La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings / Edition 1

by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Ann Thomson

Overview

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51), author of Man a Machine (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. 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. Ann Thomson's introduction examines his aims and the scandalous moral consequences which he drew from his materialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521478496
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/18/1996
Series:	Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.47(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword; Introduction; Chronology; Further reading; 1. Machine Man; 2. Treatise on the soul; 3. Man as Plant; 4. The System of Epicurus; 5. Anti-Seneca or the Sovereign Good; 6. Preliminary Discourse; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher