La Mettrie’s materialist and monistic philosophy is that of a military
doctor, knowing what dysentery did to his own mind, watching his regiment
destroyed at Fontenoy, running French field hospitals in Flanders. He learned
brain science in the injuries of his fellows. He knew pain and that man’s main
positive drive was sex. He despised the prudish hypocrisies of feeble materialists
like Diderot and Voltaire. His brutal military life and his hedonism made
him the most coherent monist against Cartesian dualism. His study of vertigo is
sound clinical medicine, which well accords with one trend in today’s medical
practice.