Claude Buffier

Claude Buffier (25 May 1661 – 17 May 1737) was a French philosopher, historian, and teacher. Born in Poland to French parents, his family returned to France shortly after his birth, settling in Rouen. He was educated at the Jesuit college in Rouen and joined the Society of Jesus at nineteen. A disagreement with the archbishop led him to leave Rouen. After a brief period in Rome, he returned to Paris and spent the remainder of his life at the Jesuit college there. He was known as a good teacher and a clear expositor. His most famous work, "Traité des premières vérités" (1724), aimed to identify the fundamental principle of knowledge, which he located in our awareness of our own existence and internal sensations. In this, he aligned with René Descartes but diverged by rejecting the *a priori* method. Buffier argued that common sense, a natural disposition present in most people, is necessary to understand external reality and form consistent judgments. He defined common sense as an innate ability to form uniform judgments about external objects, independent of prior reasoning. According to Buffier, truths accepted due to common sense cannot be definitively proven or disproven but are followed in practice. While he believed these truths held the highest probability, rejecting them labeled an individual as foolish, though not contradictory. Buffier's aversion to scholasticism made his writings appear superficial, lacking deep metaphysical insight. However, he was among the first to recognize the psychological aspect of Descartes's principle and use it for analyzing the human mind, akin to John Locke's approach. This foreshadowed the work of Thomas Reid and the Scottish school of common sense realism. Voltaire famously called him the only Jesuit to offer a reasonable philosophical system. He also authored "Elémens de métaphysique" (1725), "Suite de la Grammaire française sur un plan nouveau" (1709), and several historical essays. A collected edition of his works was published in 1732, and an English translation of "Traité" appeared in 1780.