rationalist in the Cartesian tradition. But he was also an Oratorian
priest in the Catholic Church. Religious themes pervade his works, and
in several places he clearly affirms his intention to write philosophy
as a Catholic. These religious themes are important for understanding
his philosophy. As a rationalist, Malebranche places great emphasis on
the importance of Reason. However, because he identifies Reason with
the Divine Word, that is, with the Son or Second Person of the
Trinity, his rationalism has features that are not common among other
forms of rationalism. For example, Reason is a divine person and
therefore capable of a wide range of action. In tracing out some of
the consequences of this identification of Reason with the Divine
Word, the student of Malebranche is quickly immersed in a wide range
of his favorite theological and philosophical ideas. The present
article will explore three theological ideas which play a special role
in Malebranche's philosophical thought: the Trinity, Original Sin, and
the Incarnation.
1. A Trinitarian Account of Reason
The features of the doctrine of the Trinity that are of the greatest
importance for understanding Malebranche's philosophical views are the
following:
(1) There are three persons of the Godhead, usually known as the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Malebranche, however, follows
the opening verses of the Gospel of John, which calls the Son the
Logos. The usual translation of this into English is 'Word,' but it
can also be translated as 'Reason,' and this is how Malebranche
understands it. Likewise, Malebranche preferred the Augustinian
tradition of giving the name 'Love' to the Holy Spirit.
(2) The three persons are consubstantial and coeternal; that is, they
are not three distinct Gods but one God and are inseparable. (3) Human
beings are created in some way in the image of God, so that there is a
sort of analogy, however loose, indirect, or approximate, between the
human mind and the Trinity.
The influence of these ideas is recognizable in Malebranche's account
of ideas. Rather than holding ideas to be innate, Malebranche claims
that they are found in God. In fact, he identifies them with divine
ideas in the traditional theological sense. Theologians attributed
ideas to God by drawing an analogy to artistic design. Just as the
artisan who makes a product knows his product independently of that
product's actual existence, since the product's actual existence
presupposes the plan or idea by which the artisan makes it in the
first place, so God knows His creation by means of productive ideas.
Since these ideas cannot be something independent of God Himself, they
are simply the divine substance itself insofar as God's perfections
are participable or imitable by creatures: each creature in its own
limited way imitates or 'partitions' the infinite unlimited perfection
of God. By knowing His own unlimited perfection, then, God knows all
things He could possibly make, and thus all things that could possibly
come to exist. It is this conception of ideas that makes up the
primary background for Malebranche's account of ideas and, pressed by
critics, Malebranche through the course of his career placed greater
and greater emphasis on this element of his thought that derived from
tradition. Malebranche's place in this tradition is most explicitly
developed in the 1696 Preface to the Dialogues, where he quotes a
number of passages from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in order to
extract a general description of divine ideas, which he then directly
applies to ideas in his account.
Malebranche goes farther than this, into territory that might well
have made traditional theologians uncomfortable. Ideas are not merely
in God in the sense that they are the divine substance understood in a
certain way; they are somehow a manifestation of God's Reason, which
is "coeternal and consubstantial with Him" (LO 614; OC 3:131). The use
of the term "consubstantial," a traditional theological term applied
to the Word or Son, that is, the second Person of the Trinity, marks
out the direction in which the Oratorian wants to take this line of
reasoning. Drawing on, and modifying, the Augustinian tradition,
Malebranche suggests that a proper account of the reason to which we
regularly appeal must be rooted in the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity. God's Reason is the Word, and we are rational because the
Word, the Logos, is our Interior Teacher (an Augustinian phrase). When
we attend to various ideas we are learning from the Divine Word,
universal Reason; thus Malebranche's thesis that all things are seen
in God is a way of putting the Word at the center of epistemology.
Ideas are the province of the second Person of the Trinity; to
attribute ideas to ourselves is to commit the serious mistake of
attributing to ourselves what only belongs to God. It is to fail to
see (to use another Augustinian phrase that is one of the Oratorian's
favorite sayings) that we are not our own light. This Trinitarian move
is the foundation for Malebranche's version of rationalism; Reason is
infallible because Reason is quite literally God.
In a Trinitarian account of Reason there is necessarily more to Reason
than an account of our rational ideas can cover on its own. As the
Interior Teacher, Reason not only illuminates us with ideas, but also
guides us in inquiry through interior sentiments, particularly
pleasures and pains. Some background explaining Malebranche's view of
the role of freedom in inquiry will help to clarify this unusual twist
in his epistemology.
The understanding is "that passive faculty of the soul by means of
which it receives all the modifications of which it is capable" (LO 3;
OC 1:43). On the other hand, the will is "the impression or natural
impulse that carries us toward general and indeterminate good" (LO 5;
OC 1:46). The will is both active, although Malebranche is careful to
qualify this by the phrase "in a sense" (LO 4; OC 1:46), and free,
where freedom is "the force that the mind has of turning this
impression toward objects that please us, and making it so that our
natural inclinations are directed to some particular object" (OC 1:46;
cf. LO 5). When we believe something necessary, it is because "there
is in these things no further relation to be considered that the
understanding has not already perceived" (LO 9; OC 1:53). We need
freedom because there are many cases in which this has not yet
occurred, requiring us to direct our attention (another act of the
will) in other directions, and, more importantly, because everything
the intellect receives has some appearance of truth (we seem to
perceive it, after all), so "if the will were not free and if it were
infallibly and necessarily led to everything having the appearance of
truth and goodness, it would almost always be deceived" (LO 10; OC
1:54). At first glance, this would force us to say that God, as Author
of our natures, is the source of our errors. To avoid this premise,
Malebranche concludes that God gives us freedom in order that we may
under these circumstances avoid falling into error. In particular, we
are given freedom so that we may refrain from accepting the merely
probable, by continuing to investigate "until everything to be
investigated is unraveled and brought to light" (LO 10; OC 1:54).
Therefore, we have an epistemic duty to use our freedom as much as we
can, as long as we do not use it to avoid yielding to "the clear and
distinct perception of all the constituents and relations of the
object necessary to support a well-founded judgment" (LO 10; OC 1:55).
How do we know we have reached clear and distinct perception?
Malebranche does not appeal to anything intrinsic to the clear and
distinct perception itself. Rather, he suggests that we know it
through the "inward reproaches of our reason" (LO 10; OC 1:55), "the
powerful voice of the Author of Nature," which he also calls "the
reproaches of our reason and the remorse of our conscience" (LO 11; OC
1:57). That is, we know we clearly and distinctly perceive something
because when we try to doubt the perception, Reason reproaches us with
pangs of intellectual conscience. In addition to these pangs of
intellectual conscience, we are led by "a certain inward conviction"
and "the impulses felt while meditating" (LO 13; OC 1:60).
It is in the context of discussing these sentiments, in fact, that
Reason first appears in the main body of his major work, the Search
after Truth, and, since similar sentiments about "the replies He gives
to all those who know how to question Him properly" arise in the
conclusion to the work, these epistemic sentiments may perhaps be said
to frame the entire work. They play an important role in the Dialogues
on Metaphysics and on Religion as well. We are told by the character
Theodore early in the Dialogues that Reason guides inquiry by
dispensing convictions and reproaches (JS 33; OC 12:194), and the
point recurs throughout the Dialogues. Malebranche admits that
distinguishing this guidance from prejudice can be difficult, but this
is perhaps the point of the Search as a manual for avoiding error: by
giving us rules and guidelines by which to avoid error, it helps us
listen to the voice of Reason (cf. LO xlii-xliii, 529; OC 1:25-26,
2:453-454).
2. Love and Order
Malebranche extends this Trinitarian rationalism in order to give his
own take on the claim that human minds are in the image of God,
suggesting in the Treatise on Morals that our lives are structured by
the Trinity itself:
The Father, to whom power is attributed, makes them to partake of His
power, having established them as occasional causes of all the effects
that they produce. The Son communicates His wisdom to them and
discloses all truths to them through the direct union they have with
the intelligible substance that He contains as universal Reason. The
Holy Spirit animates them and sanctifies them through the invincible
impression they have for the good, and through the charity or love of
Order which He infuses into all hearts (OC 11:186; W 163).
This short passage on the way we are in the image of God gives a
succinct summary of a number of claims that Malebranche regards as
important; it also shows how intimately related to his Trinitarian
concerns many of his most distinctive philosophical positions are.
First, there is occasionalism, the view that only God is a true cause.
Second, there is the union with universal Reason, according to which
we are rational only by union with the Divine Word. Third, there is
the will understood as the "invincible impression for the good," which
is attributed to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not invoked by Malebranche as often as the Father
and the Son are, but there are several passages that hint at the
Spirit's importance; for example, in Elucidation Ten: "For since God
cannot act without knowledge and in spite of Himself, He made the
world according to wisdom and through the impulse of His love—He made
all things through His Son and in the Holy Spirit as Scripture
teaches" (OC 3:141; cf. LO 620). Despite receiving less emphasis, this
third element, the theory of love that is associated with the Spirit
as the theory of Reason is associated with the Son, plays an important
role in the account of how we are related to Reason. Recognizing this
requires recognizing Reason's role in morality; Reason is (moral)
Order.
The notion of Order is the core of Malebranche's ethical theory, since
"what makes a man righteous is that he loves order and that he
conforms his will to it in all things; likewise the sinner is such
only because order does not please him in everything and because he
would rather have order conform to his own wishes" (OC 3:137; cf. LO
618). Order, in turn, is explained in Augustinian fashion in terms of
the divine ideas. Having argued that ideas do not represent things
equally noble or perfect, Malebranche goes on to explain the
importance of this inequality:
If it is true, then, that God, who is the universal Being, contains
all beings within Himself in an intelligible fashion, and that all
these intelligible beings that have a necessary existence in God are
not in every sense equally perfect, it is clear that there will be a
necessary and immutable order among them, and that just as there are
necessary and eternal truths because there are relations of magnitude
among intelligible beings, there must also be a necessary and
immutable order because of the relations of perfection among these
same beings. An immutable order has it, then, that minds are more
noble than bodies, as it is a necessary truth that twice two is four,
or that twice two is not five (LO 618; OC 3:137-138).
We know ideas are not all equal because we judge the perfections of
things by means of their ideas, and it is certain that things
themselves are not all equal in perfection; some things are
distinguished from others in that they have "more intelligence or mark
of wisdom" (LO 618; OC 3:137). Because of this inequality, which is
effectively an inequality in the moral salience of the things we know
by way of ideas, the eternal, immutable intelligible world of ideas is
also an eternal, immutable order. This order, however, is not a merely
descriptive order. Were there nothing more to divine Order than the
theory of ideas, it would be "more of a speculative truth than a
necessary law" (LO 618; OC 3:138). Malebranche wants to go farther.
This ordering of perfections among the divine ideas has a necessity
that constrains even God. To take this system of divine ideas and make
it "necessary law," the Oratorian introduces his theory of love.
This theory, like the theory of ideas, is rooted in an understanding
of the divine nature. Just as the theory of ideas is rooted in God as
being in general, so the theory of love is rooted in God as good in
general. God's goodness is a universal or sovereign goodness; God is
"a good that contains all other goods within itself" (LO 269; OC
2:16). As such, God is the only perfect or completely adequate object
for love, and, accordingly, God loves Himself perfectly. In loving
Himself, He necessarily loves what in Himself represents Himself
perfectly, namely, His own self-image, divine Wisdom or universal
Reason, which contains the order of all things; and because of this,
God always acts according to divine Order. The Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit are inseparable, and therefore God necessarily has a
Love for Order. Malebranche goes so far as to say that "it is a
contradiction that God should not love and will order" (LO 594; OC
3:97). It is because of this necessary love that order has a normative
aspect; because of this love, order has "the force of law" for all
minds (LO 620; OC 3:140), both created and uncreated.
Since God loves Himself, and in so doing operates according to Order,
God creates us with an impulse to the most perfect good, namely
Himself. This is our will. As Malebranche states,
Only because God loves Himself do we love anything, and if God did not
love Himself, or if He did not continuously impress upon man's soul a
love like His own, i.e., the impulse of love that we feel toward the
good in general, we would love nothing, we would will nothing, and as
a result, we would be without a will, since the will is only the
impression of nature that leads us toward the good in general… (LO
337; OC 2:126-127)
Because order has the force of law, God makes us according to Order;
part of this involves making us to love God alone as our sovereign
good. This leaves us with the question of other goods besides God.
Malebranche sometimes says that God loves only Himself (for example,
LO 364; OC 2:169). However, this is never taken to mean that God does
not love other things; in fact, "He loves all His works" (LO 330, 666;
OC 2:113, 3:220). The reason is that, as sovereign good, God loves
other things in loving Himself. As he notes, "God loves only
Himself—He loves His creations only because they are related to His
perfections, and He loves them to the extent to which they have this
relation—in the final analysis God loves Himself and the things He has
created with the same love" (LO 364; OC 2:169-170). On the other hand,
not all things bear the same type of relation to Himself; there are,
as we noted above, different relations of perfection in Order. Mind is
more perfect than body; and, being more perfect, it is more closely
related to God, and therefore more lovable. Because of this God cannot
will that the mind be subordinated to the body. This is not a
metaphysical or logical necessity, but an ethical necessity (an
obligation) that presupposes the metaphysical necessity of divine
self-love. Given that He loves Order, He ought to will the right
ordering of perfections among creatures; this 'ought' is an obligation
grounded in love.
God, in loving himself, loves sovereign Reason or Order and, because
of this love, Order has normative force. When we see in Reason that
the soul is more perfect than the body, for instance, we can recognize
this principle as not merely a truth, but a law: "the living law of
the Father" (JS 238; OC 12:302). Because it is according to Order that
Order be loved, and since God always acts out of love of Order, and
therefore always in conformity with it, God directs our own love
toward Order. Moreover, the law of Order is sanctioned by divine
omnipotence itself. Conformity with Order will, in the long run, be
rewarded, while divergence from Order will be punished. In one key
respect, however, Order is not like other laws. In a case of human
law, we can evaluate a law, and perhaps reject it, by considering
higher principles than those embodied in the law itself. Because it is
the highest law, this can never be the case with Order; when we
evaluate the goodness or rationality of any law, we can only do so by
comparing it to Order. As divine, Order is the good in general; as
Reason, Order is what makes anything rational. Order, in short, is
authoritative in every significant way. This authority is essential to
Malebranche's discussion of human nature in its natural,
'prelapsarian' state, that is, its state prior to the Fall.
3. Original Sin
We know that God acts according to Order, and that, therefore,
everything God creates is originally in conformity with Order. Because
Reason shows us the divine ideas, we have cognitive access to Order,
and therefore know the original, natural state of human beings (what
God created human beings to be) despite not being in it ourselves:
But to speak accurately of innocent man, created in the image of God,
we must consult the divine ideas of immutable order. It is there that
we find the model of a perfect man such as our father was before his
sin (JS 65; OC 12:103).
On this view, our natural state is nothing other than our ideal
ethical state; we are most natural when we are perfect. What we find
in "the model of the perfect man" is in some ways like us, but in some
ways not. Like us, Adam in his original state was made in such a way
as to be constituted by two relations, one to sensible goods and one
to Reason. This twofold union, of mind to God and mind to body, looms
large in Malebranche's thought, and he sees it in terms borrowed from
St. Augustine. Our union to God is what elevates us, and from it "the
mind receives its life, its light, and its entire felicity"; however,
our excessive attachment to our body "infinitely debases man and is
today the main cause of all his errors and miseries" (LO xxxiii; OC
1:9). This intimate union of ethical, epistemological, metaphysical,
and theological themes is characteristic of Malebranche's thinking; a
deviation from ethical perfection entails a corruption of nature and
an obscuring of our cognitive abilities, and this deviation from ideal
is nothing other than distraction from divine Reason.
However, if this is so, Adam (man as God originally created him) must
differ from us in not being able to enjoy sensible goods in a way that
ever conflicted with, or distracted from, the good of sovereign
Reason. God works according to general laws, as Order requires, but as
the general laws now stand, it is very easy for our union with bodies
to interfere with our union with Reason. Therefore, there must have
been some special characteristic in Adam's situation that gave him
greater control over his sensory union with the body. Because Adam was
created to be subject only to God, he merited a special ability to
maintain his relationship with divine Reason (JS 233; OC 12:296).
Since God always acts according to Order, He cannot subject the mind
to the body because this would violate Order by subjecting the more
noble to the less noble. Malebranche interprets this to mean that
something must have been in place to make it possible for Adam not to
be distracted from Reason by bodies. In the Dialogues Theodore tells
Aristes precisely what this something must have been:
And conclude from all this that prior to sin there were exceptions
favoring human beings in the laws of the union of the soul and the
body. Or, rather, conclude from it that there was a law which has been
abolished, by which the human will was the occasional cause of that
disposition of the brain by which the soul is shielded from the action
of objects though the body is struck by them, and that thus despite
this action it was never interrupted in its meditations and ecstasy.
Do you not sense some vestige of this power in yourself when you are
deeply absorbed in thought and the light of truth penetrates and
delights you? (JS 65; OC 12:103)
When we look at what should be natural to us, and therefore what made
our original state different from our current state, we may perhaps
find it surprising that it involves a special ability to control our
brains – an ability we now unnaturally lack. Although, intriguingly,
Malebranche thinks we still have traces of it when we are "deeply
absorbed in thought."
Examination of ourselves in light of Reason, therefore, leads us to
conclude that we are currently in a state of disorder. As Malebranche
illustrates, alluding to the letter of Paul to the Romans, "each of us
is sufficiently aware of a law in himself that captures and disorders
him, a law not established by God because it is contrary to the
immutable order of justice, which is the inviolable rule for all His
volitions" (LO 580; OC 3:72). In practice, this disorder is an
excessive concern with bodies, a concern so strong that it is a
pathological dependence. We treat bodies, rather than God, as our true
good of the mind. This makes us exalt our union with bodies over our
union with Order, in the process running afoul, of course, of
principles of Order (principles like "bodies are not worthy of love"
and "all the love that God places in us must end in Him"). Given that
this motion of love toward good is the will, and given that the will
governs attention, we are driven to attend more to sensible matters
than their ethical importance and value for inquiry would merit. While
the senses are not corrupt in themselves, then, our excessive
dependence on them is an essential feature of the corruption of our
cognitive capacities. Malebranche regards these matters, at least at a
very general level, as common knowledge.
For Malebranche, original sin is not purely a doctrine known on faith
because it is something of which he thinks we can all be conscious of
in ourselves, by comparing ourselves, known by interior sentiment,
with Order, which is known clearly by ideas but obscurely by the
interior sentiments it effects. In other words, we can recognize our
disorder through moral principles or, more obscurely, through the
feelings of conscience. Through faith we learn important details about
this disorder, particularly about its history, some of which we could
not otherwise know; the disorder itself, however, is something
everyone can recognize. Reason teaches us that there is a way things
should be; experience shows us that we are not the way we should be.
What is more, experience seems also to suggest that the reason we are
not the way we should be is not that we cannot be so, at least in any
absolute sense. Malebranche does not develop the idea, but it seems
suggested by Theodore's statement in the Dialogues that we can still
experience "some vestige of this power" (JS 65; OC 12:102). In general
our minds are clouded and confused, but on rare occasions, we go
beyond this.
Furthermore, because it affects the way we interact with sensible
goods, the disorder of original sin has serious epistemic
consequences. In particular, "the mind constantly spreads itself
externally; it forgets itself and Him who enlightens and penetrates
it, and it lets itself be so seduced by its body and by those
surrounding it that it imagines finding in them its perfection and
happiness" (LO 657; OC 3:203). Our primary union is with sovereign
Reason, but distracted by our union with sensible things, we treat
this latter union as if it were more important; and because "we cannot
increase our union with sensible things without diminishing our union
with intelligible truths" (LO 415; OC 2:257), we ignore our union with
universal Reason to the extent we devote our attention to sensible
things. The reason, Malebranche thinks, is that we enjoy making
judgments, and therefore try to have this pleasure without first
consulting Reason (LO 649; OC 3:189). This trait bodes ill for us if
we are interested in avoiding error, as we shall see. For now what is
interesting is just how sharply this error-inducing dependence on the
body differentiates human nature in its original and ideal state from
human nature as we currently find it. There is a sort of inevitability
about some aspects of our dependence on the body. Our ideas are
clouded, our attention becomes tired (JS 65; OC 12:103), and in
practice there is little we can do about this. Malebranche is clear
that this was not the case with Adam, due to the special power over
the body we have already noted, a power that we (at least beyond a
certain degree) conspicuously lack.
Since we have lost the ability to govern our brains properly because
its presence in us was linked by principles of Order to our merit, we
now must struggle to overcome disturbances Adam in Eden would easily
have overcome. There is a sense in which this has been a fall from
intelligence, since our thought is now subject to our body's
limitations and thus we are naturally inclined to make stupid
mistakes. Prior to sin, Adam was not stupid enough to think that
bodies were the real cause of his pleasure (LO 593; OC 3:96). We,
however, have become that stupid. This is the root of Malebranche's
diagnosis of the psychological basis for the claim that bodies are
true causes, a claim he considers to be the most dangerous
philosophical error original sin has spawned. This brings us
immediately to the motivation for Malebranche's occasionalism, his
view that God alone is a true cause.
For Malebranche, a pagan worldview follows closely on, and is perhaps
the primary consequence of, original sin. It is this recognition that
mediates between his arguments against necessary connection and his
general views; it is by means of their ethical role, as correctives to
the presumptions of the pagan mindset, that the arguments interest
him; see Gouhier's excellent discussion (1926, pp. 108-114). Gouhier's
phrase for this pagan worldview, la philosophie du serpent, the
philosophy of the serpent, captures Malebranche's view perfectly.
Occasionalism is an ethical antidote, or at least an ethical
treatment, for our tendency to idolatry, and, in particular, for an
especially pernicious instance of this idolatry:
If the nature of pagan philosophy is a chimera, if this nature is
nothing, we must be advised of it, for there are many people who are
mistaken with respect to it. There are more than we might think who
thoughtlessly attribute to it the works of God, who busy themselves
with this idol or fiction of the human mind, and who render to it the
honor due only to the Divinity. (LO 668; OC 3:223-224)
The philosophical superstition of causal powers or efficacious natures
is but one more sad example of the terrible failure of human nature to
live up to the demands of Order; it is but one more expression of the
"secret opposition between God and man" (LO 657; OC 3:204). It has its
root in a religious failing, the failure to give God the credit He is
due.
4. Universal Reason as External Teacher
Even though original sin puts our cognitive capacities in a wretched
state, Malebranche does not throw up his hands in despair, nor does he
resort to skepticism. The reasons for Malebranche's optimism all have
to do with the active and personal role played by universal Reason in
human life. Without his personal role of sovereign Reason, despair and
skepticism would be unavoidable. With it, Malebranche can afford to be
optimistic.
The first reason for Malebranche's optimism is that we are never
entirely cut off from the teaching of Reason. However, much of our
perverse fascination with bodily goods may obscure the guidance, yet
Reason still guides us. Not only does Reason still illuminate us with
ideas, He "teaches us inwardly" when we take the trouble to engage in
philosophical meditation (LO 13; OC 1:61). Reason still encourages,
warns, and rebukes us as our intellectual conscience. Although
prejudices resulting from original sin have made it difficult to find
truth, knowledge is still possible.
The second reason that Malebranche can be optimistic is that Reason
has not been idle in the face of our perversity. This is seen most
clearly in the Incarnation. In more secularly-minded times this may be
the hardest bit of Malebranche's system to wrap one's mind around;
even someone willing to allow Reason an active role in guiding inquiry
might balk at taking the Incarnation as an essential part of
epistemology. It is not, however, an ad hoc addition to the
Oratorian's other claims. It would, indeed, be rather strange if he
did not think along these lines, given other claims he makes. Reason
is the second Person of the Trinity, the Logos or divine Word; the
Word is, in the opening words of the gospel of John, the light of all
who come into the world, and also is the Word made flesh. It is Reason
that we consult in inquiry; Reason illuminates us with ideas, judges
our actions, rebukes us for bad uses of freedom and rewards us for
good. Given all this, it is not surprising that Reason takes an active
and personal hand in fixing the epistemological and ethical mess in
which fallen humanity finds itself; Malebranche has already insisted
that Reason takes an active and personal hand in a number of
epistemological and ethical areas.
In the Incarnation, therefore, the divine Word has resorted to a new
method of teaching in its attempt to counteract our fallen condition:
The Son of God, who is the wisdom of God or eternal truth, was made
man and became sensible to make Himself known to crude and carnal men.
He wished to instruct them by means of what was blinding them; He
wished to lead them to His love, to free them from sensible goods by
means of the same things that were enslaving them. Dealing with fools,
He used a kind of foolishness to make them wise (LO 367; OC 2:124. Cf.
also LO 417-418; OC 2:260-261).
The divine Word took physical form because human beings have an
excessive love for sensory things. According to Malebranche, this
teaches us several things. First, in our own teaching we should invest
intelligible truth with the sort of presentation that would in some
way appeal to the senses. This can be overdone, of course. It is being
done correctly only when it elevates us to the intelligible rather
than flattering the senses, or, more specifically, when it causes
people to withdraw inward in order to think and meditate rather than
outward in order to be entertained by sensible things (cf. LO 418; OC
2:261).
Malebranche also contemplates about Wisdom becoming sensible "in order
to condemn and sacrifice in its person all sensible things." He does
not elaborate much on this phrase, but the Preface to the Search makes
it clear enough. He claims that one of the lessons the Incarnation is
meant to teach us is "the scorn we should have for all objects of the
senses" (LO xxxviii; OC 1:18). By uniting Himself with a body, he
exalted to the highest dignity anything could have, namely, union with
God; it became "the most estimable of sensible things." This "most
estimable of sensible things," however, was subjugated to divine truth
to the point of suffering and death. The idea is that if even the most
estimable sensible thing should be held less important than truth and
order, than all sensible things should be regarded as less important
than truth and order. From this Malebranche concludes that "we must
gradually become accustomed to disbelieving the reports our senses
make about all the bodies surrounding us, which they always portray as
worthy of our application and respect." As he asks rhetorically in
Treatise on Nature and Grace, "did not Jesus Christ sacrifice and
destroy, in his person, all grandeurs and sensible pleasures? Has not
his life been for us a continual example of humility and of
penitence?" (R 131-132; OC 5:53). In effect, Malebranche advocates
others to take Jesus Christ as an epistemological model. It is perhaps
not common to appeal to epistemological rather than ethical exemplars,
but in Malebranche's philosophy epistemology and ethics are closely
related. In fact, there are passages that suggest that he considers
them to be essentially the same thing. Consider, for example, the
following passage, which opens
Error is the cause of men's misery; it is the sinister principle that
has produced the evil in the world; it generates and maintains in our
soul all the evils that afflict us, and we may hope for sound and
genuine happiness only by seriously laboring to avoid it (LO 1; OC
1:39).
The error here is both intellectual and moral. That it is both appears
to be necessitated by the role of the will. Every error is a misuse of
will contrary to the guidance of Reason, and therefore can be treated
as an immoral rebellion against Reason (cf. LO 8-11; OC1:50-54). Since
the Incarnation involves the perfect union of body, mind, and divine
Word, the incarnate Word is a paradigm case of perfect orderly
relation among the three, and therefore in itself serves as part of
Reason's pedagogy, as "the rule of beauty and of perfection" (R 123;
OC 5:41) against which we must measure ourselves.
The third way in which Malebranche thinks the incarnate Word extends
its work of teaching the human race is the most obvious, through
explicit moral teaching, which communicates to us "in a sensible,
palpable way the eternal commands of the divine law," so as to
reinforce its too-often-ignored inner promptings (JS 81; OC 3:121).
Related to this, Malebranche considers the teaching of the Church to
be one form that Reason's teaching takes. That is, the Church is "a
visible authority emanating from incarnate Wisdom," extending that
moral teaching through time (JS 81; OC 3:121). This is in part
necessary because Reason is interested in teaching "the poor, the
simple, the ignorant, and those who cannot read," not merely "those
who have enough life, as well as mind and knowledge, to discern truth
from error" (JS 255-256; OC 12:322-323). Reason's exercise of visible
teaching authority has not ceased, but rather continues in the Church,
which continues Reason's work of compensating for human failings.
It is unsurprising, then, that Malebranche attacks the Protestant
notion of sola scriptura as not merely theologically problematic but
also philosophically irrational. Even if the author of the Gospel of
Matthew were the apostle, and even if we can suppose there was no
corruption in the transmission of the text, we cannot base our faith
on the words we read there unless we have an infallible authority
teaching that the evangelist was inspired by God. The only infallible
authority is God Himself, so the Holy Spirit must either reveal the
inspiration of Scripture to each person individually or to the church
as a trust for all; of this choice, Malebranche says, "the latter is
much more simple, more general, more worthy of providence than the
former" (JS 256; OC 12:323). Even if we granted that God revealed to
each individual that the text was inspired, Malebranche thinks that
this is far from adequate; after you recognize the text as inspired
you still must come to understand it. Since God wills for all people
to arrive at knowledge of the truth, there must be something to help
lead us to it, and again the choice is between inspiration of each
person individually or the church collectively. But, states
Malebranche, it is absurd to attribute to each individual person the
divine assistance one denies to the entire church in assembly, given
that the church preserves tradition and, more than any individual,
deserves that Jesus Christ guarantee its protection. Jesus imitates
the Father as much as is possible; therefore "He will never act in a
certain person in a particular manner without some particular reason,
without some kind of necessity" (JS 258; OC 12:325). Since it is
generally sufficient for Christ to preserve the faithful by preserving
the Church's authority and infallibility in matters of faith, it is
absurd and presumptuous to expect special enlightenment by reading
Scripture on one's own, just as it is absurd and presumptuous to
expect God to make exceptions to natural laws for one's personal
convenience.
The existence of a church or divine society (with authority,
scripture, teaching, and rituals) makes it possible for Reason to do
the most good to the most people in the simplest way, preparing for
the restoration even of those who do not have the leisure or ability
to do rigorous philosophical meditation (JS 257-258; OC 12:323-324).
The graces of enlightenment and sentiment (R 151; OC 5:97) extend the
dual teaching function of Reason discussed previously, namely,
enlightenment by ideas and guidance by sentiments. These graces form
and guide the Church, making certain aspects of its teaching, for
example, preaching on the basis of Scripture, an infallible authority
on whose basis arguments almost like demonstrations can be formed. In
Malebranche's view, Reason is therefore the foundation for the
infallibility of the Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals.
He was quite right in saying that his philosophy was a Catholic
philosophy.
5. Conclusion
There are a number of ways in which Malebranche's religious interests
affect his philosophical discussion.
(1) Reason has the features of the Second Person of the Trinity, that
is, the Son or Word of God. Reason is a divine person. This allows
Malebranche to attribute a wider range of activities to Reason than
could be attributed to an impersonal reason.
(2) The Trinitarian influence helps to clarify why Malebranche has no
problem with talking as if Reason, in its aspect of Order, constrained
even God: he has a Trinitarian account of why God must act according
to Order.
(3) Original sin plays an extraordinarily important role in
Malebranche's philosophy, to such an extent that even Malebranche's
discussion of very philosophical topics, like the question of whether
there are causal powers, is affected by his understanding of original
sin and its tendency to drag us away from attentive meditation on
divine ideas in Reason.
(4) There is no question that Malebranche's philosophy is Catholic
throughout. Purely Catholic themes and ideas arise throughout, to such
an extent that he does not hesitate to bring Catholic doctrines about
the Incarnation or the Church into his philosophical discussions.
These are only a few examples. There are many other ways in which
Malebranche's religious views and practices are reflected in his
philosophy: his discussions of grace and providence, his theodicy, his
relation to the French School of Spirituality founded by Bérulle, and
more. Many of these have only just begun to be studied in any detail.
If, however, we were to examine every way in which Malebranche's
philosophy were influenced by his religious views, this would not be
any different from a complete examination of every facet of his
philosophy.
6. References and Further Reading
a. Reference Format
In this article the following reference format for Malebranche's works
has been used:
(LO 418; OC 2:261; cf. also R 131-132; OC 5:53)
The English translation is given first, with its page number; followed
by 'OC' to indicate the standard French edition, the Oeuvres
Complètes, with the volume and page number; particularly notable
analogous references follow the "cf. also." At times, when reference
is intended to two different passages equally, the following format
has been used:
(LO 330, 666; OC 2:113, 3:220)
The English translations are listed first, while their corresponding
pages in the Oeuvres Complètes are listed in order after the
semicolon. Thus "OC 2:113" corresponds to "LO 330" and "OC 3:220"
corresponds to "LO 666." Where the passage as quoted in the article
deviates from the English translation, this is noted by the following
format:
(OC 12:196; cf. JS 147)
The edition abbreviations that have been used are:
JS: Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Nicholas Jolley and
David Scott, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
LO: The Search after Truth, Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp, eds. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
OC: Oeuvres Complètes de Malebranche, 20 vols., André Robinet, ed.
Paris: J. Vrin, 1958-84.
R: Treatise on Nature and Grace, Patrick Riley, ed. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992.
W: Treatise on Ethics, Craig Walton, ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993.
Current scholarship on the role of religion in Malebranche's
philosophy is fairly limited, and what exists is somewhat uneven. The
following are suggested as useful for those who wish to study this
topic. Some of them discuss the matter in its own right, while others
simply raise important questions and topics for further investigation
in the course of discussing other things.
b. Further Reading
Arnauld, Antoine. On True and False Ideas, Elmar Kremer, ed. Lewiston:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. This important work, occasioned by
Malebranche's views on grace, began the long-lasting dispute between
Arnauld and Malebranche.
Astell, Mary, and Norris, John. Letters Concerning the Love of God, E.
Derek Taylor and Melvyn New, eds. London: Ashgate, 2005. John Norris
was a British Malebranchean; his correspondence with Mary Astell is an
excellent resource for identifying features of Malebranche's thought
that would have been considered especially relevant to religion in the
period.
Connell, Desmond. The Vision in God: Malebranche's Scholastic Sources,
Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1967. Connell's book, despite its relatively
limited topic, is a good beginning for those interested in looking at
the question of how Malebranche's thought relates to the broader
context of Catholic thought out of which it emerges.
Gouhier, Henri. La philosophie de Malebranche et son expérience
religieuse, 2nd ed., Paris: J. Vrin, 1948.
Gouhier, Henri. La vocation de Malebranche, Paris: J. Vrin, 1926. This
and the immediately preceding work are still the must-read texts for
any study of the relation between Malebranche's religion and his
philosophy.
Guéroult, Martial. Malebranche, 3 vols. Paris: Aubier, 1955-59. This
rather extensive work discusses a number of religion-related issues in
Malebranche, and has some particularly notable discussions of
Malebranche's Augustinianism.
Jolley, Nicholas. The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz,
Malebranche, and Descartes. In the course of his discussion of
theories of ideas Jolley raises a number of key questions that have to
be considered by anyone interested in the relation between religion
and philosophy in Malebranche.
Nadler, Steven. Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Among other things,
Nadler considers the important question of why Arnauld chose to begin
his attack on the Treatise on Nature and Grace with a criticism of the
philosophy of the Search after Truth.
Radner, Ephraim. Spirit and Nature: A Study of 17th Century Jansenism,
New York: Crossroad, 2002. Radner is mostly concerned with the
theological controversies over Jansenist appellants, but the dispute
between Arnauld and Malebranche is treated as important background to
this religious question.
Reid, Jasper. "Malebranche on Intelligible Extension," British Journal
of the History of Philosophy 11:4 (2003), 581-608. An excellent
demonstration of how considering Malebranche's theological interests
can clarify puzzles arising elsewhere in his philosophy.
Robinet, André. Système et existence dans l'oeuvre de Malebranche,
Paris: J. Vrin, 1965. This work contains good, albeit occasionally
short, discussions of various religious issues in Malebranche's works
(notably original sin).
Schmaltz, Tad. Malebranche's Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian
Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. This work
only obliquely discusses matters relevant to religious themes in
Malebranche's philosophy, but it is currently the best discussion of
the diverse roles Malebranche attributes to sentiment.
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