This book provides an overview of key features of (philosophical)
materialism, in historical perspective. It is, thus, a study in the
history and philosophy of materialism, with a particular focus on
the early modern and Enlightenment periods, leading into the 19th
and 20th centuries. For it was in the 18th century that the word
was first used by a philosopher (La Mettrie) to refer to himself.
Prior to that, 'materialism' was a pejorative term, used for wicked
thinkers, as a near-synonym to 'atheist', 'Spinozist' or the
delightful 'Hobbist'. The book provides the different forms of
materialism, particularly distinguished into claims about the
material nature of the world and about the material nature of the
mind, and then focus on materialist approaches to body and
embodiment, selfhood, ethics, laws of nature, reductionism and
determinism, and overall, its relationship to science. For
materialism is often understood as a kind of philosophical
facilitator of the sciences, and the author want to suggest that is
not always the case. Materialism takes on different forms and
guises in different historical, ideological and scientific contexts
as well, and the author wants to do justice to that diversity.
Figures discussed include Lucretius, Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza,
Toland, Collins, La Mettrie, Diderot, d'Holbach and Priestley;
Buchner, Bergson, J.J.C. Smart and D.M. Armstrong.
General
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