Also known as “mechanical materialism”. The materialist philosophy in the history of Western philosophy developed during the 16th-18th century following the ancient naïve materialism. It was appropriate to the needs of development of capitalism in its early stage, and appeared along with the emergence of modern natural science; it was the world outlook and methodology of the bourgeoisie in its rising period, the ideological-theoretical weapon of the bourgeoisie against feudalism and religious theology. The main representatives were the 17th-century British philosophers Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza and the 18th-century French philosophers La Mettrie, Helvetius, Diderot, d’Holbach and others. . .
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