A Hazardous Materialist: La Mettrie's Life and Ideas

A "bold atheist", a "renowned glutton", an "enemy of all doctors", a "mad imagination", an "overly joyful man", a purveyor of "incoherent lunacy" -- and that's just what Voltaire thought about him. Several times made a refugee for his writings, a man who stood alone against both Christianity and the medical establishment, La Mettrie is a lost icon of free speech and moral courage.

Instead, both during his life and for generations after death, La Mettrie became the iconic "bad atheist" - a favorite target of Christian apologists, but also "the whipping-boy of French materialism" who was definitively rejected by the leading philosophes.

This collection, which contains new or first-ever translations of over a dozen historical texts, offers a second opinion on a man who was far ahead of his time: a brilliant theorist of materialism, teacher of a life-affirming hedonism, and a forerunner of Nietzsche.

Table of contents:

INTRODUCTION

LA METTRIE'S CHRONOLOGY

EULOGIZED BY A KING
-A EULOGY FOR LA METTRIE

IN HIS OWN WORDS: LA METTRIE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
-PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE
-A RESPONSE TO A LIBEL AGAINST THE AUTHOR,
-PLEASURE IS PROPHYLACTIC
-WRITING HOME FROM EXILE

A "PERSECUTED PHILOSOPHER" IN THE PRUSSIAN COURT
-FROM THE KING TO MAUPERTUIS
-FROM MAUPERTUIS TO THE KING
-FROM THE KING TO MAUPERTUIS.
-LA METTRIE'S LETTER OF INTRODUCTION AT THE PRUSSIAN COURT
-FROM THE KING TO MAUPERTUIS
-FROM MAUPERTUIS TO THE KING
-LA METTRIE IN VOLTAIRE'S CORRESPONDENCE

DISSECTING THE LATE LA METTRIE: POST-MORTEM DEPOSITIONS
-A LETTER FROM KING FREDERICK TO HIS SISTER WILHELMINE
-THE HALLER-MAUPERTUIS EXCHANGE
-A SYMPATHETIC LETTER FROM A FRIEND AT COURT
-DIDEROT ATTACKS LA METTRIE
-D'ARGENS "SACRIFICES" LA METTRIE

AN ANECDOTAL ATHEIST:
-AT EASE WITH THE KING
-A RIDICULOUS MATERIALIST IN THE COURT
-ANECDOTES FROM THE COURT