Desgabets est-il gassendiste ?

Dom Robert Desgabets (1610-1678) has been reckoned Gassendist by a few authors, among whom Victor Cousin. Yet Desgabets himself claims to be Cartesian, and even more Cartesian than Descartes! The evidence provided by his own texts is herewith analysed in order to attempt an answer to the question « Is Desgabets a Gassendist? ». Theese texts seem to show that he is indeed only a Gassendist insofar as he considers Gassendi as a the co-founder, along with Descartes, of the mechanistic « New philosophy ». But when the question arises as to which of the two parties he choses to belong, he will follow Descartes, condemning explicitly the doctrine of void and atoms. Desgabet’s apparent affinities with Gassendi may be explained by a cause other than influence: namely his own, often paradoxical, insight finding precisely in Descartes the means to maximize the fulfillment of whatever good is to be found in any other philosophy