Nicolas Malebranche's account of the nature of ideas and their role in knowledge and perception has been greatly misunderstood by both his critics and commentators. In this work, Nadler examines Malebranche's theory of ideas and the doctrine of the vision in God with the aim of replacing the standard interpretation of Malebranche's account with a new reading. He argues that Malebranche's ideas should be seen as essences or logical concepts, and that our apprehension of them is (...) thus of a purely intellectual character and serves to provide us with knowledge of eternal truths. He then shows that the visionary representationalist reading usually given to Malebranche's theory of perception simply misconstrues the nature of ideas and the role he intended them to play in perception. Nadler's discussion includes detailed analyses of Malebranche's notion of representation and of his arguments for the presence of divine ideas in knowledge and perception. These aspects of Malebranche's system are considered both in light of his Cartesian and Augustinian commitments and in the broader seventeenth-century philosophical context. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche holds that we see all things in the physical world by means of ideas in God (the doctrine of "vision in God"). In some writings he seems to posit ideas of particular bodies in God, but when pressed by critics he insists that there is only one general idea of extension, which he calls “intelligible extension.” But how can this general and “pure” idea represent particular sensible objects? I develop systematic solutions to this and two other putative (...) difficulties with Malebranche’s theory of sensory cognition by appealing to the notion of “seeing as” and to his doctrine that ideas in God have causal powers to affect the mind. (shrink)

Malebranche affirmed the existence of the material world on the grounds of faith rather than reason. Religious dogma demanded the existence of the material world and Malebranche, the priest, acquiesced. Reason found the existence of the material world doubtful and, indeed, unnecessary. The existence of a material world different from and apart from minds conflicts with the proof of the economy of God's nature which Malebranche offered. Further, in inquiring into the probable nature of the material world (...) Malebranche never successfully avoided the conclusion that apart from a mind the material world is nothing. Malebranche thus came close to proving that the assumption of a material world is unnecessary even for theology, but the explicit statement of such a conclusion would have been too open a break with the church for a faithful member. Surely, however, the weight of Malebranche's reasoning and its implications for immaterialism would not be lost on one already interested in arguments against materialism. Berkeley's interest was such and Luce has shown that Berkeley read Malebranche carefully. Malebranche was the only thinker clearly inclining toward immaterialism whom Berkeley read. Is Malebranche, then, not the source of Berkeley's immaterialism? (shrink)

Descartes, Malebranche, and the Crisis of Perception, by OttWalter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 272.

This essay argues that Malebranche originated the model of sensitive taste in French thought, several decades before Du Bos. It examines the highly gendered, negative physiological model of taste and of the female mind which Malebranche developed within the Cartesian framework and as a witness to Parisian salon society in which women’s taste had great cultural influence, and strongly questions the common assumption that Cartesian substance dualism necessarily contained feminist potential. The essay argues for Malebranche’s great influence (...) in this regard, connecting him to later Enlightenment critics of women’s taste such as Rousseau, and to Vitalist physicians like Le Camus. -/- All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112. (shrink)

The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naive realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, which underwrote it. This created a problem for seventeenth century philosophers: how is that we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? -/- Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once (...) makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? -/- This volume traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Regis alongside their better-known countrymen Rene Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche. (shrink)

among nicolas malebranche’s most influential contributions to philosophy are his defense of occasionalism, his highly original theodicy, and his philosophical method elaborated in greatest detail in his magnum opus De la Recherche de la vérité. In his account of occasionalism, Malebranche argues that finite things have no causal power and that God is the only true causal agent. Malebranche’s theodicy—his attempt to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the existence of an all-good and all-powerful (...) God—is most thoroughly developed in Traité de la nature et de la grâce. Malebranche’s theodicy revolves around a.. (shrink)

In this engrossing double volume, the work and thought of Nicolas Malebranche is examined through the eyes of Simon Foucher and Dortous de Mairan. Part 1 consists of Richard A. Watson’s translation of the first published critique, by Simon Foucher, of Malebranche’s main philosophical work, _Of the Search for the Truth. _In the second part, Marjorie Grene presents a meticulous translation of the long correspondence between Malebranche and Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan that ended shortly before Malebranche’s (...) death. Both Watson and Grene provide insightful introductions to their translations. The influence of the works of Malebranche has been extensive, as has the influence of the lesser works of his first critic, Simon Foucher. Although Foucher was a minor philosopher of the seventeenth century, he provided arguments that led to a crucial turning point in modern philosophy. Listened to with care and treated with respect by Leibniz, Foucher’s arguments were utilized by Bayle, Berkeley, and Hume toward the destruction not only of Cartesian metaphysics but of substance philosophy as well. In this translation of Foucher’s work, it is now possible for readers of Malebranche’s _Of the Search for the Truth _to evaluate the immediate response of a young philosopher about town to one of the most important philosophical works of his day. The correspondence between Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan, an obscure provincial, and Nicolas Malebranche has usually been viewed as a small addendum to the works of Malebranche. Marjorie Grene, however, in her translation of this correspondence, considers it not only a contribution to the Malebranchian corpus but also an example of a reaction to Spinoza. Born at Béziers in the south of France in 1678, Mairan went to Paris in 1698, where he studied mathematics with Malebranche. Their correspondence began four years later when Mairan returned to Béziers to accept a position with the local bishop. In his letters to Malebranche, Mairan reveals himself to be one of no more than a handful of known readers of Spinoza who, in the early eighteenth century, admitted fascination with Spinoza’s presentation of his thoroughly unorthodox God and his equally unorthodox nature. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is exegesis. I explicate Nicolas Malebranche's (1674, 1678, 1688, 1714) concept of intelligible extension. I begin by detailing how the concept matured throughout Malebranche's work, and the new functions it took on within his metaphysical system. I then examine Gustav Bergmann's “axiomatic” interpretation, as well as the criticism of it offered by Daise Radner. I argue that Radner's criticism of the interpretation is only partly successful; some of her objections can be met; others (...) cannot. I then develop a novel interpretation of the concept, given insights from this dispute. I call it the “programmatic interpretation.” I argue that this interpretation coheres well with Malebranche's famous Vision in God thesis, as well as many of his other commitments. I conclude by considering a certain pertinent objection to my proposal, summarizing the dialectic, and forcefully restating my case. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that according to Malebranche mental attention is the corrective to epistemic error and moral lapse and constitutes the essence of human freedom. Moreover, I show how this conception of human freedom is both morally significant and compatible with occasionalism. By attending to four distinctions made by Malebranche throughout his writings we can begin to understand first, what it means for human beings to exercise their freedom in a way that has some meaningful consequence, (...) and second, how this meaningful consequence does not conflict with occasionalism. The distinctions are: mind/matter, nothing/real, moral/physical, union of the human mind with God/union of the human mind with the human body. By getting clear about how Malebranche sees the overlap between and interconnection among these distinctions we can get a better handle on the metaphysical nature of human freedom, what kind of power it confers on us, and what it entails. I will discuss each distinction is turn starting in 1) with the mind/matter distinction. This first pair will be analyzed by way of a comparison between extended things and thinking things introduced by Malebranche early in *The Search After Truth.* Taking note of where the comparison breaks down, and why, leads directly into 2) where I discuss the nothing/real distinction. This pair is discussed at length in the first Elucidation to *The Search*, the stated objective of which is to clarify what was written in the course of the comparison between mind and matter at the outset of *The Search.* In 3) I analyze the moral/physical distinction, developed in Malebranche’s final work *Réflexions sur la prémotion physique*, and suggest that this pair exactly parallels the nothing/real distinction. In 4) I suggest that the only way to fully understand what is a stake with these distinctions and what Malebranche is trying to do with them is by looking at them in relation to the most important distinction of them all –between the union of the mind and God/union of the mind and body. I conclude in 5) by suggesting a way to understand our power to unite our minds to God. This power does not conflict with occasionalism because it is neither an efficient cause nor does it produce any real effects. It does, nevertheless, have a meaningful role in our moral lives. (shrink)

This paper argues that Malebranche’s semantics sheds light on his metaphysics and epistemology, and is of interest in its own right. By recasting issues linguistically, it shows that Malebranche assumes a Neoplatonic semantic structure within Descartes’ dualism and Augustine’s theory of illumination, and employs linguistic devices from the Neoplatonic tradition. Viewed semantically, mental states of illumination stand to God and his ideas as predicates stand in Neoplatonic semantics to ideas ordered by a privative relation on “being.” The framework (...) sheds light on interpretive puzzles in Malebranche studies such as the way ideas reside in God’s mind, the notion of resemblance by which bodies imitate their exemplar causes, and the issue of direct vs. indirect perception through a mechanism by which agents can see bodies by “seeing” ideas. Malebranche’s semantics is of interest in its own right because it gives a full account of the mediating relations that determine indirect reference; lays out a correspondence theory of truth for necessary judgments; defines contingent truth as based on an indirect reference relation that is both descriptive and causal but that does not appeal to body-mind causation; and within his theory of perception, works out an account of singular reference in which singular terms carry existential import, refer indirectly via causal relations, but describe their referents only in a general way. (shrink)

Malebranche's Theodicy ANDREW G. BLACK LEIBNIZ'S SOLUTION tO the problem of evil, his theodicy, might be regarded as a paradigm of philosophical theology. Its pattern, as with so much of Leibniz's philosophy, is reconciliation of deep metaphysical truth with recalcitrant ap- pearance. Thus, a theodicy is not just any solution to the problem; strictly speaking it is a vindication of divine providence in the face of the challenge posed by apparent imperfections of all kinds in creation.' The preeminence of (...) Leibniz's theodicy as a modern solution to the problem of evil has helped to obscure distinguished contributions from among his contemporaries. Not least among these is that made by Nicolas Malebranche, a philosopher having much in common with Leibniz . ~ Malebranche shows a deep concern for the problem of evil throughout his philosophical writings, though nowhere more so than in his Treatise on Nature and Grace, a a book written in response to the Jansenist4 challenge to orthodox In addition to an entire and substantial book, the Theodicy , a number of Leibniz's essays contain versions of his theodicy. See, for example, articles 1- 7 of the Discourse on Metaphysics; also "A Vindication of God's Justice Reconciled with his.. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche is one of the most important philosophers of the 17th Century after Descartes. A pioneer of Rationalism, he was one of the first to champion and to further Cartesian ideas. Andrew Pyle places Malebranche's work in the context of Descartes and other philosophers, and also in its relation to ideas about faith and reason. He examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous The Search After Truth , which was admired and criticized by both (...) Leibniz and Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and 'vision in God', before exploring and assessing Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace, and the freedom of the will. This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to not only philosophers, but also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or 17th Century thought. (shrink)

This book offers a provocative interpretation of the theory of the soul in the writings of the French Cartesian, Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). Though recent work on Malebranche's philosophy of mind has tended to emphasize his account of ideas, Schmaltz focuses rather on his rejection of Descartes' doctrine that the mind is better known than the body. In particular, he considers and defends Malebranche's argument that this rejection has a Cartesian basis. Schmaltz reveals that this argument not only (...) provides a fresh perspective on Cartesianism but also is relevant to current debates in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

While there has been a resurgence in Malebranche scholarship in the anglophone world over the last twenty years, most of it has focused on Malebranche’s theory of ideas, and little attention has been paid to his philosophy of mind. Schmaltz’s book thus comes as a welcome addition to the Malebranche literature; that he has given us such a well-researched and carefully argued study is even more welcome. The focus of this work is Malebranche’s split with Descartes (...) on the question of our knowledge of the nature of the mind; the book concentrates specifically on Malebranche’s rejection of the claim that we know the nature of the mind better than we know the nature of body. Schmaltz maintains that Malebranche’s arguments for his position are, for the most part, successful against the Cartesians who opposed him, though he claims—and this is perhaps the central claim of the book—that “Malebranche took his negative thesis concerning our knowledge of the soul to involve not so much a rejection of Cartesianism as an internal correction of it”. While acknowledging that Augustine was “the primary inspiration for [Malebranche’s] view of the ideas that are the objects of perception”, Schmaltz’s interpretation of Malebranche’s theory of the soul “presents it as fundamentally Cartesian”. According to Schmaltz, not only is Malebranche closer to Descartes in this regard than is generally thought, he is closer to him than are many other Cartesians. Part 1 of the book examines Malebranche’s position that while we have certain knowledge of the soul’s existence, we have only confused knowledge of its nature. Part 2 focuses on Arnauld’s objection that if in fact we had no clear idea of the soul, we could not, despite Malebranche’s claims to the contrary, know anything of its immortality, spirituality, or freedom. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche is one of the most important philosophers of the seventeenth century after Descartes. A pioneer of rationalism, he was one of the first to champion and to further Cartesian ideas. Andrew Pyle places Malebranche's work in the context of Descartes and other philosophers, and also in its relation to ideas about faith and reason. He examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous The Search After Truth, which was admired and criticized by both Leibniz (...) and Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and 'vision in God', before exploring and assessing Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace and the freedom of the will. This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to not only philosophers, but also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or seventeenth century thought. (shrink)

Malebranche's proof of the existence of God "by mere sight" is opposed to Descartes' a priori proof. Its origin as the origin of vision in God is in the theory of beatific vision developed by Aquinas.

Not much attention has been paid to Malebranche’s philosophy of time. Scholars who have written on it have typically written about it only in passing, and by and large discuss it only in relation to his philosophy of religion. This is appropriate insofar as Malebranche doesn’t discuss his views of time in isolation from his religious metaphysics. I argue that Malebranche’s conception of how created beings have their properties commits him to saying that God is omnitemporal rather (...) than atemporal. For just as bodies get their spatiality by participating in God’s omnipresence, so all creatures get their temporality by participating in God’s omnitemporality. Moreover, Malebranche is a substantivalist about space and time: infinite space and time are one and the same divinely simple substance, God (partially considered), who contains the world. My exploration of Malebranche’s metaphysics sheds light on his views of eminent containment, participation, and causation. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche fut le principal représentant du cartésianisme en France. Sa pensée se présente comme une audacieuse tentative de synthèse entre la philosophie « moderne » de Descartes et certains thèmes fondamentaux de l’augustinisme. Malebranche est donc un représentant majeur de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le « rationalisme chrétien ».Ce livre expose et analyse une série de thèmes qui fournissent des axes directeurs pour la lecture de l’abondante œuvre de Malebranche. Il fait apparaître l’intérêt philosophique des (...) principales problématiques malebranchistes : la théorie de la connaissance et de l’idée; la question de la connaissance de soi; les rapports entre philosophie et religion; la théorie de la causalité appelée « occasionalisme »; la théodicée. Il tente aussi de suggérer les multiples postérités du malebranchisme, qui exerça une influence considérable sur l’ensemble des penseurs européens du XVIIIe siècle. (shrink)

This paper treats a heretofore-unnoticed concept in the history of the philosophical discussion of human freedom, a kind of freedom that is not defined solely in terms of the causal power of the agent. Instead, the exercise of freedom essentially involves the non-occurrence of something. That being free involves the non-occurrence, that is, the absence, of an act may seem counterintuitive. With the exception of those specifically treated in this paper, philosophers tend to think of freedom as intimately involved with (...) volition, the judging or deciding activity of the will that votes in favor of or against a proposed action. However, there are two thinkers who endorse a view where not willing constitutes human freedom. Our analysis focuses on the views of Malebranche and Locke. Both invoke a notion dubbed here as ‘absential suspension.’ On this view, freedom is associated not with the power of volition, but rather with this kind of suspension. (shrink)

Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God NICHOLAS JOLLEY IN THE SECOND of the Three Dialogues Hylas, the materialist, asks Philonous: "But what say you, are not you too of opinion that we see all things in God? If I mistake not, what you advance comes near it."' In the first edition of the Dialogues Philonous's response was a temperate one; he expressed his agree- ment with Malebranche's emphasis on the Scriptural text that in God we live, move, and (...) have our being, and confined his disagreement with Malebranche to pointing out that, for him, the things we perceive are our own ideas. In the third edition, by contrast, Berkeley inserted a lengthy and rather ill-tempered expression of his differences from Malebranche: Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men's opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that tenets, which in themselves are ever so different, should nevertheless be confounded with each other by those who do not consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised, if some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malebranche, though in truth I am very remote from it. He builds on the most abstract general ideas, which I entirely disclaim. He asserts an absolute exter- nal world, which I deny. He maintains that we are deceived by our senses, and know not the real natures or the true forms and figures of extended beings; of all which I hold the direct contrary. So that upon the whole there are no. (shrink)

The philosophical thought of Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1713) does not constitute two aspects of a spirit or a man that is that of the man of God and that of the man of letters. Malebranche, as a successor of Descartes in the history of European philosophy, although God is not the wise for him but He is wisdom and science Himself. For Malebrache, God is the reason of the world. God, as a substantial source, is able to create the (...) ideas of the spirit of man and motivate his body. However, there is an archetypal idea of soul which comes in front of the body. According to the mentioned metaphysical definition, God is not doubtable in soul which is related to his Word. Malebranche introduces a rationalism emerging the mathematical values to provide an accurate and justifiable idea for Godbecause the continuous search of truth within sciences and our fear of a false existence can find answers in the system of arithmetic and algebra. Therefore, Malebranche’s thought constitutes “an intellectual mystic” denoting the connection of logic and belief. (shrink)

Hume’s discussion of pride and sympathy in the _Treatise_ shows direct engagement with Malebranche’s discussion of ‘imitation’ in the _Search_. For Malebranche, imitation—both of passions and belief—and our tendency to judge ourselves by comparison, generate the passion of pride or grandeur, which plays a useful social role. However, as both cause and effect of the admiration of others, grandeur is ungrounded and thus imaginary. Hume disagrees. He invokes the principle of sympathy to explain how the evaluations of others (...) can support pride by indicating, without constituting, grounds for pride. Hume’s argument depends on his underappreciated claim that sympathy can communicate the evaluative opinions as well as the passions of others. Working with the Malebranchean inventory of principles—sympathy and comparison—Hume refines their characterization, thereby redeeming the human tendency to feel pride and humility by characterizing it as corrigible and subject to social regulation. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that the feeling of having a body comes in three main varieties. A perceiver sensorily experiences herself (1) as causally connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the body as causing her sensory experiences and as uniquely responsive to her will, (2) as materially connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the perceiver as a material being wrapped up with the body, and (3) as perspectivally connected to her body, (...) in so far as the external senses represent the world from the body’s perspective. In addition to distinguishing these varieties of embodied experience, I explain why the perceiver experiences her connection to the body in these ways. Although Malebranche often casts the experience of embodiment in a negative light, his considered view is that this experience contributes to our survival and salvation. (shrink)

The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, (...) and opens up investigation of important material that is all but ignored in the English literature and only incompletely addressed in the French. (shrink)

Presents nicholas malebranche's interpretation of chinese philosophy as found in his "entretien d'un philosophe chretien et d'un philosophe chinois" (1708). Treats background (transition from 17th century insular to 18th century cosmopolitan eurocentrism), Sources (primarily artus de lionne, Bishop of rosalie and former missionary to china), And motivation (defense of his philosophy against the charge of spinozism). Discusses malebranche's interpretation of neo-Confucian terms "li" and "ch'i" and their relationship to his definition of god. Places the "entretien" in the context (...) of the malebranche-Leibniz correspondence and interprets the work as a stimulus for leibniz' more substantive "discours sur la theologie naturelle des chinois" (1716). (shrink)

In Malebranche's account of occasional causality, God exercises his general will with respect to every event that merits a causal explanation. Nadler distinguishes two pictures of God's involvement; (1) there are as many distinct acts of God's will as there are causal events to be explained; (2) God's will is exercised once only, when the natural order of causes is created. I argue that Malebranche's concept of God is inconsistent with a real distinction between God and acts of (...) his will, and with using temporal parameters to identify God's acts. Thus, Leibniz's pre-established harmony is analogous to Malebranche's occasionalist concurrence. (shrink)

Do the senses represent causation? Many commentators read Nicolas Malebranche as anticipating David Hume’s negative answer to this question. I disagree with this assessment. When a yellow billiard ball strikes a red billiard ball, Malebranche holds that we see the yellow ball as causing the red ball to move. Given Malebranche’s occasionalism, he insists that the visual experience of causal interaction is illusory. Nevertheless, Malebranche holds that the senses represent finite things as causally efficacious. This experience (...) of creaturely causality explains why Aristotelian philosophers and others struggle to recognize occasionalism’s truth. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Malebranche claims that God always, or nearly always, acts by general volitions. However, two possible interpretations of this claim have led to competing understandings of Malebranche's occasionalism. The General Content interpretation (GC) holds that God forms as few volitions as possible, and that aside from a limited number of particular volitions, God's normal mode of action consists simply in willing the general laws themselves. The Particular Content interpretation (PC) affirms that God forms a distinct volition for each event (...) or state of affairs, but that those volitions count as general when they are issued "in accordance with" some general law. This essay examines five lines of evidence that purport to reveal Malebranche's commitment to PC and explains why they all fail. As a result, GC emerges unscathed as a consistent and viable interpretation, and, at the same time, much of the case for PC is undermined. (shrink)

Alain Badiou offers a tour de force encounter with a lesser-known seventeenth-century philosopher and theologian, Nicolas Malebranche, a contemporary and peer of Spinoza and Leibniz. The seminar is at once a record of Badiou's thought at a key moment and a lively interrogation of Malebranche's key text, the Treatise on Nature and Grace.

F alquie has shown that, contrary to malebranche's own intention, his main influence in france was in the direction of deism. yet in england malebranche appealed to devout christians and greatly influenced the platonist john norris. why was his influence so different in the two countries? mainly, the author suggests, because norris was attracted by malebranche's central thesis of man's direct vision of the divine ideas, whereas the french enlightenment was influenced by theses which were less central (...) to malebranche but more in accord with the spirit of the age, involving the extension of mechanistic types of explanation to the spiritual sphere. (shrink)

Like their contemporary counterparts, early modern philosophers find themselves in a predicament. On one hand, there are strong reasons to deny that sensations are representations. For there seems to be nothing in the world for them to represent. On the other hand, some sensory representations seem to be required for us to experience bodies. How else could one perceive the boundaries of a body, except by means of different shadings of color? I argue that Nicolas Malebranche offers an extreme (...) -- and ultimately unworkable -- attempt to solve this riddle. Most commentators claim that Malebranche defends an adverbial theory of sensation, according to which a sensation is merely a way in which an act of sensing happens. The adverbial reading is wrong, or so I argue. Once we arrive at a more accurate reading, we shall see that his position is much more strange than is currently thought. Nevertheless, Malebranche’s view is similar to the adverbial theory in one respect, albeit it at a very high level of generality. His view thus inherits two of the main problems that afflict adverbial theories. Although Malebranche fails to solve them, his ingenious attempts to do so are instructive. (shrink)

L’hypothèse de travail qui régit cette contribution est que les discussions sur les rapports entre théologie et philosophie forment un thème récurrent dans la réception de Malebranche depuis les premières lectures de La Recherche de la vérité, et que cela s’explique par la rupture qu’il provoque avec les horizons d’attente des philosophes et théologiens. Rupture qui tient largement à l’enchevêtrement singulier des registres discursifs que présente son argumentaire. C’est là, nous semble-t-il, l’intérêt indéniable de la lecture – plutôt négligée (...) par la critique contemporaine – que propose Fontenelle de La Recherche de la vérité que de mettre précisément en scène ce « malaise » qu’elle produit chez ses premiers lecteurs. Elle vise ainsi à poser le problème de la frontière entre philosophie et théologie, voire à chercher à circonscrire le territoire de la première afin de lui préserver son autonomie. (shrink)

In VI.ii.3 of The Search After Truth Malebranche offers an argument for the view that only God is a cause. Here I defend an interpretation of the argument according to which Malebranche is supposing (quite rightly) that if there is a necessary connection between a cause and its effect, then if creatures were real causes, God's volitions would not be sufficient to bring about their intended effects. I then consider the argument from constant creation that Malebranche offers (...) in Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion. If Malebranche holds that God is literally creating things in their entirety at each and every moment, it is difficult to understand how his system could make room for finite substances, and it is difficult to understand how he can allow that finite minds are to be held accountable for what they do. Here I defend a weakened version of the doctrine of constant creation according to which God is constantly creating the modifications of things but is not constantly creating things in their entirety. (shrink)

Malebranche's psychology of error and psychology of moral choice are the core of what Locke kept on admiring, even when criticizing the metaphysics and the theory of ideas underlying them. So to understand why Locke rejects Malebranche's "idea" and Malebranche rejects Locke's "idea", it is useful to see where they agree and disagree in the theory of moral choice: pleasure, supreme good, suspense, uneasiness, desire are themas debated around them (Arnauld, Bayle) and between them.

This paper explores the ontology of Malebranche's notion of "intelligible extension", the archetypal divine idea of matter which he believed to be the immediate object of our own minds in all of our thoughts about corporeal things. Building on this account of its ontology, and through an examination of a form of isomorphism between intelligible extension and the created spatial world, the paper also attempts to explain the manner in which it could fulfill its epistemological role of representing all (...) possible bodies and supplying us with our abstract knowledge of geometry. (shrink)

Central to Nicolas Malebranche’s theodicy is the distinction between general volitions and particular volitions. One of the fundamental claims of his theodicy is that although God created a world with suffering and evil, God does not will these things by particular volitions, but only by general volitions. Commentators disagree about how to interpret Malebranche’s distinction. According to the ‘general content’ interpretation, the difference between general volitions and particular volitions is a difference in content. General volitions have general laws (...) as their content and particular volitions have particular contents. The ‘particular content’ interpretation holds that all of God’s volitions have particular contents. The difference between general and particular volitions is whether the content of the volition is in accordance with the laws that God has established. A proper interpretation of this distinction is essential to understanding Malebranche’s theodicy, as well as his account of occasionalism and God’s causal activity in the world. In this paper, I defend the ‘particular content’ interpretation of the distinction. (shrink)

Traduite en anglais et en néerlandais, la Recherche de la Vérité a aussi fait l’objet, du vivant de son auteur, d’une traduction latine, le De Inquirenda Veritate. Réalisée entre 1682 et 1683, cette traduction, effectuée à partir de la troisième édition de l’ouvrage de Malebranche, est due au travail de Jacques Lenfant, à l’époque étudiant en théologie à l’Académie de Genève. Cette entreprise atteste de manière significative la réception du malebranchisme à Genève dans les années 1680 et fournit un (...) témoignage de l’accueil favorable que le monde intellectuel lié à cette Académie réformée a réservé à la doctrine cartésienne, frappée à la même époque par de nombreuses censures, tant dans le monde catholique que dans le monde protestant. La Préface que Jacques Lenfant a préparée pour le De Inquirenda Veritate, dont nous proposons ici la traduction française, illustre bien ces deux aspects. Elle présente en effet une sorte d’apologie du cartésianisme et propose une interprétation de la pensée de Malebranche comme une philosophie qui suit et porte à son accomplissement, à travers ses développements éthiques et théologiques, la doctrine de Descartes. (shrink)

Traduite en anglais et en néerlandais, la Recherche de la Vérité a aussi fait l’objet, du vivant de son auteur, d’une traduction latine, le De Inquirenda Veritate. Réalisée entre 1682 et 1683, cette traduction, effectuée à partir de la troisième édition de l’ouvrage de Malebranche, est due au travail de Jacques Lenfant (1661-1728), à l’époque étudiant en théologie à l’Académie de Genève. Cette entreprise atteste de manière significative la réception du malebranchisme à Genève dans les années 1680 et fournit (...) un témoignage de l’accueil favorable que le monde intellectuel lié à cette Académie réformée a réservé à la doctrine cartésienne, frappée à la même époque par de nombreuses censures, tant dans le monde catholique que dans le monde protestant. La Préface que Jacques Lenfant a préparée pour le De Inquirenda Veritate, dont nous proposons ici la traduction française, illustre bien ces deux aspects. Elle présente en effet une sorte d’apologie du cartésianisme et propose une interprétation de la pensée de Malebranche comme une philosophie qui suit et porte à son accomplissement, à travers ses développements éthiques et théologiques, la doctrine de Descartes. (shrink)

(2013). Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy: A Reconsideration. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 262-280. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.718869.

This chapter analyses Malebranche’s theory that the human, finite mind participates in two separate and, at least prima facie, incompatible unions: one with the body to which it is joined and one with God. By looking at the way that Malebranche borrows from both the mechanical philosophy as articulated by Descartes and Augustine’s dictum that we are not “lights unto” ourselves, the unique, difficult, and at times problematic Malebranchean philosophy of mind is revealed. This discussion is divided into (...) two main parts. First, it situates Malebranche’s view of the nature of mind in relation to Descartes’ and Augustine’s views by way of discussion of the roles of intellect and will, the intelligibility of mind, and the manner in which the mind is involved in sensation, imagining, and passionate responses. These are the operations that depend on the mind’s relationship to its body. Second, the chapter moves to explore Malebranche’s view of the operations of the mind as united to God: ideation, which involves a discussion of Malebranche’s famous doctrine of the Vision of All Things in God, and pure understanding. In this second part, attention is paid to Malebranche’s disputes with Antoine Arnauld, Pierre-Sylvain Régis, and Dortous de Mairan over the central philosophical principle that underwrites the Malebranchean view of ideas: intelligible extension. While intelligible extension is the legitimate object of critique, it is suggested here that Malebranche, by relying on faith, can answer his critics. The chapter concludes by articulating the manner in which that Malebranche sees the relationship between the two unions of the mind, with body and with God, in his science of man. -/- . (shrink)