La Mettrie Julien Ofra (La Mettrie Julien Offroy de)

(1709-1751)
Born in Saint-Malo December 25, 1709. He studied theology in Paris and seemed destined to become a priest yansenistskogo wing. However, a physician, practiced in Saint-Malo, awakened his interest in medicine and in 1733 La Mettrie went to study this science in Leiden to the famous Herman Boerhaave, whose works he later translated into French. Having achieved fame as a physician, surgeon, received a place in the regiment of the Royal Guard in Paris. Ill fever and watching during the illness of his own thoughts and feelings, he began studying the question of the relationship between mind and body and came to the conclusion that the soul - just a function of the heart and brain.
These ideas were published in his Natural History of the soul (Histoire naturelle de l 'me, 1745), and the author was attacked from both the church and by the doctors of the old school. The book was publicly burned. La Mettrie emigrated to Holland, where his materialism has become even more radical form. In the Labor Man-Machine (L'Homme machine, 1747), also burned to the ground, he argued that man is nothing more than organized matter how difficult. Those who think that the thinking presupposes the existence of incorporeal soul, not shown, that the body is incapable of thinking. Ideas arise only when the body receives impressions through the senses. The lower animals also have sensory organs, and man differs from animals only quantitatively - a greater degree of sensitivity and intelligence. The soul ceases to exist after the death of the body. Sensual pleasure is the goal of life, and in virtue, there can be no other reason than love of man to himself. Ethical La Mettrie's views were outlined in the work against the Seneca, or Discourse on Happiness (Anti-Senque, ou Discours sur bonheur, 1748). Posthumously published work The system of Epicurus (Systme d'Epicure, 1751) also included these ideas. The perturbation caused by the heterodox ideas La Mettrie, led to what he had to leave Leiden. In 1748 he obtained a position at the court narrator Frederick II in Berlin and became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. La Mettrie died in Berlin on November 11, 1751.