Cordemoy, Géraud de (1626–84)

Géraud de Cordemoy was, by profession, first a lawyer, then a tutor to the Grand Dauphin, first son of Louis XIV. But he was also one of the more important Cartesian philosophers in seventeenth-century France. In Le discernement du corps et de l’ame, Cordemoy defended a strict dualist and mechanist philosophy. But his Cartesianism was unorthodox, since he introduced indivisible atoms into his natural philosophy and was one of the first to argue for occasionalism, the doctrine that God alone is a true causal agent. He also wrote an important work on the nature and origins of speech and language, Le discours physique de la parole.