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Intellect and Illumination in Malebranche
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 32, Number 2, April 1994
- pp. 209-224
- 10.1353/hph.1994.0029
- Article
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Intellect and Illumination in Malebranche NICHOLAS JOLLEY ONE OF THE HALLMARKSof Descartes's philosophy is his doctrine that the mind has a faculty of pure intellect. In the Sixth Meditation, for example, Descartes tells us that it is by means of this faculty that the mind is capable of grasping complex geometrical ideas such as that of the chiliagon.' Indeed, Descartes sometimes writes as if the faculty of pure intellect is alone essential to the mind; the faculties of sensation and imagination, by contrast, are contingent powers of the mind which arise from its union and intermixture with the body.* Descartes's commitment to the doctrine of pure intellect is so striking that it has sometimes been taken to be a defining characteristic not merely of the Cartesian but of the whole rationalist tradition. Certainly it is difficult to imagine that any self-professed disciple of Descartes would abandon the doctrine . Yet precisely this is what happened in the case of Descartes's most famous disciple, Malebranche. Malebranche's teaching in this area has been poorly understood in the English-speaking world. One reason for this is that he is known almost exclusively on the basis of The Search after Truth. But despite subsequent revisions, this work is not the best guide to Malebranche's mature thought; in the Search Malebranche is still seeking to establish his own independent philosophical identity. In this paper I shall argue that, under Augustinian influence, Malebranche came to abandon the Cartesian doctrine of pure intellect in favor of a version of divine illumination theory which has no room for it. I shall argue that the disappearance of the Cartesian doctrine left a void in his philosophy which he sought to fill with the puzzling theory of causally efficacious ideas. I shall also argue that, though the motivation for its introduction is , Meditation VI; AT VII 7~-73; CSM II 5o-51. I am grateful to Steven Nadler and to two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ' On thisissueseeM.D.Wilson,Descartes(London: Routledgeand KeganPaul, 1978),2co-~o1. [209] 210 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32"2 APRIL 1994 clear, the doctrine of causally efficacious ideas is subject to at least one serious difficulty which Malebranche does little to resolve. I shall end by suggesting that in his later philosophy of mind Malebranche has more in common with Berkeley than with Cartesian rationalism.3 1. There is no doubt that in his first work, The Search after Truth, Malebranche embraces a Cartesian doctrine of pure intellect. Malebranche's picture of the mind in this work is somewhat complex, but its essential features are familiar to us from Descartes. The mind is a substance whose essence is thought;4 it has two principal faculties, will and understanding.~ The understanding is defined as "the passive faculty of the soul by means of which it receives all the different modifications of which it is capable. ''8 The term "understanding" or "intellect" is to be taken in a broad sense here, for Malebranche tells us that it is through this faculty that the mind both senses and imagines; the senses and the imagination "are nothing but the understanding perceiving objects through the organs of the body."7 Later in the work Malebranche speaks of the "pure understanding " which is defined as "the mind's faculty of knowing external objects without forming corporeal images of them in the brain to represent them. ''s It is by means of this faculty that the mind is aware of intellectual ideas such as the concepts of geometry. Such ideas are not merely objects of abstract thought; they are also involved in our perception of the physical world.9 Even at this stage in his career, however, Malebranche is not a strict Cartesian ; he seeks to find room for at least a version of the Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination. Drawing ultimately on the prologue to St. John's gospel, Malebranche echoes Augustine by insisting that the mind is not a light to itself. 'o sAt this point a caveat should be entered. Although I believe it is possible to speak of Malebranche's development, the issue is...