France
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
said
[B]efore Descartes, some of the ancients made the essence of matter consist in solid extension.
— Ch. III Concerning the Extension of Matter
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
French physician and philosopher
- Fame55.1
- Momentum0.5
- France rank#247
Summary
Updated 2026-06-08
He wrote that humans are machines without souls — complex animals running on meat and nerve — and the backlash forced him out of France entirely.
Biography
About
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher who pushed Enlightenment materialism past the line polite society would tolerate. In 1747 he published L'homme machine, arguing that the mind is simply part of the body, that humans possess no immortal soul distinguishing them from other animals, and that life's proper aim is pleasure. The position made him one of the earliest French materialists and one of the most controversial: he had to flee France and settle in Berlin, where he died in 1751 at forty-one.
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Sourced, dated quotes from Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
said
The ancients, persuaded that there is no body without a moving force, regarded the substance of bodies as composed of two primitive attributes.
— Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
said
The Christian Scholastics... might have shown that God Himself said that He had "imprinted an active principle in the elements of matter (Gen. i; Is. lxvi).
— Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
said
We have now but to prove a third attribute: I mean the faculty of feeling which the philosophers of all centuries have found in this same substance.
— Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
said
We know in bodies only matter, and we observe the faculty of feeling only in bodies: on what foundation then can we erect an ideal being, disowned by all our knowledge?
— Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
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Fame
Stable55.1
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum0.5
Historical23.6
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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- WikidataHigh confidencewikidata · wikidata.org
- WikipediaHigh confidencewikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Pantheon 2.0High confidencedatabase · pantheon.world
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