Sensi, corpi e passioni nei Philosophes. Boulanger, Diderot

The work of the Eighteenth-century Philosophes played a crucial role in developing the MBP after Descartes. In N.-A. Boulanger first and in D. Diderot later, a form of biological materialism is affirmed concerning the phenomena of mind and spirit, which assigns unquestionable primacy to the body and the various phenomena of the sensibility of matter. In anthropology, the “minor” philosopher Boulanger, an early thinker, opens up the historical perspective of humanity’s progress and a secular view of the phenomena of ancient “oriental” religions. The Philosophe Diderot, director of the great enterprise of the Encyclopédie, elaborates in the "Eléments de physiologie", an original doctrine of organic memory, considered the basis of the different phenomena of the mind/brain. A materialism of the mind and an organicistic vitalism drew new horizons on integrating bodily and mental phenomena. Finally, different historical “models” of corporality are proposed, from the ancient to the Renaissance vision, and to the current bio-informatic one, in the context of which the transition from the body-machine (Descartes) to the bio-energetic body (Diderot) plays a central role.