Steven Nadler

The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche

Introduction Steven Nadler 1. Malebranche and method Thomas M. Lennon 2. Malebranche on the soul Nicholas Jolley 3. Malebranche on ideas and the vision in God Tad M. Schmaltz 4. The Malebranche-Arnauld debate Denis Moreau 5. Malebranche on causation Steven Nadler 6. Metaphysics and philosophy Jean-Christophe Bardout 7. Malebranches theodicy Donald Rutherford 8. Malebranche on human freedom Elmar J. Kremer 9. Malebranches moral philosophy: divine and human justice Patrick Riley 10. The critical reception of Malebranche, from his own time to the end of the eighteenth century Stuart Brown 11. Malebranches life and legacy Andre Robinet.

Descartes and occasional causation

Questions about the nature of causal relations occupy a central position in early modern philosophy. The prominence of this topic in seventeenth and eighteenth-century thought can, in large measure, be traced to a specific historical problem: the need to reconcile an emerging scientific view of the natural world mechanistic physics with traditional beliefs about the relation between God and his creation. On the one hand, natural philosophers of the period saw their task as one of identifying the underlying causal structures of observed phenomena and of framing explanations in terms of matter and motion alone. On the other hand, it was generally recognized that God is responsible not just for creating the world and its contents, but for sustaining them in existence as well. Against this background, in which philosophy, physics, and theology merge, the problem of causation arises in several contexts: in the realm of purely physical inquiry (how does one body produce changes in another body?); in regard to relations between the mind and the body (are mental events true causes of physical events, and do bodily states cause effects in the mind?); and in philosophical inquiry into the mind alone (are there causal relations among thoughts and other mental activities?)l In this paper I examine a particular philosophical model of causation prevalent in the seventeenth century one that makes its clearest appearance in the second of the three contexts mentioned, mind/body relations, although for some thinkers it functions in the other two contexts as well. The model is a nonstandard one, insofar as it represents a departure from what might be called the standard causal model of the period: transeunt efficient causation. I shall call the type of causal relation I am

Cordemoy and Occasionalism

[37] 1 Thus, in Descartes’s Metaphysical Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), Daniel Garber argues that the doctrine of occasionalism “is certainly flexible enough” to allow us to say that “Descartes is . . . an occasionalist when it comes to the inanimate world,” that is, with respect to the motion of bodies not united to souls (304). He also notes, however, that “while Descartes may share some doctrines with the later occasionalists of the Cartesian school, he is not an occasionalist, strictly speaking, insofar as he does allow some finite causes into his world,” namely, human minds and angels; see “Descartes and Occasionalism,” in Steven Nadler, ed. Causation in Early Modern Philosophy (University Park: Penn State Press, 1993), (24). Thus, according to Garber, Descartes still rejects both the negative and positive theses of occasionalism that I outline below. J.E. McGuire, while insisting that Robert Boyle “did not accept occasionalism,” nonetheless argues that for Boyle “God’s will . . . is the only causally efficacious agency in nature. Hence there are no laws or causal connections in nature existing as entities over and above particulars conceived as events, bodies or particles . . . there are no secondary causes in nature which are miraculously dispensed with by Providence; rather, Providence is God’s continual action in nature”; see “Boyle’s Conception of Nature,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 523–42. For a critique of McGuire’s reading, see Timothy Shanahan, “God and Nature in the Thought of Robert Boyle,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (1988): 547–69. 2 The first occasionalists, in fact, had nothing to do with Cartesianism. The occasionalism among the Islamic followers of al-Ashari in the tenth and eleventh centuries, including al-Ghazali (1058– 1114), was perhaps an even more extreme version of the doctrine than what would appear in the seventeenth century. For a study of this movement, see Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism and its Critique by Averroës and Aquinas (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958). Cordemoy and Occasionalism

Arnauld's God

In this paper, I argue that Arnauld’s conception of God is more radical than scholars have been willing to allow. It is not the case that, for Arnauld, God acts for reasons, with His will guided by wisdom (much as the God of Malebranche and Leibniz acts), albeit by a wisdom impenetrable to us. Arnauld’s objections to Malebranche are directed not only at the claim that God’s wisdom is transparent to human reason, but at the whole distinction between will and wisdom in God, even if that wisdom were “hidden.” Arnauld’s God, in fact, approaches the extreme voluntarist God of Descartes, and thus transcends practical rational agency altogether.

Gersonides on Providence: A Jewish Chapter in the History of the General Will

The notion of the “general will” has proven to be one of the more influential and at the same time enduringly perplexing concepts in the history of ideas. Its most famous appearance is of course, in Rousseau’s political philosophy as the expression, ideally embodied in the sovereign’s commands, of what is in the common or public interest. The general will (la volonté générale) is, Rousseau says, the will of “the body of the people,” that is, “the will that one has a citizen” for the common good. It thus stands in contrast to the “particular will” (la volonté particulière), the expression of one’s individual and particularistic preference. In this political context, what gives the general will its generality is the universality of interest it represents. Its scope extends to all citizens and it specifies what is in the best interest of the members of the body politic as a whole. Although the general will may or may not coincide with each and every individual’s private interest, all citizens are, as a matter of fact, properly served by its fulfillment. In his book The General Will Before Rousseau, Patrick Riley demonstrates how this central idea of eighteenth-century political thought actually has its origins in seventeenth-century theological debates over divine, not human, justice.

The Jewish Spinoza

The seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, was expelled from the Amsterdam Portuguese- Jewish community when he was a young man, and in his philosophy he adopts a critical, even hostile attitude toward sectarian religions. Scholars have debated the extent to which Spinozas thought, despite his own fraught relationship to Judaism, belongs to the history of Jewish philosophy. This review article looks at various trends in scholarship on Spinoza and Judaism, and particularly at recent illuminating work showing the precedents of Spinozas ideas in medieval Jewish rationalism, especially Maimonides.

Spinoza on Lying and Suicide

Spinoza is often taken to claim that suicide is never a rational act, that a ‘free’ person acting by the guidance of reason will never terminate his/her own existence. Spinoza also defends the prima facie counterintuitive claim that the rational person will never act dishonestly. This second claim can, in fact, be justified when Spinozas moral psychology and account of motivation are properly understood. Moreover, making sense of the free mans exception-less honesty in this way also helps to clarify how Spinoza should, and indeed does, recognize the possibility of rational suicide.

A Source for Menasseh ben Israel’s Printer’s Mark

This zuta offers a presentation of the various printer’s marks used by Menasseh ben Israel, and especially the discovery of some sources in Dutch emblem literature for his most prominent and well-known mark and its motto, ‘Non odit tamen.’

Writing the Lives of Philosophers: Reflections on Spinoza and Others

This essay begins with some thoughts on the challenges and pitfalls of writing philosophical biography, on why biographies of philosophers tend to fall between the literary cracks, and on what makes for a successful biography of a philosopher. This is followed by a more specific discussion of the specific problems facing someone writing a biography of Spinoza, on whose life so little documentary material is available.

L'ombre de Malebranche : Providence divine et volonté générale dans la correspondance entre Leibniz et Arnauld

EnglishArnauld’s first letter to Leibniz (March 13, 1686) was written shortly after the publication of his attack on Malebranche’s Treatise on Nature and Grace. A central theme in Arnauld’s Philosophical and Theological Reflections on the New System of Nature and Grace is Malebranche’s failure to treat the nature and extent of divine providence in an adequate manner. Now, while the question of God’s liberty seems to have the upper hand in the first couple of exchanges between Arnauld and Leibniz, the question of providence is also present. I try to show that Arnauld’s views on divine providence, as these appear primarily in his attacks on Malebranche in the Reflections, may have much to tell us about what he is really worried about in his initial reaction to the title-summary of Article XIII in the Discourse on Metaphysics; and, moreover, that Leibniz’s familiarity with the substantive details of the Arnauld-Malebranche debate influenced how he replied to Arnauld’s objections. francaisLa premiere lettre d’Arnauld a Leibniz, le 13 mars 1686, fut ecrite peu de temps apres la publication de ses Reflexions philosophiques et theologiques contre le Traite de la nature et de la grâce de Malebranche, dans lesquelles il critique la maniere dont l’oratorien rend compte de la nature et de l’etendue de la providence divine. Or, bien que les premiers echanges entre Arnauld et Leibniz semblent privilegier la question de la liberte divine, le probleme de la providence est lui aussi bien present. J’essaie de montrer que les positions d’Arnauld sur la providence, d’abord dirigees contre Malebranche dans les Reflexions, aident a jeter une lumiere nouvelle sur ce qui constitue l’objet principal de ses preoccupations quand il reagit negativement au sommaire de l’article XIII du Discours de metaphysique, et que les reponses de Leibniz aux objections d’Arnauld ont elles-memes ete influencees par sa connaissance precise de la controverse entre Arnauld et Malebranche.