L'homme machine

About “L'homme machine”

Man a Machine is a 1748 work of materialist philosophy by the French physician and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie. In this book, La Mettrie argues that humans are like machines, extending René Descartes' idea that animals operate as automatons. He rejects the notion of the soul as a separate substance from the body, asserting that human behavior and thought result from physical processes. The work challenges traditional views on the mind and body, proposing a strictly materialist explanation of human existence.