Abstract: At the beginning of his Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionnelles, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle asserts that René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche would have shared the same position vis-à-vis occasionalism. On the other hand, he suggests throughout the book that there is a fundamental antagonism between the two. The methods he uses for this purpose are often concealed, the language under which he hides is often that of the Oratorian. It is therefore a text to be deciphered.
