ABSTRACT
François Bernier (1620-1688) is one of the philosophers who did the most to enrich and disseminate Pierre Gassendi’s philosophy. L’Abrégé de la philosophie de M. Gassendi, a seven-volume work published in French, went through three successive versions in 1674, 1678, and 1684, and soon became the main instrument whereby Gassendi’s ideas were made familiar to the honnête homme of the late seventeenth century (Koyré 1980: 321). The aim of this chapter is to assess Bernier’s place in the seventeenthcentury debate between the Cartesians and the Gassendists, particularly in terms of his views on bodies and on the structure of matter.
