LA FORGE, LOUIS de. – Physician and philosopher, born in Paris at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He practiced medicine at Saumur. He was a disciple and friend of Descartes.
In 1666 he published his Traité de l'âme humaine, de ses facultés et fonctions et de son union avec le corps, d'après les principes de Descartes. The work was translated into Latin by Flayder in the same year. The author endeavors to bring Descartes closer to s. Agostino. As regards the union of soul and body, he assigns it two causes: one particular, namely the will of the soul, which can move the body, and one general, namely the divine will, which moves the body in all the movements that the soul does not produce.
BIBL.: Fr. Bouiller, Histoire de la philosophie cartésienne, I, Parigi-Lione 1854, pp. 500-503; Überweg, III, Berlino 1921, p. 246, 263.