Marin Cureau de La Chambre’s Theory of Extension and Its Scholastic Background

By analysing his works from 1634 to 1666, I map out Cureau de La Chambre’s theory of universal extension. I focus in particular on what he borrowed from his contemporaries, especially his synthesis of Scaliger’s doctrine of the extension of spiritual substances and Suárez’s notion of extensio entitativa, a pre-categorial extension attributed to bodily parts prior to categorial continuous quantity. I reconstruct both his overall metaphysical account of extension and his specific positions on the extension of God, angels, and human souls, before outlining the main implications of this theory for his natural philosophy. I conclude with brief remarks on the possible relationship between La Chambre’s view and Henry More’s similar theory, set against Cureau’s anti-Cartesian polemic following the publication of Descartes’s letters in 1657.