Géraud de Cordemoy: biography of this French philosopher

Géraud de Cordemoy is considered one of the most important Cartesian philosophers. after the death of Rene Descartes, although he quite disagrees with the Cartesian philosophy itself.

He was the only Cartesian philosopher to embrace atomistic ideas, in addition to discussing occasionalism. Let's take a closer look at his life and his work through a biography of Géraud de Cordemoy in summary format.

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Brief biography of Géraud de Cordemoy

Geraud de Cordemoy He was born in Paris on October 6, 1625, the son of a professor at the University of Paris.. He was the third of four children, the only son of the brothers. Apart from the fact that his father died when he was 9 years old, little else is known about his childhood.

In his youth, he married Marie de Chazelles, although the exact date of the nuptials is not known. Five children arose from this marriage.

Geraud de Cordemoy he earned his living working as a lawyer, but this did not prevent him from rubbing shoulders very actively with Parisian philosophical circles

. He also practiced as a linguist and private tutor, and was chosen as a member of the French Academy. In the salons where he conversed about philosophy, he maintained contact with Emmanuel Maignan and Jacques Rohault, and had the privilege of being the tutor of the Dauphin of France, Louis, son of King Louis XIV.

Shortly after his 58th birthday, Géraud de cordemoy died of a sudden illness, dying on October 15, 1684.

Main works

Cordemoy's trial Discours de l'action des corps was published in 1664 together with a speech by his friend Rohault in a posthumous publication of Descartes the world, by Claude Clerselier.

That essay, along with Le Discernement du corps et de l’âme en six discours pour servir à l’éclaircissement de la physique, would be Cordemoy's most important work. In this work he presents his thoughts on atomism, his arguments for occasionalism and his distinction between mind and body, and how these two elements would interact with each other according to his conception dualist of the human being

Another important work by Géraud de Cordemoy is Discours physique de la parole, which appeared in 1668, together with Copie d'une lettre écrite à un sçavant religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus. This letter is about an attempt to reconcile with Descartes' philosophy using the creation story as background, taken from the book of Genesis.

With these works, Cordemoy would become one of the most important French philosophers of his time.

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Atomism

In his first speech, Cordemoy he talks about how “bodies”, that is, what would be equivalent to our idea of ​​atom, remain on earth according to his own vision of physics.

He considers that "bodies" have (1) a limit in their extension, which gives them shape and calls "figure"; (2) bodies are one substance, and cannot be divided into other smaller bodies, nor can one body pass through another; (3) the relationship that the body has with other bodies is called “place”; (5) a change to another place is called a move; and (5) when the relationship remains without being moved or given any force, the body is at rest.

Cordemoy explains that matter is clearly understood as a set of bodies; bodies are part of matter. When these stay very close to each other, they are a cluster; if they change position incessantly, they are a fluid; and if they cannot be separated from each other, they are a mass.

Cordemoy was not in favor of the idea that reality could be made up of two substances, something that Descartes did believe. For the more traditional Cartesians, there were two different things, bodies and matter. For Cordemoy only the bodies were the true extended substance, while matter was the set of bodies.

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Occasionalism

Cordemoy was one of the first to see that Cartesian physics led to occasionalism., a philosophical view that holds that God is the only true and active cause in the world. This is expounded in his fourth Discourse, in which he presents the idea that bodies do not have movement by themselves, since they continue to be bodies when they are in motion. They do not change into something momentary that has the property of motion so that, in a state of rest, they become bodies again.

That is why, since bodies do not have movement by themselves nor do they generate it, the one that first should have given the original movement should not have been a body. Within Cordemoy's philosophy, there are only two types of substances, those that are bodies and those that are minds, so the first to give the body was a mind.

But the mind, at least the human mind, does not have an infinite capacity to generate movement. You cannot initiate any movement. For example, we cannot make our liver cells stop reproducing, nor can we make our body stop aging through our thinking. It is based on this that Cordemoy concludes that the only thing that could initiate a primitive movement is God, with an infinite mind in terms of its ability to influence bodies.

language and speech

In his philosophy, Géraud de Cordemoy he asks himself how he can be sure that others can think. It is clear that each one is aware that he is thinking, but there is no way to enter the minds of others and know if they are also thinking or not. It is then that he states that this is observable through language.

Other human beings cannot be automatons devoid of the ability to think since, through language, a sophisticated communication system, are able to share their inner world creatively. This creativity that characterizes human language cannot be explained by means of principles mechanical, which would be applicable to an automaton without a soul, a gear or any type of machine.

Cordemoy distinguishes between the actual use of language and the act of simply making sounds. Language supposes the ability to be able to emit, through sound, signals of one's own thought, that is, it is to be able to inform about what we have in our heads.

In order for any speech to be issued, Cordemoy raises the need for two requirements to be met. The first is the physical act of emitting any sound, that is, having a voice, something that comes from the body, and the other is having the ability to think, which can only come from the soul.