Du Pont, René

A French polemicist of the first half of the seventeenth century. He was the author of a Philosophie des esprits published in two editions (Paris 1602, Paris 1612), in which he defended and developed, in opposition to the materialists, the concept of intelligent spiritual substance. Du Pont's views were close to those of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, and he put forward a theory of human nature in the scholastic tradition, with strong influences from Hermetic, Augustinian, and neo-Platonic thought.