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 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 1 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. 2 Dedication To Andreu Missé, my first reader and everlasting fan i Table of Contents: Abstract 1 Introduction iv Chapter 1: The Emergence of “Materialism” and the Crisis of Philosophy in 1 Early Modern France Chapter 2: Materialism and Anti-Materialism in the Emerging Public Sphere 56 Chapter 3: What is “Materialism” and Where it Comes From? The Genealogy 103 of a Contested Category Chapter 4: La Mettrie, in a Materialist Way 159 Chapter 5: Diderot: From Public Critique to a Materialist Expression 254 Bibliography 300 Appendices 337 ii Acknowledgements The main person I ought to “acknowledge”, or rather very sincerely thank, is my dear friend and life partner Natalia Brizuela, as she has been my main supporter, interlocutor, coach, encourager, assistant, nurturer, and fellow traveler through a long projet I thought many times of abandoning and never really thought I could finish. Without her presence in my life, I would have very likely dropped out of grad school and would be living under a bridge. In fact, she even made this process “cool”. I also want to acknowledge Prof. Blocker, my advisor, who was kind enough to accept to advise such an unadvisable student as myself, with all the constraints of time and distance, and encouraged me to continue until the end, as well as Prof. Kaufman and Prof. Maslan for the enlightening conversations I had with both of them and Prof. McLaughlin who inspired me to write the first chapter of my dissertation. Finally there are a set of friends and thinkers, whose material and virtual presence around me during my last years of graduate education in Berkeley and dissertation writing in Buenos Aires have contained and stimulated me intellectually to write and finish. Each one in their own explicit or subtle way have made this experience a pleasurable one, as they always seemed interested in my work and their own intellectual or artistic production implicitly informed mine, as a sort of background music. When writing, I always thought of them as “potential” readers of my work, in particular Rob, Ann, Francine or Michèle. I will mention them alphabetically, as there is no way to “rank” your friends and interlocutors: Adriana Amante, Sébastien Antoine, Sandra Antunes, Vilma Areas, Joao-Ricardo Ayala, Alvaro Bianchi, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Jean-Luc Chappey, Nathalie Chouchan, Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Églantine Colon, Lena Esquenazi, Armelle Flambard, Katy Fox-Hodes, Nick Kardahji, Rob Kaufman, Michelle Koerner, Silvana Lacarra, Josie López, Canela Llecha-Llop, Francine Markovits, Miguel Missé, David Oubiña, David Rafoni, Nuno Ramos, Alicia Sagra, Carmen Sánchez, Alexandra Saum-Pascual, Matthew B. Smith, Ann Smock, Bill Smock, Olga Sylvia, Cate Talley, Travis Wilds. iii Introduction The French Suicide A couple of weeks ago, while presenting his most recent book, Le Suicide français on the popular prime-time public TV show On n’est pas couché, Eric Zemmour repeatedly, through statements like “tout était social, rien n’était naturel, que tout pouvait être déconstruit, et re-construit, et qu’il n’y avait rien d’inné, d’intangible”, argued that deconstruction and materialism had brought about the decay of all French cultural and political life since 1968.1 During the course of the debate, some interlocutors argued that the causes of the French people’s growing “unhappiness” and turn to far-right wing narratives were linked to the effects of the current economic crisis and their actual material situation. Ruquier, the show’s MC, confronted Zemmour stating that: “si la majorité des Français avait de quoi se nourrir comme il fallait, d’être heureux dans leur vie, si les conditions économiques leur avaient été données, alors ils ne chercheraient pas de boucs-émissaires comme vous essayez de leur faire croire.” 2 Zemmour responded: “ça c’est un matérialisme limité, moi je pense qu’il y a autre chose que le matériel, il y a l’esprit et l’identité,” and later in the debate he complained about the actual astate of French society: “nous ne sommes plus que des atomes qui ne pensons qu’à consommer, nous ne sommes plus des membres de famille etc.”3 For Zemmour, La Mettrie, Diderot, Sade, Fourier, Marx, Deleuze, Foucault, Bourdieu, Butler or Rancière all represent a pulsion to destroy what remains of a social link and a collective “ideal.” Their thought, supposedly, eliminates everything that differentiates humans from apes, as human existence ought to be more than the sum or combination of material interests, desires, and appetites. We can imagine what Zemmour meant when he attacked deconstruction, and, although it's not something that I'll dwell on here, it's symptomatic that for him deconstructive thought is today’s materialism. I want to pay attention to his conflation of these despairingly different and far removed philosophical methods because it reveals both the social-political continuity of a recurring metaphysical anxiety in bourgeois society and a discontinuity of the materialist tradition. What I am interested in is pointing out that Zemmour’s critique of “materialism” is uncannily similar to the critique the Catholic Church had of a number of 18th-century philosophers that it called “materialist” as a way of dismissing their propositions. Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrian Helvetius and the Baron D’Hollbach were called “materialist” because they questioned the existence of God, because they challenged moral values as “natural”, and because they criticized the legitimacy of the Absolutist French political regime: this made them, in the eyes of the most powerful institution at the time, “materialist”. As a critic of the Enlightenment, and specifically of materialism, I can't help but smile at the effet de montage between Zemmour’s tyrade and that of the French Catholic 1 On n’est pas couché, France 2. 4 October 2014. Television. 2 On n’est pas couché, France 2. 4 October 2014. Television. 3 On n’est pas couché, France 2. 4 October 2014. Television. iv clergy's fearful declaration in 1758 in the face of a rising “materialist philosophy”: “Une religion sans culte, des passions sans frein, une société sans moeurs, des lois sans autorité, plus inventées pour intimider le crime que pour inspirer la vertu; le crime même dépouillé de tout ce qui en doit donner l’horreur.