МАТЕРИАЛИЗМ ФРАНЦУЗСКИЙ 18 ВЕКА

Materialism, French 18th Century

An ideological movement representing a new and higher stage in the development of materialist thought on a national, and also a world scale as compared with 17th century materialism. In contrast to English 17th century materialism, which largely reflected a compromise between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, French Materialism was the outlook of the progressive French bourgeoisie; their doctrine aimed to enlighten and arm ideologically a broad section of society—the bourgeoisie, artisans, bourgeois intellectuals, and the progressive part of the aristocratic intelligentsia.

The leading French materialists—La Mettrie, Helvetius, Diderot, and Holbach—expounded their philosophical views not in Latin treatises but in widely accessible publications written in French—dictionaries, encyclopaedias, pamphlets, polemic articles, and so on.

The ideological sources of French Materialism were the national materialist tradition represented in the 17th century by Gassendi and mainly by the mechanistic materialism of Descartes and English materialism. Of particular importance were the doctrine of Locke on experience as a source of knowledge, criticism of the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas, and also an understanding of experience as such, which was materialist on the whole. Locke's pedagogical and political ideas exerted no less influence. He held that the perfection of the individual is determined by education and the political structure of society. But French Materialism did not simply assimilate Locke's theory of materialist sensualism and empiricism but discarded vacillations towards Cartesian rationalism.

Medicine, physiology, and biology, side by side with mechanics, which retained its leading significance, became the scientific basis for the French materialists. Because of this, the doctrines of the French materialists contained many new ideas as compared with 17th century materialism. Elements of dialectics in Diderot's teaching on nature were the most important of them.

The ethical and socio-political theories of French Materialism were highly original. Developing the ideas of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke in this sphere, French Materialism largely cleared their ethical doctrines and their socio-political views from their abstract, naturalist limitations: in contrast to Hobbes, who deduced man's striving for self-preservation from an analogy with the mechanical inertia of a physical body, Helvetius and Holbach regarded this "interest" as a specifically human motive of behaviour.

French Materialism rejected the compromise forms of pantheism and deism and openly preached atheism based on the conclusions of the natural and social sciences. The French materialists' lucid and witty criticism of religion was highly assessed by Lenin, who advised the use of specimens of this criticism in contemporary atheistic propaganda.

A concise and meaningful essay of the history of French Materialism was given by Marx in The Holy Family. In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism Lenin showed how great was the role of French Materialism in elaborating philosophical principles for any materialism. He also demonstrated its theoretical limitations, its metaphysical nature and idealism in explaining phenomena of social development.