Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1709 – 1751 · aged 42
French physician and philosopher (1709–1751)
- Born
- 12 Dec 1709 · Saint-Malo
- Died
- 11 Nov 1751 · Potsdam
Life timeline
Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.
- 12 Dec 1709BornBorn in Saint-Malo
- 11 Nov 1751DiedDied in Potsdam
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Biography
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (French: [ɔfʁɛ də la metʁi]; 23 November 1709 – 11 November 1751) was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his 1747 work L'homme machine (Man a Machine).
La Mettrie is most remembered for taking the position that humans are complex animals and no more have souls than other animals do. He considered that the mind is part of the body and that life should be lived so as to produce pleasure (hedonism). His views were so controversial that he had to flee France and settle in Berlin.
Text from the Wikipedia article Julien Offray de La Mettrie, CC BY-SA 4.0
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