Laffitte Pierre (1823–1903), French positivist philosopher, a disciple of Comte and founder (1878) of the Revue Occidentale. Laffitte spread positivism by adopting Comte’s format of ‘popular’ courses. He faithfully acknowledged Comte’s objective method and religion of humanity. Laffitte wrote Great Types of Humanity (1875–76). In Positive Ethics (1881), he distinguishes between theoretical and practical ethics. His Lectures on First Philosophy (1889–95) sets forth a metaphysics, or a body of general and abstract laws, that attempts to complete positivism, to resolve the conflict between the subjective and the objective, and to avert materialism. See also COMTE , LOGICAL POSITIVIS. J.-L.S. La Forge, Louis de (1632–66), French philosopher and member of the Cartesian school. La Forge seems to have become passionately interested in Descartes’s philosophy in about 1650, and grew to become one of its most visible and energetic advocates. La Forge (together with Gérard van Gutschoven) illustrated the 1664 edition of Descartes’s L’homme and provided an extensive commentary; both illustrations and commentary were often reprinted with the text. His main work, though, is the Traité de l’esprit de l’homme (1665): though not a commentary on Descartes, it is ‘in accordance with the principles of René Descartes,’ according to its subtitle. It attempts to continue Descartes’s program in L’homme, left incomplete at his death, by discussing the mind and its union with the body. In many ways La Forge’s work is quite orthodox; he carefully follows Descartes’s opinions on the nature of body, the nature of soul, etc., as they appear in the extant writings to which he had access. But with others in the Cartesian school, La Forge’s work contributed to the establishment of the doctrine of occasionalism as Cartesian orthodoxy, a doctrine not explicitly found in Descartes’s writings. See also DESCARTES, OCCASIONALIS. D.Garb.