophique? »

"Who guarantees me that one day the hemlock cup wo n't be the reward of my philosophical courage?"

- Bernd A. Laska (Ed.): About happiness or the highest good ("Anti-Seneca") , p. 93.

And the title of his fictional autobiographical satire, which appeared in Potsdam in 1750, also speaks volumes: The machine that fell to the ground. Or credible news of the life and strange end of the famous doctor de La Mettrie .

The philosopher king Frederick the Great writes the following in his Eloge :

“Mr. La Mettrie died in the house of Milord Tirconnel, the French agent, to whom he had given back his life. It seems that knowing who it was dealing with, the disease had the skill to tackle him by the brain first in order to kill him all the more safely. He developed a hot fever with severe delirium . The patient was compelled to take refuge in the science of his colleagues, and he did not find in it the help which he had so often found in his own knowledge, both for himself and for the public. "

- Friedrich Albert Lange: History of materialism and criticism of its significance in the present. Second, improved and enlarged edition. Iserlhohn. Verlag von J. Baedeker 1873 - p. 359 - in fine

In a confidential letter dated November 21, 1751 to his sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth, the Prussian king reports on the consumption of a pheasant pie and a bloodletting that the doctor La Mettrie had prescribed for himself:

"Here that Lamettrie by digestion of a mention, pheasant pate a Indigestion 've drawn. However, the king seems to regard bloodletting as the actual cause of death , which Lamettrie (sic) prescribed himself in order to prove to the German doctors, with whom he was in dispute on this point, the advisability of bloodletting in this case. "

- Friedrich Albert Lange, op. Cit. P. 359 - in fine

What the real cause of death was now, of course, can no longer be clarified.

Philosophical works (selection)

Automata by famous contemporary designer Vaucanson s : mechanical flute player, 1737, mechanical duck and mechanical drummer. "Vaucanson's dream was to create an artificial (machine) human".
Title page of the famous font "L'Homme-Machine" , Leyden 1748, preceded by a verse motto.
La Mettrie was way ahead of its time

The eloquent Breton was way ahead of his time. So he is apostrophized as a forerunner of Darwin and this because of his evolutionary concept of the self-organization of matter and life . One sees in Mr. Machine also a forerunner of Freud , because in his theory of guilt feelings he had already recognized the disastrous consequences of enculturation , the super-ego formation.

“Julien Offray de La Mettrie was the first of the enlighteners who went so far as to claim that matter organizes everything out of itself, inorganic and organic, man is nothing more than a more complicated machine, there is no border between dead and alive, no god, no afterlife, no natural morality, and most of all, it is nonsense to have a guilty conscience about any actions. The world of scholars was beside itself. "

- Michael Winter: Drink, eat, sleep, dream! About the philosopher, anarchist and court jester Julien Offray de La Mettrie In: Zeit online , November 4, 1988.

In her celebratory lecture Mr Machine in the Beyond Good and Evil in the BBAW (2001), the philosopher Ursula Pia Jauch even sees a forerunner of Nietzsche in the lateral thinker La Mettrie . Some passage , some passages, associations, the work of "Hofatheisten" La Mettrie with the "Nietzschean dreams" of a prejudice-free "philosophy of the future" On the one hand it is about the new, portable and free thinking, which although concerned with the tradition, but not subject to their dogmatism. On the other hand, according to La Mettrie, good and bad are categories that do not exist naturally, but only on the basis of social conventions, a thesis which Nietzsche also advocates in his essay On Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense of 1896.

“Admittedly - it seems to be a long way from Sils-Maria in 1885 back to Potsdam in November 1751, where the notorious skeptic, mocker and anti-dogmatic Julien Offray de La Mettrie just died his pie. 'Beyond Good and Evil' - What is the constant excitement, what is the provocation of this book? Quite simply: Nietzsche, the solitary thinker, takes into account the self-righteous dogmatism of all previous philosophy in sharp tones and without inglorating the supposedly high spirit of tradition. "

- Ursula Pia Jauch: Mr. Machine in the Beyond Good and Evil : Lecture at the BBAW , on November 8, 2001.

The Enlightenment dissident also did not share the scientific and socio-political optimism of his Enlightenment contemporaries :

"The struggle for 'experience, enlightenment and reason' is, on the whole, futile anyway. After all, humans as machines are subject to 'an absolute determinism'. Of course, La Mettrie does not want to justify murder and manslaughter, but accepts the existence of evil, 'because I see its origin in the organization itself, which cannot be tamed in every case. Horses are not the only animals that sometimes run away '. "

- Rudolf Walther: Neither God nor chance. The wild thinking of Julien Offray de La Mettrie. A portrait. In: Die Zeit, November 19, 2009 full text

He was skeptical about the educational optimism of the Enlightenment project. This is also why he was very hostile to the other "philosophes des Lumières" :

“His open understanding of science and the world is at odds with all scientific concepts of his time and comes close to the criticism that postmodern , poststructuralist and feminist critics of the natural sciences are formulating today. Stylistically, this attitude is reflected in the irony . Based on the premise that La Mettrie's philosophical texts are to be read ironically and critically of science, that they always allow the opposite or the other of the statement, his materialism appears in a new light. It turns out to be a thesis and not a system program. "

- Birgit Christensen: Irony and skepticism: The open understanding of science and the world in Julien Offray de la Mettrie , p. 12 Introduction.

With this Breton master thinker, one can already find echoes of Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism , the thesis of the provisional nature of all knowledge. His philosophy is reflexive criticism, which interferes in all questions and which fights against any form of dogmatics.

“Matter only exists in motion and in certain forms. They carry the principle of movement and sensation in themselves. The assumption of a God as the principle that moves the world is thus dispensable. Like other functions, thinking is a natural function of matter. La Mettrie is primarily concerned with criticizing existing systems and not with building a new system. La Mettrie's skepticism is directed against any comprehensive claim to truth. His criticism of metaphysics is directed against theology as well as against the belief in an enlightening reason , provided that it takes on sectarian traits. With this, La Mettrie clearly rejects all fanaticism, including the secular of the Enlightenment. According to him, experience and observation do not lead to truths, as all philosophical systems promise, but to probabilities. Any knowledge we can acquire is preliminary. "

- Christof Goddemeier: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1752): Praise of self-thinking. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. December 11, 2009, page number: A 2510.
Histoire naturelle de l'Âme (Natural History of the Soul), 1745

La Mettrie's theses about the soul as a “ chimera ”, a “meaningless concept”, and about humans as a “soulless machine” form the absolute counter-model to the theological ideas about nature as a divine creation and about the ensouled human organism. The godless author opposes this Christian image of nature and man anti-metaphysical, mechanistic, monistic notions of nature as a clockwork that winds itself. La Mettrie only accepts empirical observations:

"Just as Descartes described animals as machines, La Mettrie now describes humans as 'excellently equipped machines' and compares the human body with a clock."

- Gernot Saalmann: machine - organism - system. Three guiding principles of people. Lecture: What is man? , University of Freiburg 2009.

As the Prussian King Friedrich II reports, La Mettrie wrote his first philosophical-materialistic work Histoire de l'Âme (Natural History of the Soul) in 1745 under the impression of a key experience:

“During the Freiburg campaign , Monsieur de La Mettrie was attacked by a violent fever; for the philosopher illness is a school of the body; he believed he recognized that the mind was nothing more than a consequence of the organization of the machine and that a disturbance of the mainspring had a considerable influence on that part of us that metaphysicians call the soul. Imbued with these ideas during his recovery, he courageously carried the flame of experience into the darkness of metaphysics; with the help of anatomy he tried to explain the fine tissue of the mind, and where others had suspected a superior being superior to matter, he found only mechanics. "

- quoted from: Richard Reschika : Julien Offray de La Mettrie or machine happiness. Tübingen 2001, p. 44.

In this " heretical " book the scandalous doctor and philosopher interpreted everything spiritual as a mere function of the brain and denied the immortality of the soul, as the motto on the title page suggests , a quote from Lucretius' De rerum natura (Third Book, verse 462), announced:

“Participem lethi quoque convenit esse.”

"That is why it is true that she [the soul] too has a part in death."

- Title page on Gallica

He dedicated the natural history of the soul to the influential natural scientist and soon-to-be president of the Royal Prussian Academy Maupertuis , who, like La Mettrie, came from Saint-Malo and who only a few years later was to obtain asylum from the Prussian King Friedrich II for those persecuted by the censors.

L'Homme-Machine (Machine Man), 1748

La Mettrie has gone down in the history of philosophy in particular through his writing with the catchy title L'Homme-Machine (1748; German: machine man):

«CONCLUONS donc hardiment que l'Homme est une machine; & qu'il n'y a dans tout l'Univers qu'une seule substance diversement modifié. »

"So let us boldly draw the conclusion that man is a machine and that there is only one substance in the entire universe, which is of course modified in various ways."

- L'Homme-Machine , 108.

This blasphemous book begins with an enlightening postulate: "dare to think for yourself and have the courage to proclaim what has been recognized as true", which Kant's later motto of the Enlightenment from 1784 virtually anticipates:

«Il ne suffit pas à un Sage d'étudier la Nature & la Vérité; il doit oser la dire en faveur du petit nombre de ceux qui veulent & peuvent penser; car pour les autres, qui sont volontairement Esclaves des Préjugés, il ne leur est pas plus possible d'atteindre la Vérité, qu'aux Grénouilles de voler. »

“It is not enough for a wise man to explore nature and truth; he must also have the courage to say it for the benefit of the small number of those who want and can think; for it is just as impossible for others, who are willingly slaves to prejudice, to arrive at the truth, as it is for frogs to fly. "

- (Incipit) : L'Homme-Machine , [1]

Monsieur Machine has the courage in this book to describe humans as a self-regulating biological machine and to deny the dualism of body and soul, as well as free will . He puts humans and animals on the same level. Starting from René Descartes , La Mettrie developed a strictly experience-oriented materialism that denies any metaphysical assumptions or conclusions. In this way he determines the soul - a central subject of controversy in the early enlightenment - as the result of complex body functions. With this, La Mettrie deviated radically from Descartes, who had adopted a dualism of spirit and matter. So he was a materialistic monist and consequently a consistent atheist , but unlike some of his Enlightenment contemporaries, he was not a moderate, but a rigorous representative of radical Enlightenment .

In contrast to almost all prominent enlighteners of his time, who affirmed the equivalence of their moral teaching with the Christian one, La Mettrie proclaimed offensively, admittedly with the words of a fictitious "hideous" person:

"L'univers ne sera jamais heureux, à moins qu'il ne soit athée. »

"The world will only be happy if it is atheist."

- L'Homme-Machine , [69]

While La Mettrie had previously created many powerful enemies through some violent polemics against the French doctors - who in his opinion ignored medical advances as long as their business was going well - more were now added, namely those scouts who were actually against his allies the clerical and political powers of the ancien régime could have been. Voltaire , Diderot , Holbach , and Rousseau, among others, opposed him by hushing him for decades and then excluding him from the " philosophes " community "as someone who was corrupt in his customs and beliefs " . Voltaire also mockingly called La Mettrie , who lived at the court of the enlightened ruler Friedrich II, the “court atheist” . There is no argumentative confrontation between the Enlightenment philosophes and La Mettrie's thoughts which they found so contemptuous.

"Discours sur le bonheur ou Le Souverain Bien, Anti-Sénèque" (On Happiness or The Supreme Good, "Anti-Seneca"), 1748

However, from hints in contemporary letters it emerges that La Mettrie's “doctrine of the origin of remorse” (“théorie des remords”) was the unforgivable stumbling block. He developed this doctrine of the origin of feelings of guilt in his "Discours sur le bonheur ou Le Souverain Bien, Anti-Sénèque" (About happiness or the highest good, "Anti-Seneca"), which he himself considered to be his main work he published in 1748 while in exile in Prussia. This theory, which La Mettrie regarded as his only original philosophical achievement, is, as only later became clear, about an anticipation of the Freudian superego formation and the damage to the personality that this entails.

La Mettrie sees the causes of the remorse in early childhood enculturation . In it lies the root of the inability to be happy and the resistance to education:

"The largely" unconscious and unchecked "passing on of value and character attitudes - i.e. the establishment of a super-ego, which the developing ego already finds as an inner instance" above itself "when it begins to unfold, La Mettrie describes as' most sinister dowry ', as' weeds in the cornfield of life', as' cruel poison 'that' denatures life 'for man. Because, as a rule, it impairs his ability to experience an authentic happiness and blocks his way to develop the 'art of feeling lust'. "

- Bernd A. Laska: La Mettrie - a deliberately unknown acquaintance : p. 70. (PDF).

The radical enlightener sums up his core ideas in a catchy formula and propagates the abolition of feelings of guilt so that nothing would stand in the way of happiness.

L'homme porte ainsi en lui-même le plus grand des ennemis. … Ne soyons plus en guerre avec nous. Enfin détruisons les remords; que les sots soient les seuls qui en aient: qu'il n'y ait plus d'ivraie mêlée au bon grain de la vie, et que ce cruel poison soit enfin chassé pour jamais. "

So man has the greatest enemy within himself. … Let's stop waging war against ourselves. Let's finally get rid of guilt; so that the stupid are the only ones left: so that there are no more weeds in the cornfield of life, so that this cruel poison is finally banned forever. "

- Discours sur le bonheur ou Le Souverain Bien, Anti-Sénèque: p. 172,

In order to achieve a happy life, the disciple Epicurus gives his readers the following advice:

“Et toi-même, voluptueux, puisque sans plaisirs vifs, tu ne peux parvenir à la vie heureuse, laisse là ton âme et Sénèque; chansons pour toi, que toutes les vertus stoïques! Ne songe qu'à ton corps. Prends donc le bon temps, quand, et partout où il vient: jouis du présent, oublie le passé, et ne crains point l'avenir… Que la pollution et la jouissance, lubrique rivales, se succèdent tout à tour, et te faisant nuit et jour fondre de plaisir, rendent ton âme aussi lascive, s'il se peut, et, pour ainsi dire, aussi gluante que ton corps… Bois, mange, dors, ronfle, rêve. »

"But especially you, for whom lust is paramount, you shouldn't worry about your soul and Seneca , because you can not achieve a happy life without intense joys. All the stoic virtues are empty words to you. It is enough if you think about your body…. So grab your luck whenever and wherever it presents itself! Enjoy the present, forget the past and do not fear the future! ... May the orgasms that let you melt in the highest pleasure at night and during the day have the same beneficial effect on your soul as on your body ... Drink, eat, sleep, snore, dream! "

- About happiness, "Anti-Seneca") , LSR (edited and [very freely] translated by Bernd A. Laska), Nuremberg 1985/2002, p. 112 [171]
L'Art de jouir (The Art of Sensing Lust), 1750

The question in this lyrical prose text is: What is the inability of most people to experience genuine lust and genuine happiness?

“Man is born capable of happiness, but everywhere he lives in misery; How come? La Mettrie's insights can rightly be called depth psychological : on the unconscious , on the sexual, on the formation of conscience and the superego. Because of her, La Mettrie has occasionally been recognized as a forerunner of Freud . "

- Bernd A. Laska: La Mettrie - an intentionally unknown acquaintance , p. 64 (PDF).

Reception history

In his essay, Bernd A. Laska differentiates between La Mettrie - a deliberately unknown acquaintance. On the subject of 'Enlightened Hedonism' and 'Second Enlightenment' there are four literary-historical phases in the reactions to La Mettrie's works:

1) 1745–1748 He is highly regarded in Enlightenment circles.
2) From 1749 he loses his reputation due to his Discours sur le bonheur , especially with his colleagues, the Enlightenment, who make him an "non-person" because of this writing. At the end of the 18th century it was largely forgotten.
3) It is rediscovered in the last third of the 19th century. Friedrich Albert Lange , author of an extensive history of materialism (1866 and 1873/75 <), was the first renowned author who tried to rehabilitate La Mettrie, "one of the most vilified names in literary history", more than a century after his death. There he dedicated a 33-page chapter to La Mettrie. In the writings of the Enlightenment philosophers he noted widespread tacit plagiarism , which some authors also accused La Mettrie:

“In Schlosser's world history one can read that La Mettrie was a very ignorant person who had the audacity to pass off foreign inventions and perceptions for his own. If only not in all cases where we find a striking resemblance of ideas between La Mettrie and a more famous contemporary, the former would have the undeniable priority for himself! "

- Friedrich Albert Lange: History of materialism and criticism of its significance in the present. Second, improved and enlarged edition. Iserlhohn. Verlag von J. Baedeker 1873, p. 328 ( reader.digitale-sammlungen.de ).

It is thanks to Lange book that La Mettrie was now seriously discussed and that his L'Homme-Machine was first published in German in 1875. Its catchy title ensured on the one hand a certain popularity of the author and several new editions of this book, but on the other hand also, because of disregard of his other writings, for the superficial classification of La Mettrie as a representative of a crude philosophical point of view, the "mechanical (sti) ce materialism".

4) This classification has stabilized over the decades and is still widely used today, although a more differentiated view of La Mettrie has been available since 1981 with the publication of Panajotis Kondyli's large educational book. His merging of La Mettrie with the Marquis de Sade in Chapter VII: Forms of Nihilism in the Enlightenment / “The Consequences of the Enlightenment ” remains controversial. Kondylis' study also gave the impetus for a four-volume German edition of La Mettrie's works (1985ff), which, in addition to a new translation of the well-known "L'Homme-Machine" , also contains for the first time those writings that La Mettrie himself considered to be his more important.

The atheistic- hedonistic French philosopher and Epicurean Michel Onfray published six essays in 1991 under the title L'Art de jouir, alluding to the eponymous La Mettries from 1751. Initially, he expressed his admiration for this hostile libertine of the 18th century:

“J'aime La Mettrie pour son cynisme, son insolence, et son ironie. Pour le matérialisme hédoniste qu'il développe… J'aime le pamphlétaire condamné par ses pairs médecins… J'aime le penseur qui fait dans ses textes l'éloge de la volupté … [J'aime] le philosophe dont Voltaire dira: 'Il proscrit la vertu et les remords et fait l'éloge de la volupté. ' »

I like La Mettrie because of its cynicism , its insolence and its irony. Because of the hedonistic materialism he develops ... I like this pamphleteer condemned by his fellow physicians ... [I like] this philosopher, of whom Voltaire will say: 'He disapproves of virtue and guilt and praises lust '. "

- Michel Onfray: L'art de jouir. Pour un matérialisme hédoniste , Ouverture (opening), p. 9 - limited preview in the Google book search

A further consequence were some extensive monographs (Sutter, Christensen, Jauch; see below) as well as the literary processing of central ideas of La Mettrie by Martin Walser in his novel The Moment of Love .

In the epilogue of his novel biography Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie , Bernd Schuchter asks: “What remains of Mr. Machine? "And sums it up:

“La Mettrie remains a mystery because he is a solitaire who knows neither a direct ancestor nor a successor in thinking. His concept of preliminary thinking has meanwhile become common sense, the insistence of his enemies on a revealed, long-established truth obselet. "

- Bernd Schuchter : Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie . Vienna 2018, p. 162.

In Rousseau-2012, the German editor and translator La Mettrie, put Bernd A. Laska , a study in which he argued that "Jean-Jacques Rousseau famous " illumination " ( enlightenment ) of October 1749 - the birth of the philosopher Rousseau - is neither attributable to an inexplicable coincidence nor was a fantasy invented by Rousseau afterwards, but in all probability was triggered by a recently published book, the "Discours sur le bonheur ou Anti-Sénèque" (discourse on happiness or anti-Seneca) by Julien Offray de La Mettrie. "

The aim of the LSR project is to arrive at a constructive “explanation of the information”.

Marquis de Sade - master student of La Mettries?

In the relevant specialist literature it is controversial whether La Mettrie, the godless enfant terrible of the Enlightenment, served the amoralistic enfant maudit of the 18th century, the Marquis de Sade , as a master teacher or whether La Mettrie should instead be interpreted as "Sade's opponent" :

“[La Mettrie's] philosophy exposes virtue and vice as relative values, which in principle separates their orientation towards truth from the pragmatic goals of religion and politics. Theoretical amoralism finally refers to the principle of sensation from which La Metttrie derives the ideal of the 'voluptuous' . This contrasts with the 'libertine' whose character structure has been chronically damaged by the influence of morality, which creates secondary needs. In the sense of La Mettrie, Sades Voluptuous is a libertine . "

- Ronald Hinner: La Mettrie : Opponent Sades . To educate about the Enlightenment - Academia.edu

The philosopher Panajotis Kondylis , on the other hand, describes La Mettrie in his extensive study The Enlightenment in the Framework of Modern Rationalism, 1981, as the most consistent of all nihilists :

"He stylized La Mettrie's philosophy with the Sades to a (value-relativistic) nihilism, so that La Mettrie and Sade appear to him as like-minded thinkers."

- Bernd A. Laska: In: The Art of Sensing Lust , Introduction, p. XIV

While all the «philosophes des Lumières» declared La Mettrie (1709–1751) to be a non-person and strongly condemned his theses, the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) praised “the freest spirit that has ever existed”, La Mettrie "Most famous of all materialists" in several places in his works:

«Le célèbre La Mettrie avait raison. »

"The famous La Mettrie was right."

- Marquis de Sade: Histoire de Juliette ou les Prospérités du vice ( Juliette or the virtues of vice ), Quatrième partie

and:

«  Aimable La Mettrie , profond Helvétius, sage et savant Montesquieu, pourquoi donc, si pénétrés de cette vérité (le plaisir que la nature prend au prétendu ' forfait de la destruction ', n'avez-vous fait que l'indiquer dans vos livres divins? »

Lovable La Mettrie , profound Helvétius , wise and learned Montesquieu , why have you mentioned this truth (that nature takes pleasure in the so-called ' shameful deed of destruction ') in your divine books only in passing, although you are deeply penetrated by it wait? "

- Marquis de Sade: Juliette ou les Prospérités du vice . Edition intégrale, Epubli 2019 Note [18]: limited preview in Google book search

The fact that the “Divine Marquis” was an avid reader of the writings of this radical atheist hedonist and agreed to his theses can be seen from the fact that he put them in the mouths of his own fictional characters in numerous places.

'L'aimable La Mettrie' évoqué dans 'L'histoire de Juliette' est un author chez qui Sade romancier est allé puiser à pleines mains. Et pour cause: selon La Mettrie l'homme est l'ouvrage de la nature et ne peut être tenu pour responasable de ses actes.

“'The lovable La Mettrie', as Sade calls him in the novel 'Juliette or the Advantages of Vice' , is an author in whose works Sade has drawn to the full. And for good reason: 'According to La Mettrie, humans are the work of nature and cannot be held responsible for their actions. "

- Michel Brix: Sade est-il un philosophe des Lumières , in: Trans / Form / Acao, 30 (2007) (2), p. 15 online

In his essay La Mettrie and Sade's Immoralism, the historian of philosophy Jean Deprun 1976 asks whether it was really reading these “ divine books ” that drove de Sade to apologize for crime and to mock all virtues. He goes on to say that the Marquis La Mettries wrongly interpreted philosophical descriptions as normative prescriptions :

"Nous voudrions montrer qu'on doit répondre négativement à ces questions et que le dssciple [de Sade] a, pour ne pas dire gauchi, la pensée du maître [La Mettrie], transmuant de façon indue la description en prescription.  »

"We want to show that these questions have to be answered negatively and that the student [de Sade] overdid the thought of the master [La Mettrie], if not to say distorted it, by unreasonably turning description into prescription."

- Jean Deprun: La Mettrie et l'immoralisme sadien , op.cit . 1976, p. 745.

L'Homme-Machine in the light of neuroscience

“La Mettrie came too early to use science for his machine anthropology. But now it seems to be the sciences themselves that make La Mettrie's equation an issue. We have to ask all the more: is it really an attack on reason, morality, freedom and happiness? Let's watch. "

- Holm Tetens : The enlightened machine. The neurocybernetic model of man and the late salvation of honor for the philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie. In: Zeit online , June 10, 1999.

The physiologist Cabanis coined the formula of biological materialism in 1802: “  Le cerveau sécrète la pensée comme le foie la bile.  »(“ The brain secretes thoughts like the liver bile ”). In the 20th and 21st centuries, reductionist molecular biologists such as the Nobel Prize in Medicine Francis Crick ( “They are nothing more than a bunch of neurons” ) and neuroscientists like Jean-Pierre Changeux ( “The Neuronal Man” ) agree with La Mettrie's materialistic theses. For them, the brain is a complex neural bio-machine. Mental and mental states are treated as if they correspond to brain states, our consciousness is produced by a "  bunch of neurons  ".

The majority of philosophers, however, have come under heavy criticism. This is the title of a book by the philosopher Patrick Spät explicitly. Man does not live from the brain alone. Why we're not a bunch of neurons .

“To identify mental and spiritual states with brain states, that goes too far for many philosophers, although they can by no means agree on the reasons. The [natural] scientists, on the other hand, do not know the scruples and objections of the philosophers. "

- Holm Tetens, op.cit.

literature

Primary literature (selection)

“There is no secure tradition of the more than 5000 printed pages that should have appeared at some point. Some are lost, others still exist in such small numbers that even the La Mettrie researchers cannot always describe them precisely because they are almost inaccessible. Many have been moved anonymously. Between 1733 and 1774 (some of them still after his death), 46 publications were published, also in different editions. There are extensive bibliographies available from Pia Jauch and Birgit Christensen. "

- Helmut Dressler: The ostracized visionary. Notes on the aftermath of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's history . In: Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2010, pp. 303-323. Extended version of the essay under the title: The first agnostic . Notes on the history of the impact of Julien Offray de La Mettrie . - 6th section .

Medical writings

Medical treatises
  • Traité du vertige avec la description d'une catalepsie hystérique. Rennes 1737
  • Lettres de MDLM Docteur en Médecine sur l'Art de conserver la Santé & de prolonger la vie , Paris 1738
  • Nouveau traité des maladies vénériennes par M. de La Mettrie, Docteur en médecine , Paris 1739
  • Traité de la Petite Vérole, avec la Manière de Guérir cette Maladie Suivant les principes de Mr. Hermann Boerhaave & ceux des plus habiles Médecins de notre temps . Paris 1740
  • Vie de M. Hermann Boerhaave , Paris 1740
  • Observations de médecine pratique. Paris 1743
  • Mémoire sur la Dyssentrie , Paris 1750
  • Traité de l'asthme , 1750
Translations by Hermann Boerhaaves
  • Système de Monsieur Hermann Boerhaaves, Sur les maladies vénériennes , Paris 1735
  • Discours sur le Feu , 1737
  • Discours sur l'Eau , 1737
  • Discours sur l'Air , 1737
  • Discours sur la Terre , 1738
  • Les Institutions en médecine de Mr Herman Boorhaave , 2 volumes, 1740
    • The second edition, with La Mettrie's comments, comprises 8 volumes, Paris 1743-1750.
Doctor-critical pamphlets, satires & comedies
  • Essais sur l'Esprit et les Beaux Esprits , Amsterdam 1740
  • Saint Cosme vengé , Strasbourg 1744 (anonymous)
  • Politique du médecin de Machiavel ou le Chemin de la Fortune ouvert aux médecins , Amsterdam 1746
  • La Faculté vengé. Comédie en trois actes , Paris 1747
    • Released posthumously in 1762 in Paris under the title Les Charlatans démasqués ou Pluton Vengeur de la de la Société de Médecine. Comédie ironique en trois actes, en prose .
  • Le chirurgien converti , The Hague 1748
  • Ouvrage de Pénélope ou Machiavel en médecine , Leiden 1748. Three volumes (pseudonym: Aletheius Demetrius)

Philosophical writings

  • Histoire naturelle de l'Âme ou Traité de l'Âme. 1745 (anonymous)
    • Abrégé des Systèmes pour faciliter l'Intelligence du Traité de l'Âme - attached
  • (École de) La Volupté. 1746 (anonymous)
  • Politique du Médecin de Machiavel. 1746 (anonymous)
  • L'Homme Machine. 1748 (anonymous)
  • L'Homme-Plante. 1748 (anonymous)
  • L'Homme plus que machine 1748
  • Discours sur le bonheur ou Anti-Sénèque [Traité de la vie heureuse, par Sénèque, avec un Discours du traducteur sur le même sujet]. 1748 (anonymous)
  • Réflexions philosophiques sur l'origine des animaux , 1749 (anonymous) - contains 41 sections
    • Système d'Épicure, 1750 (anonymous) - extends the “Réflexions philosophiques sur l'origine des animaux” to include sections 42–93.
  • Les animaux plus que machine. 1750
  • Discours préliminiaire aux Œuvres philosophiques , 1750
  • The machine that fell to the ground. Or credible news of the life and strange end of the famous doctor de La Mettrie. Translated from the French, in three parts . Published in German in 1750. Three parts. The French originals are called:
    • Épître à Mlle ACP Ou la Machine terrassée . Part I, 1749 (anonymous)
    • Response to theauthor de la machine terrassée . Part II, 1749 (anonymous)
    • Épître à mon Esprit ou l'Anonyme persiflé . Part III, 1750 (anonymous)
  • L'Art de Jouir. 1751 (anonymous)
  • Le Petit Homme à longue Queue. Ridendo dicere verum. 1751 (anonymous)

expenditure

Critical editions of the major works
  • Aram Vartanian (Ed.): La Mettrie's L'homme machine. A Study in the Origins of an Idea, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1960
  • John F. Falvey (Ed.): La Mettrie. Discours sur le bonheur , Banbury, Oxfordshire: The Voltaire Foundation 1975 (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, vol. Cxxxiv)
  • Ann Thomson (Ed.): La Mettrie's Discours préliminaire. Materialism and Society in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, Genève: Librairie Droz 1981
  • Théo Verbeek (ed.): Le Traité de l'Ame de La Mettrie , 2 vols., Utrecht: OMI-Grafisch Bedrijf 1988
Older French work editions
  • Œuvres philosophiques de Mr. de La Mettrie. 1751 (incomplete)
  • Œuvres philosophiques de Mr. de La Mettrie. Nouvelle édition. 1752, 1753 (2 ×), 1764 (3 ×), 1774 (2 ×), 1775, 1796 ( digitized version )
New French edition
  • Œuvres philosophiques , 2 volumes, Fayard, Paris 1984 and 1987, ISBN 2-213-01839-1 and ISBN 2-213-01953-5
  • Ouvrage de Pénélope ou Machiavel en Médecine , Fayard, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-213-61448-2
  • Œuvres philosophiques , 1 volume, Coda, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-84967-002-2
  • La Mettrie. Textes choisis . (Marcelle Bottigelli-Tisserand) Éditions Sociales (ES), Paris 1974
Bilingual French-German editions
  • Man a machine / L'Homme-Machine. Trans. V. Theodor gap. Nachw. U. Notes v. Manfred Starke. Reclam, Leipzig 1965. RUB No. 110.
  • L'Homme-Machine / The human machine. Trans. U. ed. v. Claudia Becker, Meiner, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7873-1931-2
  • L'Homme-Plante / Man as a plant. Trans. V. Gabriele Blaikner-Hohenwart / Hans Goebl. VDG - publishing house and database for the humanities, Weimar 2008. ISBN 978-3-89739-606-7
German editions of works
  • Machine texts from Sanssouci. Ed., With notes and an afterword by Ulrich Richtmeyer:
Audio book
  • Man is a machine. Audio book on CD, read by Andreas Dietrich. Complete Media, Grünwald o. J. (2008) ISBN 978-3-8312-6200-7 .

Secondary literature

Bibliographies
  • Bibliographic catalog from 1752 of the works of La Mettrie. Author: Frederick the Great . Published in the appendix to his Éloge du sieur La Mettrie, Médecin de la Faculté de Paris et Membre de L'Académie Roïale des Sciences de Berlin: Avec le catalog de ses ouvrages , & deux Lettres qui le concernent , The Hague, by Pierre Gosse Junior , 1752. (29 works are listed) - pages 19–29 .
  • Birgit Christensen: Irony and skepticism: The open understanding of science and the world in Julien Offray de la Mettrie , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1271-2 , fifth chapter, pages: 269-310.
  • Ursula Pia Jauch : Beyond the machine. Philosophy, irony and aesthetics with Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751). Carl Hanser Munich 1998. ISBN 3-446-19485-1 , chapter Bibliography , pp. 579-592.
  • Bernd A. Laska : The reception of La Mettrie after 1985 - Online Bibliography (as of March 29, 2017).
  • Pierre Lemée: Julien Offray de La Mettrie: St-Malo, 1709 - Berlin, 1751, Médecin - Philosophe - Polémiste. Sa vie, Son ŒUVRE . Mortain publishing house, Saint-Malo 1954, Bibliographie des œuvres de La Mettrie , pp. 243–247. (106 works are listed).
  • Roger E. Stoddard: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1709-1751: A Bibliographical Inventory . In: The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America , Vol. 86, No. 4, December 1992, pp. 411-459. - JSTOR
    • Roger E. Stoddard: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1709-1751. A Bibliographical Supplement . In: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America , 89, March 1995, pp. 85-92 - JSTOR
    • Roger E. Stoddard: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1709-1751: A bibliographical Inventory. Together with a facsimile reprint of La Mettrie's long-lost thesis Epistolaris de vertigine dissertatio (Rennes, 1736) . Verlag Dinter, Cologne 2000, ISBN 978-3-924794-42-2 .
Biographies
  • Pierre Lemée: Julien Offray de La Mettrie: St-Malo, 1709 - Berlin, 1751, Médecin - Philosophe - Polémiste. Sa vie, Son ŒUVRE . Mortain publishing house, Saint-Malo 1954, Première Partie: L'Homme (Part One: The Man), pp. 13–39.
  • Bernd Schuchter : Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Vienna: Braumüller, 2018 ISBN 978-3-99200-201-6 , [in essayistic style]. Review by Thomas Wörtche: Bernd Schuchter: 'Herr Machine'. Mocked, branded and damned, January 30, 2018: Deutschlandfunk culture and review by Carsten Jaehner: Hated by half of Europe - a true story. online .
  • Jakob Elias Poritzky : Julien Offray de La Mettrie. His life and his works. Ferd. Dümmlers Verlagbuchhandlung , Berlin 1900, ISBN 978-93-3364343-6 , online .
Analyzes
Books
  • Arno Baruzzi : La Mettrie, in: Enlightenment and Materialism in France in the 18th Century, Paul List Verlag 1968, pp. 21–62.
  • Ernst Bergmann : The satires of the Lord Machine. A contribution to the philosophy and cultural history of the 18th century . Leipzig 1913, online
  • Philipp Blom : Evil Philosophers. Munich: Hanser Verlag 2011, therein about La Mettrie p. 63-66 and pages 241/242, as well as p. 299, ISBN 978-3-534-24403-4 .
  • Olivier Côté: Les plaisirs de l'amoralisme. Pour une compréhension de l'hédonisme lamettrien . In: Ithaque, Revue de l'Université de Montréal: PDF
  • Birgit Christensen: Irony and skepticism: The open understanding of science and the world in Julien Offray de la Mettrie , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1271-2 , limited preview in the Google book search.
  • Helmut Dressler: The ostracized visionary. Notes on the aftermath of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's history . In: Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2010, pp. 303-323. Extended version of the essay under the title: The first agnostic . Notes on the history of the impact of Julien Offray de La Mettrie . - online
  • Jean Deprun: La Mettrie et l'immoralisme sadien . In: Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'Ouest. Tome 83, numéro 4, 1976, pp. 745-750, full text on Persée
  • Christof Goddemeier: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1752): Praise of self-thinking. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. December 11, 2009.
  • Philip Lionel Honoré: L'Histoire naturelle de l'âme. The Philosophical Satire of La Mettrie . New York University 1973. (Unprinted dissertation).
  • Ursula Pia Jauch : Beyond the machine. Philosophy, irony and aesthetics with Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751). Munich: Hanser 1998. ISBN 3-446-19485-1 .
  • Ursula Pia Jauch: Mr. Machine in the Beyond Good and Evil : Ceremonial lecture at the BBAW , on November 8, 2001.
  • Ursula Pia Jauch: Friedrich's round table & Kant's table company. An experiment about Prussia between eros, philosophy and propaganda. Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-88221-589-2 .
  • Panajotis Kondylis : The Enlightenment within the framework of modern rationalism. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1981. ISBN 3-12-915430-2 (Chapter. The consequent: La Mettrie and Sade , pp. 503-518, passim) - reading sample
  • Friedrich Albert Lange: History of Materialism (1866). New edition Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp 1974. ISBN 3-518-07670-1 (2 volumes, stw 70/71, chapter La Mettrie , pp. 344–376 ).
  • Pierre Lemée: Julien Offray de La Mettrie: St-Malo, 1709 - Berlin, 1751, Médecin - Philosophe - Polémiste. Sa vie, Son ŒUVRE . Mortain publishing house, Saint-Malo 1954.
  • Claude Morilhat: La Mettrie. Un matérialisme radical . PUF Paris 1997, ISBN 978-2-13-048582-7 Gallica and review by Anne Miehe-Léon JSTOR
  • Michael Pfister / Stefan Zweifel : Pornosophy & Imachination. Sade, La Mettrie, Hegel , Matthes & Seitz Munich, 2002, ISBN 3-88221-836-3 .
  • Richard Reschika : Julien Offray de La Mettrie or machine happiness. In: Philosophical Adventurers. Eleven profiles from the Renaissance to the present , Mohr Siebeck, (UTB), Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-8252-2269-1 , pp. 41–67.
  • Lutz Rössner: Machine man and education, Frankfurt / M a. a .: Peter Lang 1990. ISBN 3-631-42370-5 .
  • Alex Sutter: Divine machines, Frankfurt / M: Athenaeum 1988. ISBN 3-610-08511-8 .
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: La Mettrie, Julien Offray de. In: Werner E. Gerabek et al. (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 819.
  • Rudolf Walther: Neither God nor chance , a portrait. In: Die Zeit, November 19, 2009.
  • Michael Winter: Drink, eat, sleep, dream! About the philosopher, anarchist and court jester Julien Offray de La Mettrie. In: Zeit online , November 4, 1988.
  • Kathleen Wellman: La Mettrie. Medicine, Philosophy, and Enlightenment . Durham / London: Duke University Press 1992.
Articles in (specialist) magazines and on websites
  • Ronald Hinner: La Mettrie's opponent Sade. To clarify about the Enlightenment , Vienna December 2012 online .
  • Bernd A. Laska : The negation of the irrational superego in La Mettrie. La Mettrie as an 'anarchist' 'educator' , 1999: full text .
    • Bernd A. Laska: La Mettrie and the art of feeling wo (h) llust. Portrait of an ostracized thinker . In: The Blue Rider. Journal of Philosophy . Volume 16, 2003, pp. 98-103: full text .
    • Bernd A. Laska: La Mettrie - a deliberately unknown acquaintance. On the subject of 'Enlightened Hedonism' and 'Second Enlightenment' , in: Enlightenment and Criticism, Special Issue 14, 14/2008: pp . 64–84 .

Web links

Wikisource: Julien Offray de La Mettrie  - Sources and full texts (French)
Commons : Julien Offray de La Mettrie  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Works in full text
Front pages
  • Les Institutions en médecine de Mr Herman Boorhaave , 1743 ( Gallica )
  • Histoire naturelle de l'Âme , 1745 ( Gallica )
  • L'École de la Volupté , 1746 ( Gallica )
  • La Faculté Vengée. Comédie en trois actes , 1747 ( Gallica )
  • L'Homme-Machine , 1748 ( digitized version ).
  • L'Homme plus que machine , 1748 ( digitized )
  • L'Homme-Plante , 1748 ( digitized version )
  • Ouvrage de Pénélope or Machiavel en médecine . First volume, 1748 ( Gallica )
    • Ouvrage de Pénélope or Machiavel en médecine . Second volume, 1748 ( Bavarian State Library )
      • Supplément à l'Ouvrage Pénélope or Machiavel en médecine . Third volume, 1750 ( Gallica )
  • Système d'Épicure , 1750 ( Gallica )
  • Anti-Sénèque ou Discours sur le bonheur , 1750 ( Gallica )
  • The machine which fell to the ground, Or credible news of the life and strange end of the famous Doctor de La Mettrie, Translated from the French in three parts . Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1750 ( SLUB - Saxon State Library - State and University Library Dresden ).
  • L'Art de joüir (sic!), 1751 ( Gallica )
Lectures

Eponym

In April 1997 the asteroid (7095) Lamettrie was named after him.

swell

  1. La Mettrie's date of birth can be found in the literature at least three different times. The one given here is probably the correct one. See: Birgit Christensen: Ironie und Skeptis. Würzburg 1996, p. 245, fn. 2 .: “The date of birth is unsecured. The Academy of Sciences in Berlin recorded November 23rd. Presumably this is the correct date, as La Mettrie could have given it himself. In Frederick II's Eloge, December 25th appears as the date of birth; but the king was wrong, as evidenced by the files of the État-civil aux Archives de la ville de Saint-Malo, which mention December 19th as the baptism date. "
  2. Bernd Schuchter : Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Braumüller, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-99200-201-6 , p. 32.
  3. Description of the picture. Portrait collection of the HAB .
  4. Richard Reschika : Julien Offray de La Mettrie or machine happiness. In: Philosophical Adventurers. Eleven profiles from the Renaissance to the present. Mohr Siebeck, UTB, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-8252-2269-1 , p. 43.
  5. Rolf Löchel: Luminous Botany. Julien Offray de La Mettrie recognizes humans as plants. Online at: Literaturkritik.de. August 8, 2009.
  6. ^ Arno Baruzzi : La Mettrie. In: Enlightenment and Materialism in France in the 18th Century. Paul List Verlag, 1968, p. 23.
  7. Bernd Schuchter: Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Braumüller, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-99200-201-6 , p. 152.
  8. Bernd A. Laska (ed.): About happiness or the highest good ("Anti-Seneca"). LSR-Quellen Vol . 2, 2nd edition, Nuremberg 2004, ISBN 3-922058-30-2 ( introduction ).
  9. Olivier Côté: Les plaisirs de l'amoralisme. Pour une compréhension de l'hédonisme lamettrien. In: Ithaque. Revue de l'Université de Montréal (PDF; 117 kB.)
  10. Helmut Dressler: The ostracized visionary. Notes on the aftermath of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's history. In: Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2010, pp. 303–323. Extended version of the essay under the title The First Agnostic . Notes on the history of the impact of Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Online, p. 21.
  11. ^ Cover picture of the satire. On: SLUB-Dresden.de.
  12. Birgit Christensen: Irony and Skepticism: The open understanding of science and the world with Julien Offray de la Mettrie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1271-2 , pp. 272-274: limited preview in the Google book search.
  13. Until recently, Reims was accepted as the location for the doctorate - probably because of a reading error that was repeatedly reproduced. Now, however, La Mettrie's dissertation was found, which was accepted by the University of Rennes. See Roger E. Stoddard: Julien Offray de La Mettrie. A bibliographical inventory. Together with a facsimile reprint of La Mettrie's long-lost thesis, Epistolaris de vertigine dissertatio. (Rennes, 1736). Cologne: Dinter 2000, p. 82
  14. For example: “Politique du médecin de Machiavel, ou Le chemin de la fortune ouvert aux médecins” , 1746 and La Faculté Vengée. Comédie en trois actes, Paris 1747.
  15. ^ Julien Offray de La Mettrie: Philosophy and Politics. Edited and introduced by Bernd A. Laska , LSR sources: Volume 3), LSR-Verlag Nürnberg 1987, ISBN 3-922058-29-9 , SV
  16. Solomon of the North, this is how Voltaire flatteringly calls the Prussian King Frederick the Great in his correspondence with the monarch.
  17. Ursula Pia Jauch: Friedrich's Round Table & Kant's Table Society. An experiment about Prussia between eros, philosophy and propaganda. Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-88221-589-2 , p. 50
  18. Rudolf Walther: Neither God nor chance, a portrait , in: Die Zeit, November 19, 2009: in fine
  19. Bernd. A. Laska: Philosophy and Politics , LSR, Nuremberg 1987, p. IX.
  20. Birgit Christensen: Irony and Skepticism: The open understanding of science and the world with Julien Offray de la Mettrie , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1271-2 , limited preview in the Google book search, pp. 288-293 :
  21. Christof Goddemeier: Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Praise for self-thinking. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. Volume 106, issue 50, December 11, 2009.
  22. Éloge de M. Julien Offroy La Mettrie, prononcé par Sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse, 1752: Éloge full text (French) - in Gallica .
  23. Éloge full text (French) , p. 10 - on Gallica.
  24. Éloge full text (French) , pp. 10/11 - on Gallica.
  25. Voltaire on the King of Prussia, Memoirs , ed. u. Translated by Anneliese Botond (Title of the original edition: Memoires pour servir à la vie de M. de Voltaire, écrits par lui-même ), Frankfurt / M. (Insel Verlag), 1981 (first edition 1967), page 41.
  26. Bernd Schuchter : Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie . Vienna: Braumüller, 2018 ISBN 978-3-99200-201-6 , p. 19.
  27. Richard Reschika : Julien Offray de La Mettrie or machine happiness. In: Philosophical Adventurers. Eleven profiles from the Renaissance to the present , Mohr Siebeck, (UTB), Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-8252-2269-1 , p. 63.
  28. Voltaire on the King of Prussia, Memoirs , ed. u. Translated by Anneliese Botond (Title of the original edition: Memoires pour servir à la vie de M. de Voltaire, écrits par lui-même ), Frankfurt / M. (Insel Verlag), 1981 (first edition 1967), pages 42, 109
  29. limited preview in the Google book search
  30. cf. Ursula Pia Jauch: Beyond the machine. Munich: Hanser 1998, p. 567.
  31. Bernd Schuchter : Mr. Machine or about the wonderful life and death of Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Vienna: Braumüller, p. 113
  32. As a motto , the writing is preceded by six closing lines of a verse letter by Voltaire to Monsieur La Falulère de Genonville, 1719:

    Est-ce là ce rayon de l'essence suprême
    Qu'on nous peint si lumineux?
    Est-ce là cet Esprit survivant à nous-même?
    Il naît avec nos sens, croît, s'affaiblit
    comme eux.
    Hélas! il périra de même.

    Does it exist, the ray of light of the highest being, whom
    one paints so brightly for us?
    Does he exist, the spirit that outlives us?
    It is born with our senses, grows and slacks
    like them.
    And oh, it will pass away as well!

    ( complete French letter text, in fine )
  33. Michel Bottolier: Homage: De La Mettrie à Darwin full text , September 11, 2009 on Libres Penseurs de France
  34. La Mettrie: Réflexions philosophiques sur l'origine des animaux , 1749 (anonymous)
  35. Bernd A. Laska: La Mettrie a deliberately unknown acquaintance full text and Ursula Pia Jauch: Beyond the machine . Munich: Carl Hanser 1998, pp. 342, 406 and Kathleen Wellman: La Mettrie . Durham and London: Duke University Press 1992, p. 220
  36. Ursula Pia Jauch, op.cit, p. 171
  37. About truth and lies in the extra-moral sense
  38. Denis Diderot (1782): Essay on the rule of the emperors Claudius and Nero as well as on the life and writings of Seneca. In: Philosophische Schriften II. Berlin (East): Aufbau-Verlag 1961, p. 429
  39. In: About happiness, or the highest good ("Anti-Seneca"). Nuremberg: LSR-Verlag 1985, p. 11
  40. Bernd A. Laska : The negation of the irrational superego in La Mettrie . Nuremberg: LSR-Verlag 1999
  41. ^ La Mettrie: Sur le bonheur. Verlag L'Arche Paris 2000, ISBN 2-85181-461-3 , p. 91 [171].
  42. La Mettrie - a deliberately unknown acquaintance. On the subject of 'Enlightened Hedonism' and 'Second Enlightenment'. In: Enlightenment and Criticism. Special issue 14, 14/2008, pp. 64–84 and pp. 67–79.
  43. Panajotis Kondylis: The Enlightenment within the framework of modern rationalism . Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1981
  44. Panajotis Kondylis: The Enlightenment within the framework of modern rationalism . Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1981, pp. 503-517, limited preview in the Google book search
  45. Cf. Bernd A. Laska's introduction to The human being as a machine , p. Xxiv, and Ursula Pia Jauch: Jenseits der Maschine , Munich: Hanser, p. 348
  46. ^ The four-volume German edition: La Mettrie im LSR-Projekt - edited by Bernd A. Laska, LSR-Verlag 1985–1988
  47. These were Über das Glück and The Art of Sensing Lust , of which he himself arranged for translations into German, which, however, found little circulation and were thought to be lost until the 20th century, and the "Discours prélimaire aux œuvres philosophiques" (by Laska titled as Philosophy and Politics ).
  48. Michel Onfray: L'art de jouir. Pour un matérialisme hédoniste . German edition (part 1): The sensual philosopher. About the art of enjoyment. Translated by Eva Moldenhauer. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-593-34711-3 - limited preview in the Google book search
  49. See: Bernd A. Laska: Why La Mettrie of all places? About the "real hero" in Martin Walser's novel "The Moment of Love"  . In: literaturkritik.de, Vol. 6, No. 10, October 2004, pp. 60–71
  50. Bernd A. Laska: 1750 - Rousseau displaces La Mettrie. A course in the history of ideas . In: Enlightenment and Criticism. Journal for free thinking and humanistic philosophy. Volume 19, 2012, Volume 4/2012, pp. 174-185; French version: «1750 - Rousseau évince La Mettrie. D'une orientation des Lumières lourde des conséquences ». In: Rousseau Studies, Revue annuelle, [octobre] 2013, p. 313-326.
  51. enfant maudit = cursed child
  52. Panajotis Kondylis: The Enlightenment within the framework of modern rationalism. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1981. ISBN 3-12-915430-2 (Chapter. The consequent: La Mettrie and Sade , pp. 503-518, passim) - reading sample
  53. Guillaume Apollinaire: L'Œuvre du Marquis de Sade , 2014, ISBN 978-1-4997-1108-0 , Introduction, p. 36: “Le marquis de Sade, cet esprit le plus libre qui ait encore existé. »- Apollinaire
  54. Karl Popper / John C. Eccles: The I and its brain. Munich: Piper 1982, ISBN 978-3-492-02447-1 , p. 254.
  55. Nature loves destruction in order to be able to renew itself again and again.
  56. ^ "Le divin Marquis" Guillaume Apollinaire: L'Œuvre du Marquis de Sade , 2014, ISBN 978-1-4997-1108-0 , p. 8
  57. ^ Ann Thomson: L'Art de jouir de La Mettrie à Sade. P. 316
  58. Jean Deprun: La Mettrie et l'immoralisme sadien . In: Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'Ouest. Tome 83, numéro 4, 1976, pp. 745-750, full text on Persée , p. 745.
  59. Cabanis (Wikiquote)
  60. Francis Crick: What the Soul Really Is. The scientific exploration of consciousness . Rowohlt 1997, ISBN 3-499-60257-1 , p. 17 - Contents
  61. ^ Jean-Pierre Changeux : The neural man. How the soul works - the discoveries of new brain research . Reinbek near Hamburg (Rowohlt) 1984, ISBN 978-3-498-00865-9 .
  62. ^ Jean-Pierre Changeux : The neural man. How the soul works - the discoveries of new brain research . Reinbek near Hamburg (Rowohlt) 1984, ISBN 978-3498008659 . - Review by Regina Oehler: Everything is simple here. The neural human and the body-soul program. News about the 'universe within us' : Zeit online , November 30, 1984. - Michel Morhange et al .: L'homme neuronal, trente ans après: Dialogue avec Jean-Pierre Changeux . Paris 2016, ISBN 978-2-7288-0546-4
  63. Peter Clarke: L'homme une machine neural sans âme? Dépt de neurosciences fondamentales, Université de Lausanne, RSESR, 6 avril 2013 Nyon: Diagram page 6/39 (pdf)
  64. Dieter Fauth: The human brain La Mettrie and modern neurology, on hpd
  65. "They are nothing more than a bunch of neurons" - Francis Crick: What the soul really is. The scientific exploration of consciousness . Rowohlt 1997, ISBN 978-3-499-60257-3
  66. Patrick Spät : Man does not live from the brain alone. Why we're not a bunch of neurons . Parodos, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-938880-46-3 (revised and updated new edition: epubli, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7418-4889-6 ) limited preview in the Google book search
  67. Explanation of the neologism imachination : The model of the 'man and as a machine' and the free-floating 'imagination' condense into imachination ... , p. 18
  68. Minor Planet Circ. 29672