Nicolas Malebranche

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 Sorbonne. Malebranche was ordained a priest in 1664.

In 1664, Malebranche first read Descartes' Traité de l'homme (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.

Philsophical career

In 1674, Malebranche published his first philosophical work in a two-volume codex entitled De la recherche de la vérité. Où l’on traitte de la nature de l’esprit de l’homme, et de l’usage qu’il en doit faire pour eviter l’erreur dans les sciences (Search after Truth. In 1678, Malebranche published a set of sixteen Eclaircissements (Clarifications). Importantly, the final Eclaircissement expanded upon an idea that Malebranche had previously only touched upon: that God acts for the most part through “general volitions” (volontez générales) and only rarely, as in the case of miracles, through “particular volitions” (volontez particulères).

Malebranche expanded on this pont in 1680 when he published Traité de la nature et de la grâce (Treatise on Nature and Grace). As part of this debate, Malebranche published Méditations chretiennes et métaphysiques (Christian and Metaphysical Meditations) in 1683, highlighting God’s role in metaphysics and morality. On account of Arnauld’s battle against Malebranche, Nature et grâce was placed on the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books in 1690 (as well as the Recherche nineteen years later) for its religious views.

Timeline

Philosophy

The central tenants of Malebranche’s philosophy appear in his book, De la recherche de la vérité (The Search after Truth).

Vision in God

The doctrine of vision in God states that human knowledge is dependent on divine understanding, just as bodies in motion are dependent on divine will. Like Descartes, Malebranche held that humans attain knowledge through ideas – immaterial representations present to the mind. But whereas Descartes believed ideas were mental entities, Malebranche argued that all ideas existed only in God. Although Malebranche conceded that God could have created a more perfect world, free from all defects, such a world would have necessitated a greater complexity in divine ways.

Scientific contributions

Although known more for his philosophical work, Malebranche made some notable contributions to science. As a philosopher, Malebranche developed a new conception of science: from his doctrine of vision in God, he reasoned that because eternal truths are contained in the divine intellect, scientific knowledge is possible only because the soul is part of the divine intellect. As a scientist, Malebranche wrote on optics and the laws of motion. Malebranche made no important discoveries in mathematics, but he was instrumental in introducing and disseminating the contributions of Descartes and Leibniz in France.

Legacy

By the end of his life, Malebranche was widely regarded as the greatest, if most controversial, philosopher of his day.