Géraud de Cordemoy

Géraud de Cordemoy (1626 to 1684) was a Parisian lawyer and one of the more important Cartesian philosophers of the decades after Descartes died. Though in many respects an orthodox Cartesian, he was the only Cartesian to embrace atomism, accepting indivisible atoms and empty space, and one of the first to argue for occasionalism. His Le Discernement du corps et de l'âme of 1666 defends atomism, mechanism, occasionalism and dualism, and his Discours physique de la parole of 1668 is a study of the nature of speech that made his name in Paris and is said to have inspired the philosophy master in Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. He was also tutor to the Dauphin, a member of the Académie française and a historian of France.