André Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval was a French mathematician and philosopher. He was born in Charenton-le-Pont on 16 February 1716 and died in Berlin on 2 September 1764. [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]
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]
...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.
André Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval was a French mathematician and philosopher. He was born in Charenton-le-Pont on 16 February 1716 and died in Berlin on 2 September 1764. [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]
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]
...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.