title: [The machine more than a machine or the automation transfigured. Julien Offray de la Mettrie's anthropology and the reinvention of the medical mechanism].
abstract: In this paper I take into account an image, or concept, that of 'machine', and more precisely one of its most problematic and controversial derivations, that of 'man-machine', which are at the basis of all the representations, and in particular medical representations, of the human action as a result of an 'automatism' as well as of man as an 'automaton'. More in detail, I try to analyse the theoretical framework, the rhetorical structure and the medical derivation of Julien Offray de la Mettrie's concept of the 'man-machine', and to cast light on a double phenomenon of semantic distortion and of individuation of new shades of meaning that the semantic field of the 'mechanical' underwent in La Mettrie's thought.
authors.affiliation: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Klassische Philologie, Unter den Linden 6, D-10099 Berlin. roberto.lo.presti@hu-berlin.de
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lo Presti
mesh_terms: D000883:Anthropology / Q000266:history*; D001332:Automatism / Q000266:history*; D005602:France; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D008328:Man-Machine Systems; D019222:Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical; D010684:Philosophy / Q000266:history*