Géraud de Cordemoy: biography of this French philosopher

Géraud de Cordemoy was one of the French intellectuals of the 17th century.

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

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

• Related article, "How are Psychology and Philosophy similar?"

Brief biography of Géraud de Cordemoy.

Géraud de Cordemoy 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 male of the brothers. Beyond 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 were born of this marriage.

Géraud de Cordemoy earned his living by working as a lawyer, but this did not prevent him from being very active in 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 discussed philosophy he kept in touch 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 essay Discourse on the Action of the Body was published in 1664 together with a discourse by his friend Rohault in a posthumous publication by Descartes Le Mondeby Claude Clerselier.

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

Another important work of Géraud de Cordemoy is Discours physique de la parolewhich 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 himself with Descartes' philosophy by using the using the story of creation as a background, taken from the book of Genesis.

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

Atomism

In his first speech, Cordemoy talks about how "bodies," i.e., what would be equivalent to our idea of atom, remain grounded according to his own view of physics.

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

Cordemoy explains that matter is clearly understood as an aggregate of bodies; bodies are part of matter. When these remain close together, they are a heap; 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 believed. For the more traditional Cartesians, there were two distinct things, bodies and matter. For Cordemoy only bodies were the real extended substance, while matter was the whole of bodies.

Occasionalism

Cordemoy was one of the first to see that Cartesian physics was leading to occasionalisma philosophical view that holds that God is the only true and active cause in the world. He expounds this in his fourth Discourse, in which he presents the idea that bodies do not have motion 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 neither have motion by themselves nor generate it, the one that must have first given the original motion must not have been a body. Within Cordemoy's philosophy, there are only two kinds of substances, those that are bodies and that which is mind, 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 motion.. It cannot initiate any movement. For example, we cannot make our liver cells stop reproducing, nor can we, through our thinking, make our body stop aging. It is on this basis that Cordemoy concludes that the only thing that could initiate a primordial movement is God, with a mind infinite in its ability to influence bodies.

Language and speech

In his philosophy, Géraud de Cordemoy raises the question of how he can be sure that others are able to think. It is clear that everyone is aware that he is thinking, but there is no way to enter the minds of others and know whether they are also thinking or not. It is then that he proposes that this is observable by means of language.

Other human beings cannot be automatons devoid of the ability to think since, by means of language, a sophisticated communication system, are able to share their inner world in a creative way.. This creativity that characterizes human language cannot be explained by means of mechanical principles, which would be applicable to a soulless automaton, a gear or any kind of machine.

Cordemoy distinguishes between the actual use of language and the act of simply uttering sounds. Language implies the capacity to be able to emit, by means of sound, signals of one's own thought, that is, to be able to report what we have in our head.

In order to be able to emit speech, Cordemoy states that two requirements must be met. The first is the physical act of emitting any sound, that is, to have a voice, something that comes from the body, and the other is to have the capacity for thought, which can only come from the soul.