Vital materialism and the problem of ethics in the Radical Enlightenment

From Hegel to Engels, Sartre and Ruyer (Ruyer, 1933), to name only a few, materialism is viewed as a necropolis, or the metaphysics befitting such an abode; many speak of matterU+2019s crudeness, bruteness, coldness or stupidity. Science or scientism, on this view, reduces the living world to U+2018dead matterU+2019, U+2018brutishU+2019, U+2018mechanical, lifeless matterU+2019, thereby also stripping it of its freedom (Crocker, 1959). Materialism is often wrongly presented as U+2018mechanistic materialismU+2019 U+2013 with U+2018Death of NatureU+2019 echoes of de-humanization and hostility to the Scientific Revolution (which knew nothing of materialism!), also a powerful Christian theme in Cudworth, Clarke and beyond (Overhoff, 2000). Here I challenge this view, building on some aspects of IsraelU+2019s Radical Enlightenment concept (Israel, 2001), which has been controversial but for my purposes is a useful claim about the dissemination of a home-grown Spinozism, sometimes reformulated as an ontology of the life sciences, an aspect Israel does not address (compare Secrétan et al., eds., 2007; Citton, 2006). First, I examine some U+2018momentsU+2019 of radical Enlightenment materialism such as La Mettrie and Diderot (including his Encyclopédie entry U+201CSpinosisteU+201D), but also anonymous, clandestine texts such as LU+2019Âme Matérielle, to emphasize their distinctive focus on the specific existence of organic beings. Second, I show how this U+2018embodiedU+2019, non-mechanistic character of Enlightenment U+2018vital materialismU+2019 makes it different from other episodes, and perhaps more of an ethics than is usually thought (also via the figure of the materialist as U+2018laughing philosopherU+2019). Third, I reflect on what this implies for our image of the Enlightenment U+2013 no longer a Frankfurt School and/or Foucaldian vision of U+2018disciplineU+2019, regimentation and order (as in Mayr, 1986) U+2013 but U+2018vitalU+2019, without, conversely, being a kind of holist vitalism U+201Cat odds with the universalizing discourse of Encyclopedist materialism, with its insistence on the uniformity of nature and the universality of physical lawsU+201D (Williams, 2003): vital materialism is still materialism. Its ethics tends towards hedonism, but its most radical proponents (Diderot, La Mettrie and later Sade) disagree as to what this means.

Publication year:2013