Foucher, Simon(1644–1696)
Simon Foucher was one of the foremost critics of Cartesian philosophy. He was born in Dijon, France, where, after taking orders, he was made honorary canon of the Sainte Chapelle. He took a bachelor's degree in theology at the Sorbonne and spent his adult life as a chaplain in Paris, where he died. His first published work is a long didactic poem commemorating the death of Anne of Austria (1601–1666). In another long poem he defends the compatibility of Greek and Christian moral principles. In Paris he attended the lectures on Cartesian physics given by Jacques Rohault, which inspired him to make original experiments in the science of hygrometry (humidity of the atmosphere) on which he published two pioneering works in 1672 and 1686. He also produced three major dissertations concerning the value of Academic skepticism in the search for truth. He was the first to publish criticisms of both Nicolas Malebranche's occasionalism and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's monadism, and it is for these critiques that he is best known.
Academic Method
Foucher considered himself to be the reviver of Academic philosophy, by which he means Socratic ignorance combined with the reasonable doubt of Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon, who say that they know some things and are ignorant of others; he argues that this is the middle way between dogmatism and Pyrrhonism.
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