| Helvetius is an outstanding representative of the French enlightenment philosophy in the18th century, his philosophic thinking is enlightening with strong influence and inspiration. For a long time, people just interpret Helvetius’s thought on some particular aspect from the academic research viewpoint, and have rare research achievements that run his philosophic thought through and explained it. This situation has some relation to the overlook of Helvetius’s mind philosophy. And this can result two consequences:one is that the analysis to his philosophical thought is hardly go into his philosophical version, two is that it is hardly to impel his philosophical thought become a unit one.So this article is precisely based on this reason, hopes that on basis of the dialectical materialism and historical materialism, through a careful reading of the Helvetius’s original works and the existing related research results to refine and elaborate the Helvetius’s mind philosophy comprehensively and systematically, and make an objective evaluation, expect according to comb his mind philosophy, we can better hold Helvetius’s whole philosophic thinking, and also provide correlative theories for understanding the overall advancement of the French enlightening thought in the18th century.Helvetius’mind philosophy is mainly reflected in his philosophic work Essays on the mind, In this book, he stood on the position of materialistic sensualism to interpret the conception of mind comprehensively, and constructed a unique mind philosophy system. To this article, the unique feature of his mind philosophy is that he used the conception of mind to connect every logical part of his whole philosophic thought together, he defined the mind as the very faculty of thinking or the effect of faculty of thinking. Firstly, when the mind as the faculty of thinking, Helvetius proofed the importance of the materialistic sensualism, and pulled the sensationalism to the extreme, to established his theoretical position. Secondly, when the mind as the effect of the faculty of thinking, he explained people’s nature that pursue happy and avoid sad in the sensualism position, he thought that all of behaviour and thought are prompted by this kind of nature, interest principle is the highest principle, what people have done are to satisfied his own interest, and acquire happiness.Utilitarian ethical thought system is his final purpose. Further, when he was building his ethical system, he picked out the method that perfect mind—optimize the passions and perfect the education. He thought that only when people have perfect and sound mind and thought, they can have correct morals and values, then they can build perfect legal and political system, and only in that condition country can keep up for long, people can acquire true happiness.After combing Helvetius’s mind philosophy comprehensively, writer wants to analyze the criticize from Hume to Locke in the environment of philosophical history, in order to show the difficult of Helvetius’s philosophy. |
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