Cabanis: The Classic of Vulgar Materialism?

The article is devoted to the analysis of theoretical heritage of Cabanis, who, according to many interpreters, was the foremost representative of vulgar materialism in the French philosophical tradition. The phenomenon of vulgar materialism is often seen by historians of ideas as the evidence of the spiritual degradation of the era, the proof of its creative exhaustion. Such a scheme allowed to speak about the decline of French philosophy at the turn of 18th and 19th centuries, about the weakening of a critical element in the culture and the predominance of straight-dogmatic. The article proves that the existence of vulgar materialism in the final stage of Enlightenment in France is problematic and can be questioned. The philosophy of the Directory and the Consulate is not reduced to the simplified version of prior doctrines. It has certain characteristics and the key to understanding of them is in many respects the philosophy of Cabanis. The article shows that in his final work Cabanis defended the ideas that are incompatible with the position of vulgar materialism. The author gives arguments that allow us to speak about the absence of a sharp discontinuity in his views, about the possibility to interpret his work without relying on the idea of changing of ideological positions. Cabanis’ philosophy includes the attitudes, typical for the Age of Enlightenment in general: a critique of despotism, the desire to disprove prejudices, the call to contribute to the happiness of the human race by eliminating all injustices. The statements about the relationship of medicine and ethics, moral as the manifestation of physical bear on them-selves the imprint of the influence of materialistic ideas. But the concept of the supreme cause, specific interpretation of the problem of religion, the thesis of the impossibility of metaphysics give Cabanis’ doctrine a unique identity, allowing to consider his legacy as a source of inspiration for the supporters of the opposite trends in subsequent philosophy: positivistic and spiritualistic.

Кабанис, школа «идеологов», философия Просвещения, метафизика, пантеизм, французская философия, Cabanis, the school of “ideologists”, philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, metaphysics, pantheism, French philosophy

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