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Class 11: Nicolas Malebranche, the Search After Truth (1674-75)

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Class 11: Nicolas Malebranche, the Search After Truth (1674-75) 108 Class 11: Nicolas Malebranche, The Search is, then, no will that can fail to follow the impulse of after Truth (1674-75) this love. The just, the impious, the blessed, and the damned all love God with this love. Given that this natural love we have for God is the same thing as our Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was a philosopher natural inclination toward the good in general, toward and priest. He has a traditional scholastic education, the infinite good, toward the sovereign good, it is including three years at the Sorbonne. He entered the clear that all minds love God with this love because Oratory in 1660 and was ordained in 1664. The Ora- only He is the universal good, the infinite good, the tory was surely responsible for the Augustinian influ- sovereign good.… ence on his philosophy, but an accidental discovery in II. Inconstancy of will is the cause of the mind’s lack 1664 of Descartes’ Treatise on Man provided Male- of attention and, consequently, of error. Thus, with branche with his other major influence. His first and the will always parched by a burning thirst, always most significant work, The Search after Truth, was driven by anxieties and desires for the good it does published initially in 1674-75 and subsequently not possess, it cannot comfortably allow the mind to printed with an increasingly long set of Elucidations. dwell for any time over abstract truths that do not The work elicited critiques by Simon Foucher and affect it and that it judges incapable of making it Arnauld; although he denied having a taste for pole- happy. Thus, it continuously urges the mind to con- mics, Malebranche engaged in lengthy debates with sider other objects, and when in the course of being these two critics, as well as others (e.g. Leibniz and driven by the mind encounters an object bearing the the Cartesian Pierre-Sylvain Régis). In Search after mark of goodness, i.e., an object whose presence Truth, Malebranche presents and defends the two makes the soul feel a calm interior satisfaction, the doctrines for which he is best known, the occasion- heart’s thirst is then renewed, these desires and alism that denies causation between any finite sub- 1 longings are rekindled, and the mind, required to obey stances and the claim that we see all things in God. them, attends only to the object causing them, or appearing to cause in order to bring it near the soul, 2 Book III, Part I: The Understanding: Pure Mind which then tastes and feeds on it for a while. But since the emptiness of created things cannot fill the infinite Chapter 4 capacity of man’s heart, these trifling pleasures, I. The mind cannot long dwell on objects that have no instead of quenching its thirst, only aggravate it and relation to it, or that do not in some way involve the give the soul the vain and foolish hope of being infinite. It cannot be doubted that God is the author of satisfied by the multiplicity of terrestrial pleasures. all things, that He created them for himself and that This leads to a further inconstancy and inconceivable through an invincible natural impression that He con- weakness on the part of the mind whose duty it is to tinuously impresses in it, He inclines the heart of man find these goods for the soul. toward Himself. God cannot will that there be a will It is true that when by chance the mind encounters an that does not love him or that loves him less than some object involving the infinite, or containing something other good (if there could be any other good), because of great magnitude, its inconstancy and agitation he cannot will that a will not love what is supremely temporarily cease. For, realizing that the object bears worthy of love or love what is less worthy of love. the mark desired by the soul, it pauses and attends to Thus, natural love necessarily leads us toward God, it for a while. But this attachment, or rather, obsti- and since it comes from God and nothing can arrest nancy on the part of the mind in examining objects its impulse but God himself who impresses it. There that are infinite or too vast, does it no more good than 1 For more on Malebranche, see Charles J McCracken, A Cartesian Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1996); and Steven Nadler, ed., Cambridge Compan- Press, 1983); Nicolas Jolley, The Light of the Soul: ion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes Press, 1997). (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Steven Nadler, 2 Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Malebranche and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth (New 1992), Tad Schmaltz, Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul: York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 109 the weakness with which it considers suited to its However, since men are led as if by nature to capacity. The mind is too weak to complete such a believe that only corporeal objects exist, they judge of difficult undertaking, and only in vain does it try to do the reality and existence of things in a completely so. What must make the soul happy is not, as it were, different way than they should. For once they per- the comprehension of an infinite object—of this it is ceive an object, they want it to be quite certain that incapable—but the love and possession of an infinite the object exists, even though it often happens that good, which the will is capable of though the impulse there is nothing outside. They want, in addition, for of love continually impressed on it by God…. the object to be exactly as they see it, which never happens. But, with respect to the idea that exists necessarily and that cannot be other than as it is seen, Book III, Part II: The Pure Understanding. The they ordinarily judge without reflection that it is Nature of Ideas3 nothing—as if ideas did not have a great number of properties—as if the idea of a square, for example, Chapter 1 were not quite different from that of a circle or of a 1. What is understood by ideas. That they truly exist number and did not represent completely different and are necessary to perceive all material objects. I things—which can never happen for nothingness, think everyone agrees that we do not perceive outside since nothingness has no properties. It is therefore of us by themselves. We see the sun, the stars, and an indubitable that ideas have a very real existence. But infinity of objects outside of us; it is not likely that the now let us examine what their nature is, and their soul leaves the body and, as it were, goes wandering essence, and let us see what in the soul can be capable about the heavens in order to contemplate all these of representing all things to it. objects. It does not therefore see them by themselves; All the things the soul perceives are of two kinds: the immediate object of our mind when it sees the sun, they are either in the soul or outside the soul. Those for example, is not the sun, but is something inti- in the soul are its own thoughts, that is, all its different mately united to our soul, and this is what I call an modifications, for by the words thought, manner of idea. Thus, by the word idea, I understand here no- thinking, or modification of the soul, I understand thing other than the immediate object, or the object generally all those things that cannot be in the soul closest to the mind, when it perceives something, without the soul perceiving them through the internal namely, what touches and modifies the mind with the sensation it has of itself—such as its own sensations, perception it has of an object. imaginings, pure intellections, or simply its concep• It must be noted that for the mind to perceive an tions, even its passions and natural inclinations. Now, object, it is absolutely necessary for the idea of that our soul does not need ideas in order to perceive all object to be actually present to it—it is not possible to these things in the way it perceives them, because doubt this—but it is not necessary for there to be these things are inside the soul, or rather because they something similar to that idea outside it. For it very are only the soul itself in this or that fashion, just as often happens that we perceive things which do not the actual roundness and motion of a body are only exist and even which have never existed; thus, we that body shaped and moved in this or that fashion. often have in the mind real ideas of things that have But as for things outside the soul, we can perceive never existed. When, for example, a man imagines a them only by means of ideas, assuming that these golden mountain, it is absolutely necessary that the things cannot be intimately united to the soul. There idea of this mountain be really present to his mind. are two kinds of these, spiritual and material. As for When a madman, or someone with a high fever or the spiritual ones, it seems that they can be revealed who is sleeping, sees some animal as if before his to the soul without ideas and by themselves.
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