Programme

Claude-Adrien Helvétius is widely regarded as a primary proponent of the 'radical Enlightenment'. His magnum opus, De l'esprit, was a bestseller that was written and rewritten over many years and the subject of several pirated editions. From Hume to Sade, from Beccaria to Kant, no philosopher was without a copy. Despite Helvétius's attempts in "De l'esprit" to mask the most contentious elements of his philosophy behind a veil of moderation, the radical nature of his project was immediately apparent. The events surrounding its publication, censorship and retraction caused such a scandal that he resolved never to publish anything else and to settle his philosophical accounts in a monumental posthumous work, De l'homme. The repercussions of the echo were such that its refutation involved not only authors known only to specialists, but also leading thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. The course will proceed with a reading of De l'esprit (in an unpublished translation), examining how Helvétius does not merely reduce the mind to the body by reducing reflection and judgement to physical sensation, but, in line with the materialism of this reduction, he constructs a psychology centred entirely on self-love understood as the pursuit of pleasure and escape from pain, and a utilitarian ethic that equates virtue with the pursuit of the interest of the ‘greater number’, identifying republican or democratic institutions as the only ones capable of promoting this interest, criticising religious asceticism as a disguised expression of a despotic desire for power.

Core Documentation

Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De L'Espirit: Or Essays on the Mind and Its Several Faculties (any complete edition).

Attendance

Not required

Type of evaluation

The exam begins with the student presenting a topic of their choice. It will continue with questions designed to test their knowledge and understanding of the text based on this presentation. It may include reading and commenting on individual passages from 'Of Mind'.