Overview

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 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.

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'The present volume is a welcome addition intended for use by other readers interested in philosophy, the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas. A. Thomson provides a good general introduction setting La Mettrie in the context of eighteenth-century thought ... All the texts produced here benefit from useful notes. The brief annotations on them in the footnotes are complemented by a chronology of La Mettrie and an excellent bibliography.' British Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies

'The present volume is a welcome addition intended for use by other readers interested in philosophy, the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas. A. Thomson provides a good general introduction setting La Mettrie in the context of eighteenth-century thought ... All the texts produced here benefit from useful notes. The brief annotations on them in the footnotes are complemented by a chronology of La Mettrie and an excellent bibliography.' British Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies This is an excellent primary source text that should be included in any university library. It may easily be incorporated into any teaching context and is a valuable resource in French Enlightenment research. Jean-Pierre Schachter, Philosophy in Review The collection...well served by useful scholarly apparatus, such as a chronology of the life of La Mettrie, a listing of other works to consult, and a short history of the publication of each text. This collection okf La Mettrie's texts, which presents them to the English reading public in a clear and accessible form, is valuable to both the teacher and the scholar of the eighteenth century. Kathleen Wellman, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences The appearance of Ann Thomson's splendid English translation of La Mettrie's major philosophical writings is timely. More than ever, various forms of naturalism and materialism dominate our thinking about the mind, and worries about reductionism are hotly debated. Dialogue

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