Philosophical Selections

by Nicolas Malebranche, Steven Nadler (Editor)

These substantial selections from The Search after Truth , Elucidations of the Search after Truth , Dialogues on Metaphysics , and Treatise on Nature and Grace , provide the student of modern philosophy with both a broad view of Malebranche's philosophical system and a detailed picture of his most important doctrines. Malebranche's occasionalism, his theory of knowledge and the 'vision in God', and his writings on theodicy and freedom are solidly represented.

Genres: Philosophy

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

About the author

Nicolas Malebranche 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.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, I read it for a class. I didn't hate it, I don't remember much about it, but I really like the guy's first name.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT SELECTION OF MALEBRANCHE’S WRITINGS

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was a French Oratorian priest and philosopher; some of his other writings are 'The Search after Truth: With Elucidations of The Search after Truth,' 'Treatise on Ethics,' etc.

In the Preface to ‘The Search for Truth,’ Malebranche wrote, “Those who take the trouble to read carefully the work that I am now publishing will, unless I am mistaken, enter into this frame of mind; for in it I demonstrate in several ways that our senses, our imagination, and our passions are altogether useless for discovering the truth and our good, that, on the contrary, they dazzle us and seduce us in every instance, and generally that all the knowledge the mind receives through the body, or on account of some motion occurring in the body, is false and confused in relation to the objects it represents… In this work I combat several errors and especially those most universally received or those that cause a greater disorder of the mind, and I show that these errors are almost all consequences of the mind’s union with the body. In several places I try to make the mind realize its servitude and dependence relative to all sensible things so that it might be awakened from its somnolence and make an effort to free itself.” (Pg. 7)

He states, “It is evident that God … can create minds only to know and love Him, and that He can endow them with no knowledge or love that is not for Him or that does not tend toward Him; but He need not have joined to bodies the minds now joined to them. Hence, the relation that minds have to God is natural, necessary, and absolutely indispensable; but our mind’s relation to our body, although natural to our mind, is neither absolutely necessary not indispensable… Although closely joined to the body, the soul is still joined to God, and even while it receives these lively and confused sensations through the body and is moved by its passions, it is informed of its duty and its disorders by the eternal Truth that presides over its mind. When its body misleads us, God sets it right; when the body flatters it, God castigates it; when the body praises and acclaims it, God afflicts it internally with bitter reproaches and condemns it by the manifestations of a law that is purer and more holy than the law of the flesh it has followed. (Pg. 4-5)

He explains, “we have examined four different ways in which the soul might see external objects… There remains only the fifth, which alone seems to conform to reason and to be most appropriate for exhibiting the dependence that minds have on God in all their thoughts… We should know… that through His presence God is in closer union with our minds, such that He might be said to be the place of minds as space is, in a sense, the place of bodies… the mind can see God’s works in Him, provided that God wills to reveal to it what in Him represents them.” (Pg. 40)

He says, “Only God do we know through Himself, for though there are other spiritual beings besides Him… only He can act on our mind and reveal Himself to it. Only God do we perceive by a direct and immediate perception. Only He can enlighten our mind with His own substance… But while we can see all things in God, it does not follow that we in fact do so---we see in God only the things of which we have ideas, and there are things we perceive without ideas, or know only through sensation.” (Pg. 46-47)

He observes, “To be completely certain of the existence of external bodies, then, it is absolutely necessary to know God, who gives us the sensation of them, and to realize that, since He is infinitely perfect, He cannot deceive us. For if the intelligence that gives us the ideas of all things wanted to amuse itself, so to speak, by representing to us bodies actually existing---even though there were no such objects---it is clear that doing so would not be very difficult for it.” (Pg. 81)

He suggests, “there is such a connection between His will and the motion of all bodies… only His will can move bodies if we wish to state things as we conceive them and not as we sense them. The motor force of bodies … is nothing other than the will of God… A natural cause is therefore not a real and true but only an occasional cause, which determines the Author of nature to act in such and such a manner in such and such a situation.” (Pg. 94) He continues, “But not only bodies are incapable of being the true causes of whatever exists; the most noble minds are in a similar state of impotence. They can sense nothing unless God modifies them. They are incapable of willing anything unless God moves them … toward Himself… for, being capable only of what God makes them do, they can love only the good.” (Pg. 95)

He asserts, “The mind itself does not imaging as much as is imagined. I know that I will and that I will freely; I have no reason to doubt it that is stronger than the inner sensation I have of myself… I deny that my will is the true cause of my arm’s movement, or my minds ideas, and of other things accompanying my volitions… I deny that my will produces my ideas in me, for I do not see even how they could produce them, because my will, which is unable to act or will without knowledge, presupposes my idea and does not produce them. I do not even know precisely what an idea is. I do not know whether they are produced from nothing and whether they return to nothingness as soon as we cease to perceive them.” (Pg. 111)

He states, “bodies… do not have the force to move themselves and that therefore their motor force is but the action of God… always necessarily efficacious, which conserves them successively in different places. For I do not believe that God creates certain beings to make them the motor force of bodies… these beings would need others to move them, and so on to infinity. For only God is at once both motor and immobile.” (Pg. 120)

He continues, “That it is the will of God that moves bodies is a thing that seems indubitable to me… Therefore, the force that this ball I see rolling has is the will of God making it roll; what is it necessary for God to do to stop it now?... Thus, the cessation of the force of motion causes privation that assumes no positive will in God. Thus, to give bodies some force for remaining at rest would be to admit in God a positive will without reason or necessity.” (Pg. 134)

One of the characters in the “Dialogue on Metaphysics” states, “Everything appears to be in opposition in God’s conduct yet nothing is more uniform. Good and evil---I am speaking of physical evil---do not have two principles that differ. It is one God who does everything in accordance with the same laws. But sin brings it about that God, without changing anything in His laws, becomes the righteous avenger of the crimes of sinners… The pricking of my finger informs and warns me---that is right and in conformity with Order. Yet it also hurts me and makes me unhappy… it blurs my ideas, it keeps me from thinking of the true goods---that is certainly a disorder… I suffer, I am unhappy, I am incapable of thinking when I am pricked… There is, then, a manifest contradiction between the certainty of experience and the evidence of Reason. But here is the resolution of the difficulty. Before God, the mind of man has lost its dignity and its excellence. We are no longer such as God made us, and the union of our minds with our bodies has changed to dependence… We are born corrupt and sinners, worthy of divine anger… He no longer wills to be our good or cause of our happiness… His mercy prepares for us a Redeemer through whom we shall have access to Him, association with Him… according to the eternal decree by which He resolved to re-unite all things in our divine Head, God-in-Man, who was predestined from time eternal to be … the sovereign priest of the spiritual Temple where divine Majesty will live eternally. Thus Reason dispels the terrible contradiction which has so strongly moved you.” (Pg. 192-193)

He continues, “You still forget it is God Himself who produces in our souls all the different sensations affecting them on the occasion of changes happening in our bodies and in consequence of general laws for the union of the two substances composing man, laws which are simply the uniform efficacious volitions of the Creator… no more does the soul produce this unpleasant sensation in itself, since it suffers pain in spite of itself. It must be a superior power. It is then God Himself who, by sensations with which He affects us, reveals to us what is happening outside us; I mean, in our bodies and in the bodies surrounding us.” (Pg. 215)

He notes, “God, no doubt, could have made a world more perfect than the one we inhabit. He could, for instance, have made it such that rain, which makes the earth fertile, falls more regularly on plowed lands than in the sea, where it is not as necessary. But in order to make this more perfect world, He would have had to change the simplicity of His ways and multiply the laws of the communication of motion, by which our world subsists, and so there would not have been that proportion between the action of God and His work, which is necessary to determine an infinitely wise Being to act, or, at least, there would not have been the same proportion between the action of God and this so perfect world as there is between the laws of nature and the world we inhabit. For our world, however imperfect one imagines it to be, is founded on laws of motion so simple and natural that it is perfectly worthy of the infinite wisdom of its Author.” (Pg. 260)

This collection is an excellent introduction to this sometimes-overlooked philosopher.

[kloppy · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting. the dialogues are probably the best part (lots of classical socratic "yes theodore. certainly theodore. it's a contradiction in terms that a body should have the power to move itself"). also lots of ragging on Aristotle for being a pagan and worshipping leeks and potatoes

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Malebranche is difficult for me to read because I disagree with what he says more often than not (and most of his ideas are paraphrases of Descartes), but this collection is fairly well done.

His Dialogues on Metaphysics started out fairly easy to read an understand, but they eventually became too convoluted (which I think even he knew, since he revisited many of his earlier arguments through review at various points in the dialogues). Surprisingly, The Search After Truth was easier to comprehend than the dialogues, which is opposite from what I had thought.

I appreciate the translator's choice to put some important original phrases in parentheses next to the translation. This is something that I would have liked for some other philosophers, just because there are some important philosophical phrases that can get lost in translation.

All in all, I am rating the clarity and ease of reading/comprehension that this edition presents to the reader ... and not my own disagreement of Malebranche's philosophies.

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

I disagree with Malebranche so much that we probably would get into a fight if we were ever in the same bar, but this small collection of his work is easy to read and comprehend. I especially enjoyed that they included the original phrasing for important points. This makes it easier to cross-reference with the original text and sometimes things can get lost in translation.

[King Haddock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly did not think I would like Malebranche. But when I read him, I found him to be quite an interesting philosopher, whose ideas actually held a little bit more reason than I would have expected (I was not going to give occassionalism any credit).