Louis de La Forge on Mind, Causality, and Union

Abstract

La Forge, who is well known for his Remarques on Descartes’s Treatise of Man (1664), is also said to be one of the founders of “occasionalism”, especially because of his argument against real causality in nature in chapter 16 of his Treatise on the Human Mind (1666). This leads one to think that causality is just a word for the order that God goes on creating in the world. But in fact La Forge merely intended to underline the power of Will, through the fact that any action on a mere part of matter is bound to the proper ability of Will to consider the whole of it.