Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval explained

André Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (16 February 1716 – 2 September 1764) was a French mathematician and philosopher.

Biography

He was born in Charenton-le-Pont on 16 February 1716.^[1]

In 1744, he was forced to flee France to Switzerland due to his criticism of Catholic doctrines,^{[2] [3]} accompanied by his student Marie Anne Victoire Pigeon; on 30 June 1746, they married.^[4] Prémontval had been raised Roman Catholic, but had spent some time as an atheist and then deist; in Switzerland, Prémontval and his wife converted to Protestantism.^[5]

Later they moved to Berlin, where he was admitted to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences.^[6]

Philosophical work

Prémontval criticised the empiricist theory of the self, arguing that there is a real distinction between an individual's personality and soul that is often ignored, and that our possession of the later is our justification for our interest in the former.^[7]

Prémontval’s hypothesis termed "psychocracy" proposed that there is real interaction between the body and soul, but it is an immaterial kind of influence as opposed to a physical kind.^[8]

Selected publications

• Cause bizarre ou Pièces d'un procès ecclésiastico-civil, 1755. (Scanned copy at Google Books)
• Le Diogène de D'Alembert on Pensées libres sur l'Homme, 1755. (Scanned copy at Google Books)
• Discours sur diverses notions préliminaires à l'étude des mathématiques [Discourse on diverse notions preliminary to the study of mathematics], 1743. (Scanned copy at Google Books)
• Discours sur la nature des quantités que les mathématiques ont pour objet, 1742. (Scanned copy at Google Books)
• Discours sur la qualité du nombre, 1743.
• Discours sur l'utilité des mathématiques, 1742.
• L'esprit de Fontenelle on Recueil de pensées tirées de ses ouvrages, 1744, 1755, 1767.
• Le hasard sous l'empire de la Providence, 1754.
• Lettres contre le dogme de l'eucharistie tel qu'il est enseigné par l'Église romaine adressées en 1735 au fameux P. Tournemine jésuite.
• Mémoires, 1749.
• La monogamie ou L'unité dans le mariage, 1751. (Google Books Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3; German translation by Windheim, 1753: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3)
• Panagiana Panurglca ou Le faux évangélîste, 1750.
• Pensées sur la liberté, 1750.
• Préservatifs contre la corruption de la langue française en Allemagne, 1761.
• Vues philosophiques ou Protestations et déclarations sur les principaux objets des connaissances humaines, 1757, 1761.

Notes and References

1. Lifschitz, AS; (2009) "Prémontval, André Pierre le Guay". In: Stammerjohann, H, (ed.) Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics. (pp. 1209-1211). Max Niemeyer Verlag: Tübingen.
2. Book: Louisa Shea. The Cynic Enlightenment: Diogenes in the Salon. 2010. JHU Press. 978-0-8018-9385-8. 39.
3. Book: Avi Lifschitz. Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century. 28 September 2012. OUP Oxford. 978-0-19-163775-9. 145.
4. Book: Lloyd Strickland. Lloyd Strickland. The Philosophical Writings of Prémontval. 28 March 2018. Lexington Books. 978-1-4985-6357-4. xv.
5. Book: Strickland, Lloyd. Proofs of God in Early Modern Europe: An Anthology. Lloyd Strickland. Baylor University Press. 2018. 978-1-4813-0931-8. Waco, Texas. xiv. ...André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval, who was, by his own admission, an atheist for a time in his youth before becoming a deist and then converting to an unspecified form of Protestantism at the age of thirty..
6. Book: Julia Gasper. The Marquis d'Argens: A Philosophical Life. 11 December 2013. Lexington Books. 978-0-7391-8234-5. 228.
7. Book: R. R. Palmer. Catholics and Unbelievers in 18th Century France. 8 December 2015. Princeton University Press. 978-1-4008-7686-0. 149.
8. Strickland, Lloyd. 2018. The "Fourth Hypothesis" on the Early Modern Mind-Body Problem. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy. 5. 25. 665-685. 10.3998/ergo.12405314.0005.025.