Simon Foucher (1 March 1644 – 27 April 1696) was a French polemic philosopher. His philosophical standpoint was one of Academic skepticism: he did not agree with dogmatism, but didn't resort to Pyrrhonism, either. Life He was born in Dijon, the son of a merchant, and appears to have taken holy orders at a very early age. For some years he held the position of honorary canon at Dijon, but he resigned in order to take up his residence in Paris. He graduated at the Sorbonne, having studied theology, and spent the remainder of his life in literary work in Paris, where he died. Works In his day Foucher enjoyed considerable reputation as a keen opponent of Malebranche and Leibniz. He revived the old arguments of the Academy, and advanced them with much ingenuity against Malebranche's doctrine. Otherwise his skepticism is subordinate to orthodox belief, the fundamental dogmas of the church seeming to him intuitively evident. His object was to reconcile his religious with his philosophical creed, and to remain a Christian without ceasing to be an academician. In his 1673 publication, Dissertation on the Search for Truth, he brought to light people's psychological predilection for certainties. He wrote about the art of doubting—about positioning oneself between doubting and believing. He wrote, "One needs to exit doubt in order to produce science—but few people heed the importance of not exiting from it prematurely....It is a fact that one usually exits doubt without realizing it." He wrote further, "We are dogma-prone from our mother's wombs." Principal works Foucher had the annoying habit of re-using the same titles for his works, making it necessary to cite the whole subtitle in order to specify which work is being referred to. 1673: Dissertations sur la recherche de la vérité, ou sur la logique des academiciens (Dissertations on the search for truth, or on the logic of the Academics) (Foucher did not publish this work but distributed it privately. It is now lost and known only from Foucher's own references to it in later writings.) 1675:Critique de la Recherche de la vérité, où l'on examine en méme temps une partie des principes de Mr Descartes (Critique of the "Search for truth", in which some of the principles of Mr Descartes are examined at the same time) (A critique of Malebranche's work of that title; Foucher believed that because Malebranche chose the same title as Foucher,