Simon Foucher

Simon Foucher (1 March 1644 - 27 April 1696) was a French polemic^[1] philosopher. His philosophical standpoint was one of Academic skepticism: he did not agree with dogmatism, but didn't resort to Pyrrhonism, either.

Life

He was born in Dijon, the son of a merchant, and appears to have taken holy orders at a very early age. For some years he held the position of honorary canon at Dijon, but he resigned in order to take up his residence in Paris. He graduated at the Sorbonne, having studied theology, and spent the remainder of his life in literary work in Paris, where he died.

Works

In his day Foucher enjoyed considerable reputation as a keen opponent of Malebranche and Leibniz. He revived the old arguments of the Academy, and advanced them with much ingenuity against Malebranche's doctrine. Otherwise his skepticism is subordinate to orthodox belief, the fundamental dogmas of the church seeming to him intuitively evident. His object was to reconcile his religious with his philosophical creed, and to remain a Christian without ceasing to be an academician.

In his 1673 publication, Dissertation on the Search for Truth, he brought to light people's psychological predilection for certainties. He wrote about the art of doubting—about positioning oneself between doubting and believing. He wrote, "One needs to exit doubt in order to produce science—but few people heed the importance of not exiting from it prematurely....It is a fact that one usually exits doubt without realizing it." He wrote further, "We are dogma-prone from our mother's wombs."^[1]

Principal works

• Dissertation sur la recherche de la vérité, ou sur la philosophie académique (1673) (A presentation of the principles of academic scepticism) (Dissertation on the Search for Truth)
• Critique de la Recherche de la vérité (1675) (A critique of Malebranche's work)
• Dissertations sur la recherche de la vérité, contenant l'histoire et les principes de la philosophie des acedemiciens. Avec plusieurs réflexions sur les sentimens de M. Descartes (1693) (A collection of his writings against Malebranche)

References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.