Nicolas Malebranche

Nicolas Malebranche was the first Cartesian philosopher to challenge Descartes’ claim that we are capable of possessing a clear and distinct understanding of the soul's nature. Other Cartesians, including Clauberg, La Forge, and Cordemoy, accepted without question the conclusion of the Second Meditation that the nature of the soul is better known than is the nature of body. After presenting an overview of Malebranche's argument, this note turns to the Cartesian philosopher Pierre-Sylvain Régis. Régis, like the Cartesians before Malebranche, sides (...) with Descartes in this debate over the question of whether we can have knowledge of our soul's nature, but unlike his predecessors, he provides an original argument defending his position. This argument is, I argue, a direct response to the argument Malebranche had used in his case against Descartes. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche is often thought of as an ardent disciple of Cartesianism. Yet he parts ways with Descartes on a number of important points, one of the most important of which concerns the question of whether mind is able to affect body. It is clear from his letters to Elisabeth that Descartes believed that minds have it within their power to move bodies; Malebranche, on the other hand, denies this, not because mind and body are separate substances--the most frequent criticism (...) of Descartes' dualism--but because he considered the human mind to be too weak to act as such a cause. From this view of the mind as relatively impotent follow Malebranche's anti-Cartesian views that bodies are, in a way, better known than minds, and that our sensations, as well as the mind itself, are known only confusedly. Given what Malebranche says about the limited ability of the human mind, the main focus of this dissertation concerns what we are and are not able to know about ourselves as mental substances. ;In the first chapter, I examine several interpretations of the Cartesian theory of will, as well as Descartes' definition of thought. In the second chapter, I briefly discuss Malebranche's occasionalism before turning to his theory of the will, which is contrasted with the Cartesian account presented in the first chapter. The third chapter focuses on ideas in Malebranche, and again, I stress the contrast with the Cartesian philosophy of ideas. The final chapter begins with an account of knowledge by sentiment interieur in Malebranche; I then argue that, despite initial appearances, it is not sentiment interieur, but his theory of will, taken together with his epistemology and ontology of ideas, which in Malebranche's psychology allow for the presence of unconscious mental processes in the human mind. (shrink)

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)

The core thesis of Malebranche’s doctrine of occasionalism is that God is the sole true cause, where a true cause is one that has the power to initiate change and for which the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effects. Malebranche gives two separate arguments for his core thesis, T, based on necessary connection and on divine power respectively. The standard view is that these two arguments are necessary to establish T. I argue for a reinterpretation of (...) Malebranche’s strategy, according to which the Necessary Connection Argument alone is sufficient to establish T. The Divine Power Argument, which is anyway weaker, is needed not to support T but to bridge the gap between T and full-fledged occasionalism. Specifically, it is needed to rule out the existence of causal powers in nature, a scenario which is consistent with T but inconsistent with occasionalism. (shrink)

According to Malebranche’s occasionalism, all cases of causation in the world are due to the action of God’s will. These actions are divided into "particular volitions" and "general volitions". There has been sharp disagreement in the secondary literature concerning the nature of general volitions, for Malebranche. One side claims that general volitions are volitions of wide scope which cover a multiplicity of potential situations. The other side claims that general volitions are specific but fall under the scope of broader laws (...) of nature. I draw on the quantifier apparatus of modern predicate logic to highlight the differences between the two views, which I refer to as the Universality view and the Regularity view respectively. I also outline a third ‘Hybrid’ view that borrows elements of each. I conclude that there is a fundamental ambiguity in Malebranche’s account of general volitions which prevents any one account from fully fitting with Malebranche’s remarks. (shrink)

Assurant que « nous voyons toutes choses en Dieu », autrement dit par des idées universelles et infinies, la philosophie de Malebranche se doit d'affronter le problème de la connaissance des choses singulières, seules véritablement existantes. Après avoir montré que sa pensée échoue à fonder un authentique principe d'individuation physique des corps, nous tentons de mettre en évidence une difficulté identique à théoriser une véritable connaissance des êtres matériels. Ce déplacement de la question nous semble légitime dans la mesure où (...) les choses étendues ne sont accessibles qu'à partir de l'étendue intelligible et des sentiments qu'elle produit. Par là, nous souhaitons manifester l'inaptitude, peut-être irrémédiable, d'une métaphysique fondée sur la représentation à se saisir pleinement des singularités. Malebranche tells us that we see everything in Gods infinit and universal Ideas. In so doing, Malebranche seems unable to describe real knowledge of material singularities; more, it's quite difficult to discover a true principle of individuation in the physical treatment of matter. After all, the metaphysical background of the representative knowledge makes improbable a correct description, a philosophical experience of singularities. (shrink)

In the history of Cartesianism, the Traite de Morale by Nicolas Malebranche represents a rare attempt by a Cartesian philosopher to provide a systematic ethics. This dissertation examines Malebranche's moral philosophy in relation to its Cartesian sources and Augustinian inspiration. ;Malebranche's ethics begins with the apprehension of relations of perfection among ideas in the mind of God which constitutes Order. Virtue consists in the acquisition of a dominant, and habitual love of Order; such love is similar to the ethics of (...) rightly ordered love in the Augustinian tradition. The same Order regulates both divine and human conduct, and Malebranche's anti-voluntarist stance is one of several significant differences from the thought of Descartes. His ethics is Cartesian primarily in its extension of the Cartesian method of doubt to the domain of moral choice. Whenever there remains doubt whether a finite good in life should be pursued, the method dictates suspending the will's consent to its pursuit, resulting in practical recommendations which favor asceticism. ;Malebranche's analysis of the will's operation in making such moral judgments about what to pursue as good is an innovation in the Cartesian account of judgment which responds to controversies which Descartes' own analysis of judgment had caused. Chapter Four, "Judgment", demonstrates that Malebranche's opening chapters to the Search After Truth were carefully composed to respond to challenges to the Cartesian account of judgment from Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Gassendi. The result is a careful account of the will's role in judgment which distinguishes its role in moral as opposed to strictly speculative judgments. It has not previously been noted by Malebranche's commentators that his account of judgment is original; most have viewed it as identical to Descartes'. ;Malebranche's account of judgment is critical to his longstanding opposition to Jansenism, and, later, Quietism. Chapter Five, "Grace", examines his account of grace for a fuller understanding of his moral views. Malebranche agrees with the hedonistic psychology of his Jansenist opponents, but despite his own egoism, his ethics does give priority to the demands of moral Order in the pursuit of one's own happiness. (shrink)

The philosophical and theological debate between Nicola Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld is one of the most important philosophical exchanges of the late seventeenth century. One of the most significant products of this debate is Malebranche's clarification of his theory of causality, known as occasionalism. A theory of causality, in this case, is a theory in answer to the question, what is the extent of God's causal agency in the world and what room does that leave for causality in created substances? (...) Occasionalism is a version of the view that God is the only causal agent. Arnauld's principal criticisms are directed against the details of Malebranche's account rather than the main thesis. Contemporaneously with this debate, Arnauld was carrying on his celebrated correspondence with Leibniz. Arnauld claims to Leibniz that the latter's own theory of causality, the theory of concomitance, is indistiguishable from occasionalism. By examining the details of occasionalism, as they are discussed in the Malebranche-Arnauld debate, it may be established to what extent Arnauld's claim is true. (shrink)

Malebranche’s characterization of the human condition appears to generate a problem. While his metaphysics and his conception of man and man’s place in nature appear to preclude the possibility that we could ever be responsible for anything—much less for our passions—he insists that we are. Consequently, many commentators (both past and present) have argued that Malebranche is committed to an untenable, if not inconsistent, position. In this paper I argue that careful consideration of Malebranche’s account of the passions and the (...) various means, methods, and strategies one might employ in order to control them reveals that these charges—charges that might well be justified with respect to contemporary pre-theoretical views of the emotions—are mistaken. (shrink)

In The Search after Truths Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) claims that the first man, Adam, had the same senses as we do, that he felt the same pleasures and pains as we do, but without being distracted from God. However, after he had sinned, his senses revolted against him and enslaved him, as they do us. In other words, because of the original sin the union that joins our mind to God and which raises us above all material things is weakened (...) by a union with our body, a union that debases us and which is the main cause of all our errors and miseries. This article tries to analyse these errors and miseries in relation to man's search after truth. (shrink)