Abstract

Nicolas Malebranche , priest of the Oratory and philosophical disciple of Rend Descartes , attempted to unify theology's emphasis on the power of God with philosophy's focus on the autonomy of human reason. Malebranche's occasionalist metaphysics, within which only God exercises true causal power, extends Cartesian doctrines of mechanism, continuous creation and substance dualism to emphasize the total dependence of all of creation on God. Malebranche argues that only God possesses true casual power, because only the will and desires of an infinitely perfect being are necessarily linked to their effects. Humans may will, but as created, imperfect beings, they have no power to carry out their volitions. Created matter is merely passive extension, incapable of will or motion. So only God can move minds and bodies. The willings of created minds and impacts of created bodies merely serve as the "occasion" for God to act. Further, in his doctrine of the vision in God, Malebranche argues that ideas exist in the mind of God, where they are eternal, immutable archetypes for all created things and of all eternal truths. We are totally dependent on God to reveal to us the representative, intelligible ideas needed both to see the world around us and to think at all. Yet if Malebranche's occasionalism makes God literally the moving force of bodies and of wills, and his vision in God makes the human understanding totally dependent on God for both its sensory and intellectual perceptions, little room seems left for any kind of true human agency. Nevertheless, leaving a space for such freedom is clearly something Malebranche wanted to do. The dissertation provides a detailed philosophical account and analysis of Malebranche's efforts to provide a plausible theory of human moral and intellectual freedom in the context of his commitment to an infinitely perfect being possessing all causal power.