Nicolas Malebranche Totally Explained

Everything about Nicolas Malebranche totally explained

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Nicolas Malebranche (August 6, 1638 – October 13, 1715) was a rationalist French 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 most famous for his doctrines of vision in God and occasionalism.

Biography

Early years

Nicolas Malebranche was born in Paris in 1638, the youngest child of Nicolas Malebranche, secretary to King Louis XIII of France, and Catherine de Lauzon, sister of a Viceroy of Canada. Infirm 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.

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 error 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'd 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 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'd 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 - Malebranches dies.

Philosophy

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 Descartes, 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're 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's 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 mechanical 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.

Theodicy

Malebranche's theodicy 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.

Malebranche's dualism

Whereas Malebranche followed Augustine 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 don't 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've of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I've sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I'm - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things [...] I've 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 couldn't 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'll 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".

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 regarded Malebranche as "one of the greatest philosophers of this age" (though, admittedly, not as the greatest, as is often reported. See Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary, article on "Epicurus", note S). 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 isn't directly perceivable, but it can't actually affect us or anything else in any way at all. Descartes had also maintained that matter wasn't directly perceivable, but he'd 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 also 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." (Three Dialogues Between Hylas And Philonous, second dialogue). 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 couldn't achieve a clear idea of the mind itself. Locke had also argued for this, but he'd 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: "We are got into fairy land, long ere we've reached the last steps of our theory... Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses." (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 7, part 1.) 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, Schopenhauer regarded the theory of vision in God as "explaining something unknown by something even more unknown." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real").
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 wouldn't spread but was like to die of itself, or at least to do no great harm." ("Advertisement To The Reader" of Locke's Posthumous Works). 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.

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