Nicolas Malebranche
Encyclopedia
Nicolas Malebranche nikɔˈlɑ malˈbrɑ̃ʃ; (6 August 1638 – 13 October 1715) was a French
Oratorian
and rationalist philosopher
. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine
and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God
in every aspect of the world. Malebranche is best known for his doctrines of Vision in God and Occasionalism
.
in 1638, the youngest child of
Nicolas Malebranche, secretary to King Louis XIII of France
, and
Catherine de Lauzon, sister of a Jean de Lauson, Governor of New France
. Because
of a malformed spine, Malebranche received his elementary education from
a private tutor. He left home at the age of sixteen to pursue a
course of philosophy at the Collège de la Marche, and subsequently to study theology
at the Collège de Sorbonne
, both colleges from the University of Paris
. He eventually left the Sorbonne, having rejected scholasticism
, and entered the Oratory in 1660. There, he devoted himself to ecclesiastical history
, linguistics
, the Bible
, and the works of Saint Augustine. Malebranche was ordained a priest in 1664.
In 1664, Malebranche first read Descartes' Treatise on Man, an account of the physiology
of the human body. Malebranche’s biographer, Father Yves André reported that Malebranche was moved by Descartes’ book because it allowed him to view the natural world without Aristotelian
scholasticism. Malebranche spent the next decade studying the Cartesian system.
and on how to avoid such mistakes. Most importantly, in the third book, which discussed pure understanding, he defended a claim that the ideas through which we perceive objects exist in God.
Malebranche's first critic was the Abbé Simon Foucher
, who attacked the Search even before its second volume had been published. Malebranche replied in a short preface added to that second volume, and then, in the 1678 third edition, he added 50% to the already considerable size of the book with a sequence of (eventually) seventeen Elucidations. These responded to further criticisms, but they also expanded on the original arguments, and developed them in new ways. In the Tenth Elucidation, for instance, Malebranche introduced his theory of "intelligible extension", a single, archetypal idea of extension into which the ideas of all particular kinds of bodies could be jointly resolved. In others, Malebranche placed a greater emphasis than he had previously done on his occasionalist account of causation, and particularly on his contention that God acted for the most part through "general volitions" and only rarely, as in the case of miracles, through "particular volitions".
Malebranche expanded on this last point in 1680 when he published Treatise on Nature and Grace. Here, he made it explicit that the generality of the laws whereby God regulated His behaviour extended not only to His activity in the natural world but also applied to His gift of grace
to human beings. The book was attacked by fellow Cartesian philosopher, Antoine Arnauld
, and, although Arnauld's initial concerns were theological ones, the bitter dispute which ensued very quickly branched out into most other areas of their respective systems. Over the next few years, the two men wrote enough polemics against one other to fill four volumes of Malebranche's collected works and three of Arnauld's. Arnauld's supporters managed to persuade the Roman Catholic Church to place Nature and Grace on its Index of Prohibited Books in 1690, and it was followed there by the Search nineteen years later. (Ironically, the Index already contained several works by the Jansenist Arnauld himself). Other critics with whom Malebranche entered into significant discussion include another fellow Cartesian, Pierre Sylvain Regis, as well as Dortous de Mairan. De Mairan was sympathetic to the views of Baruch Spinoza
, and felt that he had found similar views in his reading of Malebranche: Malebranche assiduously resisted such an association.
, Malebranche held that humans attain knowledge through ideas – immaterial representations present to the mind. But whereas Descartes believed ideas are mental entities, Malebranche argued that all ideas exist only in God. These ideas, therefore, are uncreated and independent of finite minds. When we access them intellectually, we apprehend objective truth. Malebranche defined "truth
" as a relation between ideas: since these ideas are in God, they are eternal and immutable, and consequently the only truths worthy of the name will themselves be eternal and immutable. Malebranche divided these relations between ideas into two categories: relations of magnitude and relations of quality or perfection. The former constitute "speculative" truths, such as those of geometry, while the latter constitute the "practical" truths of ethics. Ethical principles
, for Malebranche, are therefore divine in their foundation, universal in their application, and to be discovered by intellectual contemplation, just as geometrical principles are.
With regard to this account of intellectual knowledge, Malebranche was more or less following Saint Augustine. His great innovation was to explain how these same divine ideas could also serve as the immediate objects of human minds in sensual perception. The problem there is that the divine ideas are universal
, whereas all perception seems to be of particulars. Malebranche's solution was to suggest that, whereas the mind's intellectual conception of these ideas is pure and direct, its sensual perception of them will be modified by "sensations". These sensations, unlike the ideas, are indeed proper to individual created minds, and subsist as modes thereof. The idea will represent only the geometrical or mechanic
al properties of bodies (size, shape, motion), while the sensation will consist in colour or some other sensible quality. The latter will limit the mind's apprehension of the former in such a manner as to make it represent a particular individual to that mind. To a different mind, one with a different sensation, the same idea could represent a different individual of the same general kind. In the Dialogues On Metaphysics And Religion (dialogue 1), Malebranche added that the same basic structure can also account for (the mental as opposed to the physiological element in) imagination, in this case where the idea only "lightly touches" the mind.
CRITICAL SUMMARY
Malebranche was strongly influenced by Descartes but did not accept his philosophy uncritically. He is noted particularly for his view that we see all things in God and for his adoption of psycho-physical parallelism and 'occasionalism' to deal with the problem of interaction between mind and body. However, his attribution of epistemological and explanatory primacy to God leads to difficulties.
(1) If we see all things in God in the sense that He puts the ideas into our minds we can have no direct knowledge of the external world. We can appeal to clear and distinct ideas as a criterion for the veridicality of judgements about physical things, but it is God who is ultimately responsible for our ideas.
(2) If all things are under the direct control of God — subject to His will, what of human freedom? Malebranche's view that we have freedom to choose but only in relation to finite goods is not convincing, denying as it does the possibility of resistance of movement towards God as the universal good.
(3) In so far as God is not to be identified with the archetypal eternal truths in his mind Malebranche is not a pantheist. But, as in mediaeval philosophy, this gives rise to the problem of reconciling God's freedom with His supposed immutability.
(4) God is central to Malebranche's philosophy. However, his 'vision' of all things in God needs to be supported by rational proof. Unfortunately he offers only the Cartesian version of the ontological argument; and this of course is open to the standard objections.
is his solution to the problem of evil
. Although he conceded that God had the power to create a more perfect world, free from all defects, such a world would have necessitated a greater complexity in divine ways. Thus, God produces the natural evils that follow from simple laws not because he wills those particular effects, but because he wills a world that best reflects his wisdom by achieving the best possible balance between the intrinsic perfection of the work and the simplicity and generality of its laws.
in his description of intellectual
knowledge
, in his approach to mind-body problems he began as a follower of Descartes. But in contrast to Descartes, who considered it possible to form a clear and distinct idea of the mind, Malebranche argues in the Dialogues on Metaphysics, a dialogue between Theodore and Aristes, that we do not have a complete conception of the powers of the mind, and thus no clear conception of the nature of the mind.
This leads Theodore to declare that 'I am not my own light to myself'; the nature of our own minds is highly obscure. What is more, with regard to psycho-physical interaction, Malebranche argues that body could not act on mind, nor mind on body. The only active power (hence the only efficient cause of change in the world) is God. When I will that my arm should rise, my volition is the "occasion" or the "occasional cause" of the movement of my arm; the efficient cause of both my volition and the movement of my arm is God. Malebranche's doctrine, which could be found in contemporary commentaries on Aristotle, and which first appeared in certain Arab philosophers, is therefore called "occasionalism".
is the view that there are no efficient causes in the full sense other than God. Created things are at best "occasions" for divine activity. Bodies and minds act neither on themselves nor on each other; God alone brings about all the phenomena of nature and the mind. Changes occurring in created things will exhibit regularities (and will thus satisfy a Humean definition of causation) because God in creating the world, observes what Malebranche calls "order": he binds himself to act according to laws of nature chosen in accordance with his general will that the world be as good as possible, and thus (for example) that the laws be simple and few in number.
In particular, there will be laws governing what we would customarily call the "interaction" of body and mind, so that similar movements in the body will "occasion" similar ideas in the mind. That relation has some features of the causal relation (it satisfies, for example, universal conditionals of the form "Whenever C occurs, E occurs"). But in reality both the idea in the mind and the movement in the body are caused by God.
, working within a broadly Cartesian framework but nevertheless prepared to depart from Descartes where necessary. In 1699, he delivered an address to the Académie Royale des Sciences on the nature of light
and color
, wherein he argued that different colors resulted out of different frequencies in the pressure vibrations of subtle matter, much as different musical tones derived from different frequencies in the vibrations of air. His theory was presented as a corrective to Descartes' view, rather than a refutation thereof, but it has important parallels with the rival optical theory of Isaac Newton
. Newton had already developed his position some thirty years earlier, but Malebranche probably would not have been aware of it until it was finally published in the Opticks
of 1704, or, more likely, in its Latin translation of 1706. When Malebranche revised his 1699 paper for inclusion as the Sixteenth Elucidation of the 1712 edition of The Search After Truth, he inserted a number of references to "Newton's excellent work".
In addition, Malebranche wrote on the laws of motion
, a topic he discussed extensively with Leibniz. He also wrote on mathematics
and, although he made no major mathematical discoveries of his own, he was instrumental in introducing and disseminating the contributions of Descartes and Leibniz in France. Malbranche introduced l'Hospital
to Johann Bernoulli
, with the ultimate result being the publication of the first textbook in infinitesimal calculus
.
Malebranche also developed an original theory related to preformationism
, postulating that each embryo probably contained even smaller embryos ad infinitum
, like a Matryoshka doll
. According to Malebranche, "an infinite series of plants and animals were contained within the seed or the egg, but only naturalists with sufficient skill and experience could detect their presence." (Magner 158-9)
Pierre Bayle
regarded Malebranche as "one of the greatest philosophers of this age" (though, admittedly, not as the greatest, as is often reported). In note H to his "Zeno of Elea
" article, Bayle discussed Malebranche's views on material substance with particular approval. Occasionalism and the vision in God seem to make the real existence of material substance redundant. Not only is it is not directly perceivable, but it cannot actually affect us or anything else in any way at all. Descartes had also maintained that matter was not directly perceivable, but he had argued that the veracity of God could support a proof of its certain existence. Malebranche, however, weakened Descartes' argument, concluding that, from a philosophical point of view, its existence could only be shown to be probable. Bayle pushed even further down this same path, thereby laying much of the ground work for the immaterialism of George Berkeley
. Berkeley, influenced both by Bayle and directly by Malebranche himself, simply took the final step to a full denial of the existence of material substance. (Arthur Collier
, who was also influenced directly by Malebranche, and by Norris, made the same move at around the same time as Berkeley did, but, it would appear, entirely independently of him.) Berkeley, admittedly, did reject the theory of vision in God. "It is evident", he insisted, "that the things I perceive are my own ideas." But he was influenced by Malebranche's occasionalism, even though he excluded the activity of created minds from its domain. In addition, Berkeley agreed with Malebranche, against Descartes
, that we could not achieve a clear idea of the mind itself. John Locke
had also argued for this, but he had made no distinction between minds and bodies on this point, whereas both Berkeley and Malebranche maintained (each in his own way) that we could have ideas of bodies but not of minds.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(who met Malebranche in Paris in about 1675 and corresponded with him thereafter) also rejected the vision in God, and his theory of pre-established harmony
was designed as a new alternative to occasionalism as well as to the more traditional theory of efficient causal interaction. However, in his own theodicy
, even if it was somewhat more elaborate than Malebranche's, he did at least agree with Malebranche's fundamental contention that the simplicity of God's ways had to be given as much regard as the world's perfection.
David Hume
supported and drew upon Malebranche's negative arguments to show that no genuine causal connections could be conceived between distinct mundane entities. However, when it came to finding a positive replacement for such causal connections, he turned inwards to the workings of the human mind, instead of turning upwards to God. With regard to this second half of Malebranche's occasionalism, Hume wrote:
Hume's empiricist epistemology led him to distrust Malebranche's confidence in discovering abstruse metaphysical
truths through an intellectual union with God. Likewise, Locke felt that Malebranche's metaphysical speculations lacked a proper foundation, and, though ingenious, were ultimately unintelligible. In a somewhat similar manner, Arthur Schopenhauer
regarded the theory of vision in God as "explaining something unknown by something even more unknown."
Locke withheld his "An Examination of P[ère] Malebranche's Opinion Of Seeing All Things In God" from publication, "because he looked upon it to be an opinion that would not spread but was like to die of itself, or at least to do no great harm." Much as Locke predicted, Malebranche's reputation outside France (where he always enjoyed high esteem) did begin to diminish during the 18th century, and remained low thereafter. However, over the last three or four decades, Malebranche's work has drawn renewed and ever-increasing interest. Several of his works have been translated into English for the first time, as scholars have been reassessing his ideas. Many have begun to argue that the originality and unity of his philosophical system merits him a place alongside such figures as Descartes, Spinoza
, and Leibniz.
The Thomas Taylor translation of the Search (1694; second edition 1700) includes material not contained in the Lennon and Olscamp edition (which is based on the 1712 version of the text). It is bound with Malebranche's Defence against the Accusation of M. de la Ville, which has not been available in English at all since the seventeenth century. The Treatise of Nature and Grace is also included in the same volume. Rival translations of all three of these works were also published by Richard Sault
in 1694-95. In addition, the Conversations chrétiennes were translated in 1695 as Christian Conferences... to which is added, Meditations on Humility and Repentance: this work has also been unavailable in English since the seventeenth century.
The standard edition of Malebranche's works in French is the Oeuvres Complètes, ed. André Robinet, twenty volumes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958–78).
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Oratorian
Oratory of Jesus
The Society of the Oratory of Jesus , also known as French Oratory, is a catholic Congregation founded in 1611 in Paris by Pierre de Bérulle...
and rationalist philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
in every aspect of the world. Malebranche is best known for his doctrines of Vision in God and Occasionalism
Occasionalism
Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God...
.
Early years
Nicolas Malebranche was born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1638, the youngest child of
Nicolas Malebranche, secretary to King Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
, and
Catherine de Lauzon, sister of a Jean de Lauson, Governor of New France
Governor of New France
The Governor of New France was the viceroy of the King of France in North America. A French noble, he was appointed to govern the colonies of New France, which included Canada, Acadia and Louisiana. The residence of the Governor was at the Château St-Louis in the capital of Quebec City...
. Because
of a malformed spine, Malebranche received his elementary education from
a private tutor. He left home at the age of sixteen to pursue a
course of philosophy at the Collège de la Marche, and subsequently to study theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the Collège de Sorbonne
Collège de Sorbonne
The Collège de Sorbonne was a theological college of the University of Paris, founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon, after whom it is named. With the rest of the Paris colleges, it was suppressed during the French Revolution. It was restored in 1808 but finally closed in 1882. The name Sorbonne...
, both colleges from the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. He eventually left the Sorbonne, having rejected scholasticism
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
, and entered the Oratory in 1660. There, he devoted himself to ecclesiastical history
Ecclesiastical History
Ecclesiastical History or ecclesiastical history may refer to:*Ecclesiastical history *Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by Bede*Church History , pioneer work on the Christian Church by Eusebius of Caesarea...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, and the works of Saint Augustine. Malebranche was ordained a priest in 1664.
In 1664, Malebranche first read Descartes' Treatise on Man, an account of the physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
of the human body. Malebranche’s biographer, Father Yves André reported that Malebranche was moved by Descartes’ book because it allowed him to view the natural world without Aristotelian
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
scholasticism. Malebranche spent the next decade studying the Cartesian system.
Philosophical career
In 1674-75, Malebranche published the two volumes of his first and most extensive philosophical work. Entitled Concerning the Search after Truth. In which is treated the nature of the human mind and the use that must be made of it to avoid error in the sciences, the book laid the foundation for Malebranche’s philosophical reputation and ideas. It dealt with the causes of human errorError
The word error entails different meanings and usages relative to how it is conceptually applied. The concrete meaning of the Latin word "error" is "wandering" or "straying". Unlike an illusion, an error or a mistake can sometimes be dispelled through knowledge...
and on how to avoid such mistakes. Most importantly, in the third book, which discussed pure understanding, he defended a claim that the ideas through which we perceive objects exist in God.
Malebranche's first critic was the Abbé Simon Foucher
Simon Foucher
Simon Foucher was a French polemic philosopher. His philosophical standpoint was one of Academic skepticism: he did not agree with dogmatism, but didn't resort to Pyrrhonism, either.-Life:...
, who attacked the Search even before its second volume had been published. Malebranche replied in a short preface added to that second volume, and then, in the 1678 third edition, he added 50% to the already considerable size of the book with a sequence of (eventually) seventeen Elucidations. These responded to further criticisms, but they also expanded on the original arguments, and developed them in new ways. In the Tenth Elucidation, for instance, Malebranche introduced his theory of "intelligible extension", a single, archetypal idea of extension into which the ideas of all particular kinds of bodies could be jointly resolved. In others, Malebranche placed a greater emphasis than he had previously done on his occasionalist account of causation, and particularly on his contention that God acted for the most part through "general volitions" and only rarely, as in the case of miracles, through "particular volitions".
Malebranche expanded on this last point in 1680 when he published Treatise on Nature and Grace. Here, he made it explicit that the generality of the laws whereby God regulated His behaviour extended not only to His activity in the natural world but also applied to His gift of grace
Divine grace
In Christian theology, grace is God’s gift of God’s self to humankind. It is understood by Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to man - "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved" - that takes the form of divine favour, love and clemency. It is an attribute of God that is most...
to human beings. The book was attacked by fellow Cartesian philosopher, Antoine Arnauld
Antoine Arnauld
Antoine Arnauld — le Grand as contemporaries called him, to distinguish him from his father — was a French Roman Catholic theologian, philosopher, and mathematician...
, and, although Arnauld's initial concerns were theological ones, the bitter dispute which ensued very quickly branched out into most other areas of their respective systems. Over the next few years, the two men wrote enough polemics against one other to fill four volumes of Malebranche's collected works and three of Arnauld's. Arnauld's supporters managed to persuade the Roman Catholic Church to place Nature and Grace on its Index of Prohibited Books in 1690, and it was followed there by the Search nineteen years later. (Ironically, the Index already contained several works by the Jansenist Arnauld himself). Other critics with whom Malebranche entered into significant discussion include another fellow Cartesian, Pierre Sylvain Regis, as well as Dortous de Mairan. De Mairan was sympathetic to the views of Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, and felt that he had found similar views in his reading of Malebranche: Malebranche assiduously resisted such an association.
Timeline
- 1638 - Born in Paris to Nicolas Malebranche and Catherine de Lauzon.
- 1654 - Enters Collège de la Marche and later the Sorbonne to study philosophy and theology.
- 1660 - Ordained as a member of the Augustinian Oratory.
- 1664 - First reads Descartes' Treatise on Man and spends the next ten years studying philosophy.
- 1674-75 - Publishes The Search After Truth.
- 1678 - Adds Elucidations to new edition of the Search.
- 1680 - Publishes Treatise Of Nature And Grace.
- 1683 - Publishes Christian and Metaphysical Meditations. Arnauld publishes On True And False Ideas, the opening salvo in their dispute.
- 1684 - Publishes Treatise On Ethics.
- 1688 - Publishes Dialogues On Metaphysics And Religion.
- 1690 - Treatise Of Nature And Grace is placed on the Index of Prohibited Books.
- 1694 - Death of Arnauld.
- 1708—Publishes Dialogue Between A Christian Philosopher And A Chinese Philosopher.
- 1709 - The Search After Truth is also placed on the Index.
- 1713-14 - Correspondence with Dortous de Mairan on Spinozism.
- 1715 - Malebranche dies.
Vision in God
Just as all human action (along with the action of any other creature) is entirely dependent on God, so too is all human cognition. Malebranche argued that human knowledge is dependent on divine understanding in a way analogous to that in which the motion of bodies is dependent on divine will. Like René DescartesRené Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, Malebranche held that humans attain knowledge through ideas – immaterial representations present to the mind. But whereas Descartes believed ideas are mental entities, Malebranche argued that all ideas exist only in God. These ideas, therefore, are uncreated and independent of finite minds. When we access them intellectually, we apprehend objective truth. Malebranche defined "truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
" as a relation between ideas: since these ideas are in God, they are eternal and immutable, and consequently the only truths worthy of the name will themselves be eternal and immutable. Malebranche divided these relations between ideas into two categories: relations of magnitude and relations of quality or perfection. The former constitute "speculative" truths, such as those of geometry, while the latter constitute the "practical" truths of ethics. Ethical principles
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, for Malebranche, are therefore divine in their foundation, universal in their application, and to be discovered by intellectual contemplation, just as geometrical principles are.
With regard to this account of intellectual knowledge, Malebranche was more or less following Saint Augustine. His great innovation was to explain how these same divine ideas could also serve as the immediate objects of human minds in sensual perception. The problem there is that the divine ideas are universal
Universal (metaphysics)
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For example, suppose there are two chairs in a room, each of...
, whereas all perception seems to be of particulars. Malebranche's solution was to suggest that, whereas the mind's intellectual conception of these ideas is pure and direct, its sensual perception of them will be modified by "sensations". These sensations, unlike the ideas, are indeed proper to individual created minds, and subsist as modes thereof. The idea will represent only the geometrical or mechanic
Mechanic
A mechanic is a craftsman or technician who uses tools to build or repair machinery.Many mechanics are specialized in a particular field such as auto mechanics, bicycle mechanics, motorcycle mechanics, boiler mechanics, general mechanics, industrial maintenance mechanics , air conditioning and...
al properties of bodies (size, shape, motion), while the sensation will consist in colour or some other sensible quality. The latter will limit the mind's apprehension of the former in such a manner as to make it represent a particular individual to that mind. To a different mind, one with a different sensation, the same idea could represent a different individual of the same general kind. In the Dialogues On Metaphysics And Religion (dialogue 1), Malebranche added that the same basic structure can also account for (the mental as opposed to the physiological element in) imagination, in this case where the idea only "lightly touches" the mind.
CRITICAL SUMMARY
Malebranche was strongly influenced by Descartes but did not accept his philosophy uncritically. He is noted particularly for his view that we see all things in God and for his adoption of psycho-physical parallelism and 'occasionalism' to deal with the problem of interaction between mind and body. However, his attribution of epistemological and explanatory primacy to God leads to difficulties.
(1) If we see all things in God in the sense that He puts the ideas into our minds we can have no direct knowledge of the external world. We can appeal to clear and distinct ideas as a criterion for the veridicality of judgements about physical things, but it is God who is ultimately responsible for our ideas.
(2) If all things are under the direct control of God — subject to His will, what of human freedom? Malebranche's view that we have freedom to choose but only in relation to finite goods is not convincing, denying as it does the possibility of resistance of movement towards God as the universal good.
(3) In so far as God is not to be identified with the archetypal eternal truths in his mind Malebranche is not a pantheist. But, as in mediaeval philosophy, this gives rise to the problem of reconciling God's freedom with His supposed immutability.
(4) God is central to Malebranche's philosophy. However, his 'vision' of all things in God needs to be supported by rational proof. Unfortunately he offers only the Cartesian version of the ontological argument; and this of course is open to the standard objections.
Theodicy
Malebranche's theodicyTheodicy
Theodicy is a theological and philosophical study which attempts to prove God's intrinsic or foundational nature of omnibenevolence , omniscience , and omnipotence . Theodicy is usually concerned with the God of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, due to the relevant...
is his solution to the problem of evil
Problem of evil
In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...
. Although he conceded that God had the power to create a more perfect world, free from all defects, such a world would have necessitated a greater complexity in divine ways. Thus, God produces the natural evils that follow from simple laws not because he wills those particular effects, but because he wills a world that best reflects his wisdom by achieving the best possible balance between the intrinsic perfection of the work and the simplicity and generality of its laws.
Malebranche's dualism
Whereas Malebranche followed AugustineAugustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
in his description of intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
, in his approach to mind-body problems he began as a follower of Descartes. But in contrast to Descartes, who considered it possible to form a clear and distinct idea of the mind, Malebranche argues in the Dialogues on Metaphysics, a dialogue between Theodore and Aristes, that we do not have a complete conception of the powers of the mind, and thus no clear conception of the nature of the mind.
I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I willWill (philosophy)Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
, that I have sensory awarenessSensation and perception psychologyIn psychology, sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses in human and animal systems, such as vision, auditory, vestibular, and pain senses. These topics are considered part of psychology, and not anatomy or physiology, because processes in the brain so greatly affect the...
, that I sufferSufferTo suffer is to undergo suffering.Suffer may also refer to:* Suffer , from Bad Religion* "Suffer", a song by The Smashing Pumpkins from their album Gish.* "Suffer", a song by Suicide Silence from their album No Time to Bleed....
, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledgeKnowledgeKnowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thoughtThought"Thought" generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination...
, my sensations, my passionPassions (philosophy)Passion, or the passions, is a philosophical concept. It is different from popular connotations of passion, which are associated with notions of romance, and which is generally seen as a positive emotion. The philosophical notion, in contrast, is identified with an innate or biologically driven...
s, or my painPainPain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...
- or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things [...] I have no idea whatever of my soul.
This leads Theodore to declare that 'I am not my own light to myself'; the nature of our own minds is highly obscure. What is more, with regard to psycho-physical interaction, Malebranche argues that body could not act on mind, nor mind on body. The only active power (hence the only efficient cause of change in the world) is God. When I will that my arm should rise, my volition is the "occasion" or the "occasional cause" of the movement of my arm; the efficient cause of both my volition and the movement of my arm is God. Malebranche's doctrine, which could be found in contemporary commentaries on Aristotle, and which first appeared in certain Arab philosophers, is therefore called "occasionalism".
Occasionalism
In general, occasionalismOccasionalism
Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God...
is the view that there are no efficient causes in the full sense other than God. Created things are at best "occasions" for divine activity. Bodies and minds act neither on themselves nor on each other; God alone brings about all the phenomena of nature and the mind. Changes occurring in created things will exhibit regularities (and will thus satisfy a Humean definition of causation) because God in creating the world, observes what Malebranche calls "order": he binds himself to act according to laws of nature chosen in accordance with his general will that the world be as good as possible, and thus (for example) that the laws be simple and few in number.
In particular, there will be laws governing what we would customarily call the "interaction" of body and mind, so that similar movements in the body will "occasion" similar ideas in the mind. That relation has some features of the causal relation (it satisfies, for example, universal conditionals of the form "Whenever C occurs, E occurs"). But in reality both the idea in the mind and the movement in the body are caused by God.
Scientific contributions
Although better known for his philosophical work, Malebranche made some notable contributions to physicsPhysics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, working within a broadly Cartesian framework but nevertheless prepared to depart from Descartes where necessary. In 1699, he delivered an address to the Académie Royale des Sciences on the nature of light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
and color
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
, wherein he argued that different colors resulted out of different frequencies in the pressure vibrations of subtle matter, much as different musical tones derived from different frequencies in the vibrations of air. His theory was presented as a corrective to Descartes' view, rather than a refutation thereof, but it has important parallels with the rival optical theory of Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
. Newton had already developed his position some thirty years earlier, but Malebranche probably would not have been aware of it until it was finally published in the Opticks
Opticks
Opticks is a book written by English physicist Isaac Newton that was released to the public in 1704. It is about optics and the refraction of light, and is considered one of the great works of science in history...
of 1704, or, more likely, in its Latin translation of 1706. When Malebranche revised his 1699 paper for inclusion as the Sixteenth Elucidation of the 1712 edition of The Search After Truth, he inserted a number of references to "Newton's excellent work".
In addition, Malebranche wrote on the laws of motion
Laws of motion
In physics, a number of noted theories of the motion of objects have developed. Among the best-known are:* Classical mechanics** Newton's laws of motion**Euler's laws**Cauchy's equations of motion** Kepler's laws of planetary motion ** General relativity...
, a topic he discussed extensively with Leibniz. He also wrote on mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and, although he made no major mathematical discoveries of his own, he was instrumental in introducing and disseminating the contributions of Descartes and Leibniz in France. Malbranche introduced l'Hospital
Guillaume de l'Hôpital
Guillaume François Antoine, Marquis de l'Hôpital was a French mathematician. His name is firmly associated with l'Hôpital's rule for calculating limits involving indeterminate forms 0/0 and ∞/∞...
to Johann Bernoulli
Johann Bernoulli
Johann Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family...
, with the ultimate result being the publication of the first textbook in infinitesimal calculus
Infinitesimal calculus
Infinitesimal calculus is the part of mathematics concerned with finding slope of curves, areas under curves, minima and maxima, and other geometric and analytic problems. It was independently developed by Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton starting in the 1660s...
.
Malebranche also developed an original theory related to preformationism
Preformationism
In the history of biology, preformationism is either the specific contention that all organisms were created at the same time, and that succeeding generations grow from homunculi, animalcules, or other fully formed but miniature versions of themselves that have existed since the beginning of...
, postulating that each embryo probably contained even smaller embryos ad infinitum
Ad infinitum
Ad infinitum is a Latin phrase meaning "to infinity."In context, it usually means "continue forever, without limit" and thus can be used to describe a non-terminating process, a non-terminating repeating process, or a set of instructions to be repeated "forever," among other uses...
, like a Matryoshka doll
Matryoshka doll
A matryoshka doll is a Russian nesting doll which is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The first Russian nested doll set was carved in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo...
. According to Malebranche, "an infinite series of plants and animals were contained within the seed or the egg, but only naturalists with sufficient skill and experience could detect their presence." (Magner 158-9)
Legacy
Aside, perhaps, from John Norris (who, in any case, drew at least as much from Malebranche's own sources, primarily Saint Augustine, as he did from Malebranche himself), there are few if any philosophers who can be considered faithful followers of Malebranche in all matters. He was, however, held in widespread high regard within his own lifetime and for some time afterwards, and the influence of certain of his ideas can be discerned in the works of several important figures.Pierre Bayle
Pierre Bayle
Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher and writer best known for his seminal work the Historical and Critical Dictionary, published beginning in 1695....
regarded Malebranche as "one of the greatest philosophers of this age" (though, admittedly, not as the greatest, as is often reported). In note H to his "Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell has described as "immeasurably subtle and profound".- Life...
" article, Bayle discussed Malebranche's views on material substance with particular approval. Occasionalism and the vision in God seem to make the real existence of material substance redundant. Not only is it is not directly perceivable, but it cannot actually affect us or anything else in any way at all. Descartes had also maintained that matter was not directly perceivable, but he had argued that the veracity of God could support a proof of its certain existence. Malebranche, however, weakened Descartes' argument, concluding that, from a philosophical point of view, its existence could only be shown to be probable. Bayle pushed even further down this same path, thereby laying much of the ground work for the immaterialism of George Berkeley
George Berkeley
George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...
. Berkeley, influenced both by Bayle and directly by Malebranche himself, simply took the final step to a full denial of the existence of material substance. (Arthur Collier
Arthur Collier
Arthur Collier was an English Anglican priest and philosopher.-Early life:Collier was born at the rectory of Steeple Langford, Wiltshire...
, who was also influenced directly by Malebranche, and by Norris, made the same move at around the same time as Berkeley did, but, it would appear, entirely independently of him.) Berkeley, admittedly, did reject the theory of vision in God. "It is evident", he insisted, "that the things I perceive are my own ideas." But he was influenced by Malebranche's occasionalism, even though he excluded the activity of created minds from its domain. In addition, Berkeley agreed with Malebranche, against Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, that we could not achieve a clear idea of the mind itself. John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
had also argued for this, but he had made no distinction between minds and bodies on this point, whereas both Berkeley and Malebranche maintained (each in his own way) that we could have ideas of bodies but not of minds.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
(who met Malebranche in Paris in about 1675 and corresponded with him thereafter) also rejected the vision in God, and his theory of pre-established harmony
Pre-established harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony is a philosophical theory about causation under which every "substance" only affects itself, but all the substances in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to...
was designed as a new alternative to occasionalism as well as to the more traditional theory of efficient causal interaction. However, in his own theodicy
Theodicy
Theodicy is a theological and philosophical study which attempts to prove God's intrinsic or foundational nature of omnibenevolence , omniscience , and omnipotence . Theodicy is usually concerned with the God of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, due to the relevant...
, even if it was somewhat more elaborate than Malebranche's, he did at least agree with Malebranche's fundamental contention that the simplicity of God's ways had to be given as much regard as the world's perfection.
David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
supported and drew upon Malebranche's negative arguments to show that no genuine causal connections could be conceived between distinct mundane entities. However, when it came to finding a positive replacement for such causal connections, he turned inwards to the workings of the human mind, instead of turning upwards to God. With regard to this second half of Malebranche's occasionalism, Hume wrote:
- "We are got into fairy land, long ere we have reached the last steps of our theory... Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses."
Hume's empiricist epistemology led him to distrust Malebranche's confidence in discovering abstruse metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
truths through an intellectual union with God. Likewise, Locke felt that Malebranche's metaphysical speculations lacked a proper foundation, and, though ingenious, were ultimately unintelligible. In a somewhat similar manner, Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
regarded the theory of vision in God as "explaining something unknown by something even more unknown."
Locke withheld his "An Examination of P[ère] Malebranche's Opinion Of Seeing All Things In God" from publication, "because he looked upon it to be an opinion that would not spread but was like to die of itself, or at least to do no great harm." Much as Locke predicted, Malebranche's reputation outside France (where he always enjoyed high esteem) did begin to diminish during the 18th century, and remained low thereafter. However, over the last three or four decades, Malebranche's work has drawn renewed and ever-increasing interest. Several of his works have been translated into English for the first time, as scholars have been reassessing his ideas. Many have begun to argue that the originality and unity of his philosophical system merits him a place alongside such figures as Descartes, Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, and Leibniz.
Works of Malebranche in English
- The Search after Truth and Elucidations, eds. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). First published, with Philosophical Commentary, by Ohio State University Press, 1980).
- Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, eds. Nicholas Jolley and David Scott. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Supersedes 1923 translation by Morris Ginsberg.
- Treatise on Nature and Grace, tr. Patrick Riley. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
- Philosophical Selections, ed. Steven Nadler. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992). Contains selections (some in alternative translations) from above three works.
- Treatise on Ethics, tr. Craig Walton. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993).
- Dialogue between a Christian Philosopher and a Chinese Philosopher on the Existence and Nature of God, tr. Dominick A. Iorio. (University Press of America, 1980).
- Correspondence with Dortous de Mairan, in Malebranche's First and Last Critics, tr. Richard A. Watson and Marjorie Grene. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995).
The Thomas Taylor translation of the Search (1694; second edition 1700) includes material not contained in the Lennon and Olscamp edition (which is based on the 1712 version of the text). It is bound with Malebranche's Defence against the Accusation of M. de la Ville, which has not been available in English at all since the seventeenth century. The Treatise of Nature and Grace is also included in the same volume. Rival translations of all three of these works were also published by Richard Sault
Richard Sault
Richard Sault was an Englishmathematician, editor and translator, one of The Athenian Society. On the strength of his Second Spira he is also now credited as a Christian Cartesian philosopher.-Life:...
in 1694-95. In addition, the Conversations chrétiennes were translated in 1695 as Christian Conferences... to which is added, Meditations on Humility and Repentance: this work has also been unavailable in English since the seventeenth century.
The standard edition of Malebranche's works in French is the Oeuvres Complètes, ed. André Robinet, twenty volumes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958–78).
Secondary Works
- Alquié, FerdinandFerdinand AlquiéFerdinand Alquié was a French philosopher and member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques.He taught at the lycée Louis-le-Grand and at the Sorbonne university. He was an instructor of Gilles Deleuze, who, according to Michael Hardt, charged him of drawing on biology, psychology, and...
. Le cartésianisme de Malebranche (Paris: J. Vrin, 1974). - Fabiani, Paolo. The philosophy of the imagination in Vico and Malebranche (Florence: Florence University Press, italian edition 2002).
- Fabiani, Paolo. The philosophy of the imagination in Vico and Malebranche (Florence: Florence University Press, english edition 2009).
- Lewin, James. Die Lehre von den Ideen bei Malebranche (Halle: E. Karras, 1912).
- Gueroult, MartialMartial GuéroultMartial Guéroult was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy, specialized in 17th century philosophy. His work was characterized by a close attention to history of philosophy, which he considered as noble as philosophy itself, and a strong demand for systematicity...
. Malebranche (three volumes, Paris: Aubier, 1955–59). - McCracken, Charles. Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
- Nadler, StevenSteven NadlerSteven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy, and Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.Nadler received his PhD from Columbia University in 1986...
. Malebranche & Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). - Nadler, Steven, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- Radner, Daisie. Malebranche: A Study of a Cartesian System (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978).
- Robinet, André. Système et existence dans l'oeuvre de Malebranche (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965).
- Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. Nicolas Malebranche (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963).
- Schmaltz, TadTad SchmaltzTad M. Schmaltz is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to that, he was a professor of philosophy at Duke University, where he began his teaching career in 1989. He graduated magna cum laude with a BA in philosophy from Kalamazoo College in 1983, received his...
. Malebranche's Theory of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
External links
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
- Malebranche's Dialogues on Metaphysics: A good introduction to his philosophy.