Géraud De Cordemoy: Biography Of This French Philosopher
Géraud de Cordemoy is considered one of the most important Cartesian philosophers after the death of René Descartes, although he disagrees quite a bit with Cartesian philosophy itself.
He was the only Cartesian philosopher to embrace atomistic ideas, in addition to discussing occasionalism. Let’s look a little more in depth at his life and his work through a biography of Géraud de Cordemoy in summary format.
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 boy 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 arose from this marriage.
Geraud de Cordemoy He made his living working as a lawyer, but this did not prevent him from rubbing shoulders very actively with Parisian philosophical circles He also served as a linguist and private tutor, and was elected 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 tutoring the Dauphin of France, Louis, son of King Louis XIV.
Shortly after turning 58, Géraud de Cordemoy died due to a sudden illness, dying on October 15, 1684.
Main works
Cordemoy’s essay Discours de l’action des corps It was published in 1664 together with a speech by his friend Rohault in a posthumous publication of Descartes Le Mondeby Claude Clerselier.
That essay, together with Le Discernement du corps et de l’âme en six discours pour serve à l’éclaircissement de la physique, would be Cordemoy’s most important work. In this work 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 dualistic conception of the human being.
Another important work by Géraud de Cordemoy is Discours physique de la parolewhich appeared in 1668, along with Copy a letter written to a religious saint of the Compagnie de Jésus. This letter is about an attempt to reconcile with the philosophy of Descartes 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 in France of his time.
Atomism
In his first speech, Cordemoy talks about how “bodies”, that is, what would be equivalent to our idea of an atom, remain grounded according to their own vision of physics
Consider that “bodies” have (1) a limit to 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 movement; and (5) when the relationship remains without being moved or given any strength, the body is at rest.
Cordemoy explains that matter is clearly understood as a set of bodies; bodies are part of matter When these remain 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 a supporter of the idea that reality could be made up of two substances, something that Descartes did believe. For the most traditional Cartesians, there were two different things, bodies and matter. For Cordemoy, only bodies were the true extended substance, while matter was the set of bodies.
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. He sets this out in his fourth Discourse, in which he presents the idea that bodies do not have motion of their own, since they continue to be bodies when they are in motion. They do not change into something momentary that has the property of movement so that, in a state of rest, they become bodies again.
That is why, given that bodies do not have movement on their own nor do they generate it, the one that must have given the original movement first 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 can’t start just any movement. For example, we cannot stop our liver cells from reproducing, nor can we stop, through our thinking, our body from aging. It is based on this that Cordemoy reaches the conclusion that the only thing that could initiate a primordial movement is God, with an infinite mind in terms of its ability to influence bodies.
In his philosophy, Géraud de Cordemoy The question arises as to how you 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 when he states that this is observable through language.
Other human beings cannot be automatons lacking the ability to think since, through language, a sophisticated communication system, They are able to share their inner world creatively This creativity that characterizes human language cannot be explained through mechanical principles, which would be applicable to a soulless automaton, a gear or any type of machine.
Cordemoy distinguishes between the true use of language and the act of simply making sounds. Language involves the ability to emit, through sound, signals of one’s own thoughts, that is, being able to report on what we have in our heads.
In order for any speech to be issued, Cordemoy proposes the need for two requirements to be met. The first is the physical act of making a sound, that is, having a voice, something that comes from the body, and the other is having the capacity for thought, which can only come from the soul.
