Man a Machine by Julien Offray de La Mettrie (gutenberg.org)
excerpt
MAN A MACHINE BY Julien Offray de la Mettrie INCLUDING FREDERICK THE GREAT’S “EULOGY” ON LA METTRIE AND EXTRACTS FROM LA METTRIE’S “THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SOUL”
Man a Machine (Wikipedia)Man a Machine (French: L’homme machine) is a work of materialist philosophy by the 18th-century French physician and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie, first published in 1747. In this work, de La Mettrie extends Descartes’ argument that animals are mere automatons, or machines, to human beings. He denies dualism and the existence of the soul as a substance separate from matter.