Materialism As Critique in the French Enlightenment By Blanca

Materialism As Critique in the French Enlightenment
By
Blanca María Missé
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
French with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory
in the Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley
Committee in charge:
Professor Déborah Blocker, Chair
Professor Susan Maslan
Professor Robert Kaufmann
Fall 2014

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Abstract
Early Modern French “Materialism”: A Materialist History of the Concept and a Study of
Two Materialist Philosophies (La Mettrie and Diderot)
by
Blanca Maria Missé
Doctor of Philosophy in French with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory
University of California Berkeley
Professor Déborah Blocker, Chair.
This dissertation is a study of the materialist current of the French Enlightenment.
Far from assuming that early modern materialism constituted a homogenous
philosophical current, my dissertation applies the materialist method of critique to the
category of “materialism” itself. I argue that “Materialism” was invented in the 18th
century, and it had little to do with the simple affirmation of the primacy of matter or the
reductionist “one –substance monism”, as its detractors at the time wanted the public to
believe. I show that the adjective “materialist” was coined in the context of a social
transformation of philosophy (a social reconfiguration of philosophical activity with the
rise of the bourgeois public sphere) and in the midst of an ideological crisis of French
absolutism. I argue that religious and political authorities labeled a set of public
philosophical interventions that advocated for a new conception of public philosophy, an
experimental and critical one, as “materialists”. Most of the thinkers which were labeled
as materialists (Julien Offray La Mettrie, Denis Diderot, Claude-Hadrien Helvetius, Paul
Henry Thiry D’Holbach) borrowed from the emerging field of modern science a critical
method of inquiry, yet, what distinguished them particularly was that they extended this
critique to moral values, metaphysical concepts and the political institutions of the
regime. They also shared a commitment to an intellectual political independence from the
State and to the development of the critical function of philosophy in an expanded public
sphere. It was for this reason that materialism was considered morally and politically
“dangerous” as a philosophy, one that needed to be repressed and persecuted. By the
early 19th Century with the re-institutionalization of philosophy by the Empire
materialism as a public philosophical critique was dead.
After 1758 the debate around materialism polarized the Enlightenment movement
itself. Some of the key figures of the Enlightenment, like Voltaire, Jean e Rond
D’Alembert or Nicolas Condorcet, which had secured for them a place in the French
academy, began to distance themselves from the materialist figures and from their public
positions, by defending publicly the benefits of an “enlightened monarchy” and a
necessary metaphysical base for science, philosophy and morality.
In my dissertation I argue that the “radical” and “political” dimension of La

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Mettrie’s and Diderot’s philosophy is not to be found in the proposal of a positive
program of reform. From the perpective of Critical Theory, I argue with Habermas and
Adorno that 18th century Materialism was rather an exploration of the new public status
of philosophy and the philosophical means to achieve a popular enlightenment. Besides
being the first advocates for a public education system open to all and targeted to a
diversity of social needs, French materialists reflected on the form philosophical texts
should produce. Philosophical form, for La Mettrie and Diderot had to necessarily appeal
not only to reason but also to imagination, using fiction, and requesting from the reader
an active and open interpretation in order to “enlighten” him or her in a non-deterministic
way.

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Dedication
To Andreu Missé, my first reader and everlasting fan