Louis de la Forge and the Development of Cartesian Medical Philosophy

Abstract

Louis de la Forge (1632–1666) was a medical doctor and an early defender of the Cartesian philosophy. He is best known for his views on causation and his development of occasionalism within the Cartesian school. Commentators such as Balz (1932), Garber (1987), and Nadler (1998) have focused on the consequences of La Forge’s views for Cartesian metaphysics and physics, with little consideration of La Forge’s medical philosophy. We argue that La Forge provides a sophisticated version of Cartesian mind-body dualism, and he advances a mechanistic account of the animal spirits, corporeal memory, and a host of other topics relevant to Descartes’s conception of the human body-machine. We examine La Forge’s lengthy Remarques in the French edition of Descartes’s L’Homme de Rene Descartes et un Traite de la Formation du Foetus (1664, 1667) where he advances Descartes’s account of the generation and working of the animal spirits and its relevance to the human body-machine. We also examine La Forge’s Traite de l’esprit de l’homme et de ses facultez et fonctions, et de son union avec le corps (1666), where he explains the functions of the soul while defending dualism and the mechanism of the body-machine against scholasticism. We conclude that La Forge advances Descartes’s account of the generation and workings of the animal spirits and their interaction with the human soul, giving us an important vantage point to see the reception and development of the Cartesian medical philosophy in France.