Abstract: This article examines the differing status of atheism in some of La Mettrie’s work. Considered from the perspective of a “system of values,” atheism is not so much a thesis as a point of view external to ideology. At other times, it describes the possibility of a social world without God, which would maintain itself as well as any other, and perhaps also that of politics without God. Finally, it unambiguously sets out a philosophy of the living body as beginning and end.
