Winged men and the cast of dice: Anti-finalism and radical materialism in Guillaume Lamy

Abstract

The controversy over teleology raged in the early modern period with particular intensity. In this paper, I will show that Guillaume Lamy represents a “radical” current of antifi nalism, devoid of weakness, and far from compromise with his adversaries. This antifi nalism makes of Lamy not so much a sincere supporter of the unknowability of God’s ends, as scholars have maintained — in other words, a proto– fi deist — but rather a radical Lucretian materialist, whose aim is to openly distance himself equally from the partial Cartesian