Modern students of philosophy are
probably unfamiliar with the French Cartesian metaphysician Nicolas de
Malebranche (1638-1715), although his name used to be very famous both in his
lifetime and for at least two centuries after his death. Pushkin alludes to him
in Yevgeni Onegin, naturally expecting his contemporaries to easily
catch his allusion. In fact, anyone with an extensive erudition in European
literature would be able to recognize the name Malebranche from numerous
non-philosophical literary references, which, as I noted, cannot be said of
those of our fellow intellectuals today involved in philosophical studies.
Truth be said, Malebranche was a
derivative philosopher, building his system upon the Cartesian foundation with
an admixture of St. Augustine’s ostensibly non-Cartesian thinking. The result
(in which Hegel finds an ample trace of basic Spinozism!) is critical of
Dèscartes, in several important “Augustinian” aspects, but this improvement on
both (or even all three of them) cannot be called entirely convincing, although
it may well be granted a certain (minimal) degree of originality.
Malebranche’s magnum opus is the
voluminous work with the ambitious title De la Recherche de la Vérité.
Its main doctrine saying that the mind cannot have knowledge of anything
outside itself, except through its relation to God, has become known (to a
small circle of specialized professionals) as Malebranchism.
Here is what Hegel has to say
about Malebranche in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (as he
quotes Malebranche extensively here, I am allowing a fairly lengthy excerpt):
The
philosophy of Malebranche is in point of matter entirely identical with that of
Spinoza, but has another, more religious and more theological form; on account
of this form it never encountered the opposition met with by Spinoza, and, for
the same reason, Malebranche has never been reproached with Atheism. His main
work bears the title: De la recherche de la vérité. One
part of it is entirely metaphysical, but the greater part is empirical. For
instance, Malebranche in the first three books treats logically and
psychologically errors in sight and hearing, in the imagination and
understanding.
What is
most important in this book is his idea of the origin of our knowledge. He
says: “The essence of the soul is in thought, just as that of matter is in
extension. All else, such as sensation, imagination and will are modifications
of thought.” He thus begins with two sides, between which he sets an
absolute chasm and then he follows out in detail the Cartesian idea of the
assistance of God in knowledge. His main point is that “the soul cannot
attain to its conceptions and notions from external things.” For when I and
the thing are clearly independent of one another, and have nothing in common,
the two can certainly not enter into relation with one another, nor be for one
another. “Bodies are impenetrable; their images would destroy one another on
the way to the organs.” But further: “The soul cannot beget ideas from
itself, nor can they be inborn,” for, as “Augustine has said, ‘Say
not that ye yourselves are your own light.’” But how then comes extension,
the manifold, into the simple, into the spirit, since it is the reverse of the
simple, i.e. the diverse? This question regarding the association of thought
and extension is always an important one in Philosophy. According to
Malebranche, the answer is, “That we see all things in God.” God Himself
is the connection between us and them, and thus the unity between the thing and
thought. “God has in Him the ideas of all things because He has created all;
God is through His omnipresence united in the most intimate way with spirits.
God thus is the place of spirits,” the Universal of spirit, just as
space is the universal, the place of bodies. Consequently the soul
knows in God what is in Him, bodies, “inasmuch as He sets forth”
(inwardly conceives) “created existence, because all this is spiritual,
intellectual, and present to the soul.” Because things and God are
intellectual, and we too are intellectual, we perceive them in God as they are,
so to speak, intellectual in Him. If this be further analyzed, it in no way
differs from Spinozism. Malebranche indeed in a popular way allows soul and
things to subsist as independent, but this independence vanishes away, like
smoke, when the principle is firmly grasped. The catechism says: God is
omnipresent, and if this omnipresence be developed, Spinozism is arrived
at; and yet theologians then proceed to speak against the system of identity,
and cry out about Pantheism.
For the rest of Hegel’s analysis
of Malebranche I am directing the reader toward his Lectures, but in quoting
Hegel, here is my ready answer to the question Why Malebranche?--- If
Hegel sees it important to comment on him, I might do it just as well. Having
acquainted myself with Malebranchism, I still find it unconvincing and
derivative, but he does get a respectable place among my entries, for the
reason of his general importance in the overall history of human thought.
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