Table Of ContentLA M E T T R I E 'S
L'HOMME JMACHINE
A STUDY IN THE ORIGINS OF AN IDEA
LA METTRIE'S
L'HOMME MACHINE
STUDY IN THE ORIGINS
OF AN IDEA
CRITICAL EDITION
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MONOGRAPH
AND NOTES
BY ARAM VARTANIAN
*96*
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
i960
Copyright © i960 by Princeton University Press
All Rights Reserved
L.C. Card 60-5759
•
Publication of this book
has been aided by the Ford Foundation
program to support publication,
through university presses,
of works in the humanities
and social sciences.
•
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
CONTENTS
*96*
I. Biographical Sketch of La Mettrie ι
II. Interpretation of I'Homme machine 13
III. The Development of La Mettrie's
Thought 40
IV. The Historical Background of
I'Homme machine 57
V. The Critical Reaction of La Mettrie's
Contemporaries 95
VI. UHomme machine since 1748 114
A Note on the Text 137
UHomme machine 139
Notes 199
Bibliography 251
Index 259
LA M E T T R I E 'S
L'HOMME M A C H I NE
A STUDY IN THE ORIGINS OF AN IDEA
CHAPTER I
•ί'Ββ'·'
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
LA METTRIE
THE publication late in 1747 of I'Homme machine marked the
climax not only of La Mettrie's thought but of his fortunes as well,
for it was not unusual that the pattern of a philosophe's life should
reflect intimately the history of his mind. Compelled to leave
Holland, where he was then residing, because of the outspoken
materialism of the book, and unable to return to France owing to
prior offenses against the censorship there, La Mettrie found refuge
in a desperate hour at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia.
Having at last won, through the Philosopher-King's favor, both
security from his many enemies and ample leisure to think and
write, he had the bad luck to perish only a few years later as the
result of what might be called a gastronomic accident.
For someone who on the appearance of I'Homme machine was
to achieve an intellectual notoriety second to none in Europe, al
most the whole of La Mettrie's previous existence had been so
strangely inconspicuous that the main source of information about
it remains the brief Eloge composed on the occasion of his death
by Frederick II. The biographical account given therein has in
recent years been rectified and augmented at various points by the
painstaking researches of M. Pierre Lemee.1 But despite all the
available facts, our knowledge of La Mettrie's life and personality
continues to be elusive and full of gaps, particularly since his cor
respondence has apparently been lost.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was born at Saint-Malo, in Brittany,
on December 19, 1709, the son of a well-to-do merchant in the
textile trade. His schooling in the humanities took place at the
provincial colleges of Coutances and Caen, where he gave early
proof of certain tastes and abilities about which Frederick remarks:
"II aimait passionement la Poesie et Ies Belles-Lettres . . . [et]
1 /. 0. de La Mettrie, medecin, philosophe, polemiste; sa vie, son oeuvre, 1954.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LA METTRIE
remporta tous Ies prix de l'eloquence. Il etait ne orateur." This
special talent of his was still in evidence, long afterward, in
I'Homme machine.
Having gone next to the College du Plessis in Paris, La Mettrie's
vocational interests appear to have turned for a time toward the
Church, and, according to Frederick again, "il devint 'janseniste,'
et composa un livre qui eut vogue dans Ie parti." Since all trace of
it has vanished, no one will ever have the pleasure of knowing
how a Jansenistic treatise by La Mettrie reads. This is a pity, for it
is strongly to be suspected that this phase of his youth had an im
portant influence on the course of his subsequent development. In
the "physiologic predestination" of the human machine, there is
an echo, however much transformed, of the sense of inner compul
sion that typifies Jansenist thought. La Mettrie eventually sur
mounted that state of mind, in part at least, by a process of in
tellectual objectification, which culminated both logically and psy
chologically in the homme machine doctrine. Similarly, in his
defiant glorification of the sensual, as in his revolt against the tyr
anny of remorse, it seems natural enough to perceive a "reaction
formation" on the part of the middle-aged philosopher against
the adolescent tendencies that had led him to Jansenism. It is un
fortunate, however, that these comments, based on the meager
information in the Eloge, can be offered as no more than plausible
conjectures.
In 1725 La Mettrie entered the famous College d'Harcourt to
study philosophy and natural science. He must have graduated as
a bachelier around 1727—at about the time, incidentally, when
Diderot, whose ideas were one day closely to parallel his own, was
entering the same establishment. In view of La Mettrie's later ad
mission of indebtedness to Cartesian thought for the man-machine
thesis, it is worth mentioning that the College d'Harcourt, during
the years he studied there, was pioneering the introduction of
Descartes, banned until then from the schools, into its curriculum.
In the final choice of a career, the young man was greatly in
fluenced by the advice and example of Francois-Joseph Hunauld,
a native of Saint-Malo and friend of the La Mettrie family, who
had already made a name for himself in medicine, and was soon
to occupy the chair of anatomy at the Jardin du Roi. For about
