The subject of this paper is Malebranche’s relation to Descartes on the question of method. Using recent commentary as a springboard, it examines whether Malebranche advances a nonpsychologistic account of method, in contrast to the psychologism typically thought to characterize the Cartesian view. I explore this question with respect to two issues of central importance to method generally: doubt and free will. My argument is that, despite superficial differences of emphasis, Descartes and Malebranche adopt positions on doubt and free will (...) that effectively ensure that their respective accounts of method aresubstantially the same. (shrink)

I sketch a new interpretation of Malebranche's conception of ideas, thus shedding new light on various of his key doctrines, such as the efficacy of ideas, involuntarism concerning the eternal truths, indirect perception, and vision in God. Briefly, I argue that Malebranche's ideas may be construed as "possible divine volitions," where these are conceptually distinguishable aspects of God, primitively possessed of representational content, by whose exercise God manifests His efficacy. I also defend the claim that Malebranche, in fact, does not (...) subscribe to a "veil of ideas" representationalism, and give two alternative accounts of what he means by saying that we perceive bodies only "indirectly.". (shrink)

Of Malebranche's many famous doctrines, his “Vision in God” (VIG) surely ranks among the most interesting. Inspired by Augustine and Descartes, he argues for it vigorously and gives it a prominent place in his system of thought. And although it won no converts it did win many critics, who, in criticizing, were compelled to clarify their own theories of cognition. Thus VIG is of interest for its own sake, for its role in Malebranche's philosophy, and for its general influence in (...) the early modern period. (shrink)

This article presents a decades-long conflict in the upper echelons of postwar French academic philosophy between the self-identifying “Cartesian” Ferdinand Alquié, professor at the Sorbonne, and the “Spinozist” Martial Gueroult of the Collège de France. Tracking the development of this rivalry serves to illuminate the historical drama that occurred in France as phenomenology was integrated into the Cartesian tradition and resisted by a commitment to rationalism grounded in a specifically French understanding of Spinozism. Over the course of Alquié and Gueroult's (...) polemic, however, we nevertheless witness a shared concern to preserve philosophy from the reductive tendencies of historicism and its possible assimilation to theology. What is more, the ultimate impasse of this conflict continues to inform the most innovative projects in French thought in the wake of structuralism and the “theological turn” of French phenomenology. (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)

O artigo procura avaliar a consolidação e os desdobramentos da função heurística e simbólica ocupada pelo Ungeheuer [o monstro ou o monstruoso] na filosofia kantiana, tendo em vista a emergência do horizonte da racionalidade moderna. Uma reconfiguração dessas imagens do Monstro e da Monstruosidade parece ter lugar no momento mesmo em que a filosofia moderna procurou pensar sua identidade e seus limites. O pensamento de Kant, que ocupa - de fato ou de direito - um lugar central nessa ruptura, apresentaria (...) de modo exemplar, embora não evidente, o percurso dessa transformação. This work intends to evaluate the origins and developments of the symbolic and heuristic function at stake in the term Ungeheuer [the monster or the monstrous] within Kant's philosophy, regarding the rising horizon of modern rationality. A reconfiguration of the Monster and Monstrous imagery seems to take place right at the moment when modern philosophy had to reflect upon its own identity and limits. Kant's thought, that occupies - de jure or de facto - a central place within this rupture could exemplarily, but not obviously, show the path of such transformation. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo analisa o modo como Malebranche apresenta o conhecimento que possuímos de nossa própria alma a partir da noção de sentimento interior. Para tanto, tomamos como ponto de partida a concepção malebrancheana do argumento do cogito, opondo-a à de Descartes, tomando-o como uma constatação imediata da existência de algo que sente, sem, no entanto, poder afirmar algo sobre sua essência. O conhecimento da alma torna-se assim algo puramente afetivo, sem nenhum conteúdo positivo, e por natureza distinto do conhecimento (...) propriamente dito. Buscamos desse modo mostrar como, na filosofia de Malebranche, cria-se um campo propriamente humano do sentimento cujo conteúdo é irredutível a qualquer ciência clara e distinta, ao mesmo tempo que é constatado pela experiência vivida.: The article aims to analyze the way by which Malebranche presents the knowledge that we possess of our own soul through the notion of inner sentiment. Therefore, we take as our starting point the Malebranchean notion of the cogito argument, contrasting it with that of Descartes, taking it to be the immediate ascertainment of the existence of something that feels without, however, being able to assert anything about its essence. The knowledge of the soul becomes therefore something purely affective, deprived of a positive content, and by its nature distinguished from knowledge properly understood. We aim thus to show how, in Malebranche's philosophy, a properly human domain of the feeling, irreducible to a clear and distinct science, but ascertained by experience, is created. (shrink)

I analyze the complex relations between Pascal and the three figures of Montaigne, Descartes, and St. Augustine, and the relations the first two figures bear to St. Augustine. For Pascal's philosophy, one is in effect a resource , another a way of thinking that he makes his own , and yet another serves as a model . I further investigate Pascal's anti-Augustinism, that is, some of the points of resistance in Pascal against the thought of St. Augustine. Central to this (...) investigation is the famous rapprochement between the cogitos of Augustine and Descartes, which requires a consideration of what, for Pascal, it means "to say the same thing." This analysis leads us to two conclusions: first, Augustine's The City of God should be placed among the number of works that Pascal did not read; second, there are fundamental philosophical reasons for Pascal to reject certain theses central to that work. Above all, there should no longer be any need to assume a merely abstract conception of an unproblematic Augustinianism in Pascal. (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)

The goal of this article is to analyze a metaphysical and theological argument between Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche about the relationship between the eternal truths and God. We try to see whether the criticism that Malebranche expresses in the Elucidations succeeds in demolishing the Cartesian theory of eternal truths that emerges in the Letters from 1630 to Mersenne or if Malebranche, in 1678, were not already disqualified by the arguments that Descartes had supported in those letters.