Materialist manifesto
The concept of dualism goes back to ancient times, but in early modern France, René Descartes (1596–1650) was its primary proponent. La Mettrie, writing almost a century after Descartes’s death, directs his arguments to refute many of Descartes’s dualistic assertions. The direct opposite of dualism is monism, a school of thought led by Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). Spinoza, however, believed that matter was imbued with God—a belief that amounts to Pantheism. La Mettrie, on the other hand, was an avowed Atheist, who believed in no god or divine power.
As the title of his work indicates, La Mettrie believed that human beings are machines, though constructed of living tissue rather than metal. That is to say, all the phenomena of the human body and mind can be explained by material processes. Mankind has no spirit or soul. La Mettrie sometimes uses the word “soul” in Man a Machine (or rather, the English translator does), but what he means by that is human consciousness. La Mettrie believed that each particle of matter was invested with an infinitesimal degree of intelligence or sensation. When organized into complex forms, these bits of mentality could be combined and amplified into higher orders of intelligence, with the human mind being the pinnacle of this process. This concept, sometimes referred to as atomistic consciousness, was later championed by the evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), among others. While the knee-jerk reaction of many to such an idea might be to disregard it as ridiculous, the development of computers and artificial intelligence seems to argue in its favor. Mankind has created artificial minds entirely of matter. Though they are not quite up to the level of human consciousness as of yet, who knows where the future will lead?
La Mettrie begins his materialist manifesto by pointing out the various ways in which the human mind is altered or affected by physical causes, such as illness, alcohol, drugs, or injury. He then goes on to assert that humans are no different from animals in their form and function, except that in many ways—especially mentally—humans are more advanced. This is not a precocious argument for evolution but rather a rebuke to the common Judeo-Christian belief that man has a soul but animals do not. La Mettrie scoffs at the anthropocentric idea that man is so special there exists a portion of his being to which the laws of physics do not apply. La Mettrie then goes on to concur with empirical philosophers like John Locke (1632–1704) who argued that all knowledge comes form sensory perception. Humans are born with a mind that is a blank slate, or tabula rasa—essentially an empty hard drive waiting for input. La Mettrie also advocates atheism over theism and rejects the theistical argument for intelligent design.
To be honest, La Mettrie probably doesn’t have a whole lot new to say in Man a Machine that Spinoza, Locke, and other pre–Enlightenment philosophers hadn’t already said. The merit is in how he says it. La Mettrie is materialism’s most enthusiastic booster. Rather than a hefty treatise that only a sage could decipher, he has written a brief, intelligent work accessible to any literate man of his age. His argument is logically structured, clearly stated, and pleasantly irreverent. In his day, even deists like Voltaire found La Mettrie’s thought too radical and dangerous, but readers of today who are atheistically inclined will enjoy this unsung Enlightenment freethinker’s no-bull iconoclastic straight talk.
