Gustavo Adrián Ratto

Adrián Ratto obtained his doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires in 2013. Since this year, he has been teaching at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2016, Adrián became a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). He has carried out research in Spain, Germany and France. He is particularly interested in the philosophy of history and eighteenth-century materialism. He is currently a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Buenos Aires and at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, and is conducting research projects on the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

The project

Title: "Forms of Writing and Strategies for Disseminating Materialism in the Work of Julien Offray de La Mettrie"

Since the 18th century up to the present day, La Mettrie’s work has been interpreted, with a few exceptions, as that of a pessimistic, cynical, and elitist author, detached from social interests and the encyclopedic project.  The expected results of the project should allow for a reassessment of this image. The aim is to demonstrate that there are strategies in La Mettrie’s writings, particularly in the Discours préliminaire, aimed at disseminating materialism and contributing to a reform of society. Furthermore, the project seeks to deepen the studies on an author about whom there are still many gaps. Finally, more generally, the goal is to contribute to the discussion on the historiography of the Enlightenment, a field that has recently attracted the attention of specialists.

Host institution : Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités (IHRIM), Lyon

Selective Bibliography

• Condorcet, Almanaque anti‒supersticioso, étude préliminaire, traduction et notes d’Adrián Ratto, Pamplona, Editorial Laetoli, coll. « Los ilustrados ». To be published.
• Las Críticas de Voltaire a Rousseau en el Rescrit de l’Empereur de la Chine, Endoxa. Serie filosófica. To be published.
• Leandro Guerrero, Adrián Ratto, Manuel Tizziani et Natalia Zorrilla (éds.), Materialismo, hedonismo y ateísmo. Nuevas discusiones sobre la filosofía de la Ilustración, Santa Fe, Ediciones UNL, 2024.
• Condorcet, Los progresos del espíritu humano, étude préliminaire, traduction et notes d’Adrián Ratto, Pamplona, Editorial Laetoli, coll. « Los ilustrados », 2024.
• Voltaire lector de Castel de Saint‒Pierre, Contrastes. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 2023, vol. 28, nº1, pp. 23‒39.