EAN: 9783319248189

SPRINGERBRIEFS IN PHILOSOPHY MATERIALISM A HI...

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 authorwant 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  Büchner  Bergson  J.J.C. Smart and D.M. Armstrong.

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