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Emotional Sensations and the Moral Imagination in Malebranche

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The Discourse of Sensibility

Part of the book series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ((AUST,volume 35))

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Abstract

This paper explores the details of Malebranche’s philosophy of mind, paying particular attention to the mind-body relationship and the roles of the imagination and the passions. I demonstrate that Malebranche has available an alternative to his deontological ethical system: the alternative I expose is based around his account of the embodied aspects of the mind and the sensations experienced in perception. I briefly argue that Hume, a philosopher already indebted to Malebranche for much inspiration, read Malebranche in the positive way that I here describe him. Malebranche should therefore be acknowledged as a serious influence on Enlightenment philosophy of sensibility.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 90.

  2. 2.

    Voltaire 1733/2003, 52.

  3. 3.

    See Malebranche 1678/1997, 226–227. For commentary, see Schmaltz 1996, 96–99; Jolley 1988.

  4. 4.

    I do not offer an interpretation of Malebranche’s theory of ideas here. It should suffice to say that, for Malebranche, ideas are intelligible representations of objects perceived externally by the mind; in many respects, they are similar to Plato’s Forms. By virtue of their being external and abstract, they are what give rise to our purely objective knowledge; they differ from sensations not only ontologically, but epistemologically—ideas are not thoughts; rather they are thought of.

  5. 5.

    I use the term ‘embodied’ in a qualified sense throughout this paper. In Malebranche’s system, a mind and a body are metaphysically distinct, since they are composed of different substances which do not causally interact. But the mind and body are intimately connected, both functionally and phenomenologically: actions of the mind and body correspond to one another, and the movements of the body give rise to sensations in the mind. (This is explained in more detail below.) It is in this sense that the term ‘embodied mind’ is employed.

  6. 6.

    As we will see below, for Malebranche, the sciences do not yield truths of the same kind as do metaphysics or theology.

  7. 7.

    Note that, for Malebranche, the body is an object in the world in the same way as are rocks and trees; see the discussion on passions below.

  8. 8.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, xxxv.

  9. 9.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, xxxix.

  10. 10.

    Simmons 2009, 105–129.

  11. 11.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 2.

  12. 12.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 3.

  13. 13.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 320.

  14. 14.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 2. Our minds are, however, modified by way of ‘pure intellections’. A discussion of what this entails will take us too far from our present topic, but for a detailed and careful analysis see Jolley 1994.

  15. 15.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 218.

  16. 16.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 16.

  17. 17.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 7–11.

  18. 18.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 7.

  19. 19.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 617–618.

  20. 20.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 433. It is to this first species of truth—the eternal and necessary truths of the intellectual realm—that Malebranche’s use of ‘truth’ typically refers in the Search. Throughout this paper, I follow Malebranche’s use of the term, though exceptions will be noted.

  21. 21.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 16–17.

  22. 22.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 198. The relationship between corporeal images and perceptions is explained below.

  23. 23.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 59, cf. 213.

  24. 24.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 52.

  25. 25.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 2.

  26. 26.

    A pain, here, is taken to be that which comes with a physical wound or a headache. The sort of ‘pain’ that accompanies or constitutes emotional sensations is considered below.

  27. 27.

    ‘Affect’ implies sensible pleasure or pain. Sensations accompanying wounds to one’s body, headaches, or orgasms would all be considered affective sensations.

  28. 28.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 55. Malebranche does not dwell on this distinction as he realises that degrees of affect can vary across occasions; that is, it is not simply the case that some sensations are affective while others are not. See Malebranche 1678/1997, 57–58.

  29. 29.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 200.

  30. 30.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 21.

  31. 31.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 21. This correlation is also explained in Malebranche’s quite questionable advice on raising children: he recommends against rewarding children with sensible pleasures as this will corrupt their motivations to learn and behave properly, steering attention towards bodily pleasures rather than reason. On the other hand, sensible punishments are justified in cases when children cannot be convinced through their own reason, as pain will impede children’s enjoyment of vice and prevent the mind from being enslaved by the body. See Malebranche 1678/1997, 127–129.

  32. 32.

    See Malebranche 1678/1997, 62–63.

  33. 33.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 24.

  34. 34.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 23.

  35. 35.

    Nadler 1992, 23.

  36. 36.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 442.

  37. 37.

    Schmaltz 1996, 58.

  38. 38.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 618.

  39. 39.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 60.

  40. 40.

    Here Malebranche is echoing Descartes’s position in his Sixth Meditation.

  41. 41.

    Simmons 2009, 105.

  42. 42.

    Simmons 2009, 110.

  43. 43.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 49–50; see also Sutton 1998b, 107.

  44. 44.

    While this claim is straightforward enough for present purposes, debates continue over exactly how we should interpret Malebranche’s doctrine of occasionalism. Nadler provides a good explanation of Malebranchean occasionalism in his article, ‘Occasionalism and General Will in Malebranche’, and offers a brief review of competing interpretations in his postscript to that article. Both pieces can be found in Nadler 2011.

  45. 45.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 200.

  46. 46.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 2.

  47. 47.

    These are ‘merely the most refined and agitated parts of the blood’ which ‘are conducted, with the rest of the blood, through the arteries to the brain’, where ‘they are separated from it by some parts intended for that purpose’ (Malebranche 1678/1997, 91).

  48. 48.

    See Malebranche 1678/1997, 98; Jolley 1995.

  49. 49.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 723–724.

  50. 50.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 134. Here we can see an example of similarity between Malebranche and Hume: ‘A greater force and vivacity in the impression naturally conveys a greater to the related idea; and ‘tis on the degrees of force and vivacity, that the belief depends’. (Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 98.) Cf. Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 67.

  51. 51.

    See Malebranche 1678/1997, 33–36, 43–44.

  52. 52.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 20.

  53. 53.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 560. Malebranche again clarifies his position on faculties in his reply to the First Objection in the tenth Elucidation, 622–624.

  54. 54.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 17.

  55. 55.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 104.

  56. 56.

    Descartes 1984–1991, Vol. 2, 50.

  57. 57.

    Descartes 1984–1991, Vol. 1, 56; emphasis removed.

  58. 58.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 419; see also Malebranche 1678/1997, 132; Sutton 1998a, 115–146.

  59. 59.

    Of course the imagination can only aid the geometrically inclined mind in relatively simple procedures. Imagining shapes is not a better means of practising mathematics than is algebraic geometry: ‘With the mind neither hampered nor occupied with having to represent a great many figures and an infinite number of lines, it can thus perceive at a single glance what it could not otherwise see, because the mind can penetrate further and embrace more things when its capacity is used economically’ (Malebranche 1678/1997, 209). Malebranche also mentions that it is by way of the pure understanding that we can accurately perceive a figure of a thousand sides (Malebranche 1678/1997, 16), hinting at Descartes’ own distinction between the intellect and the imagination (see Descartes 1984–1991, Vol. 2, 50–51). Hume adopts a very similar standpoint towards geometry through sensory perception to the one we find in the two rationalists, though of course he discards the notion of necessary truths perceived in rationalistic ideas; see Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 50–52.

  60. 60.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 88.

  61. 61.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 135.

  62. 62.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 87. This view echoes through Hume’s comparison of impressions and ideas; see Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 7–10; Hume 1748/2007, 15.

  63. 63.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 338.

  64. 64.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 347–352.

  65. 65.

    James 1997, 113.

  66. 66.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 346.

  67. 67.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 349.

  68. 68.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 201.

  69. 69.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 201.

  70. 70.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 88.

  71. 71.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 337.

  72. 72.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 262.

  73. 73.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 349.

  74. 74.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 351.

  75. 75.

    Though Malebranche mentions that it is the will which judges that the utterances perceived by the soon-to-be attacker are insulting, he need not claim that it is the will which triggers the passion itself. Indeed he maintains that it is a judgement qua perception that triggers our passions, and perceptions are matters for the understanding, not the will per se. See Malebranche 1678/1997, 351.

  76. 76.

    Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 107–108; see also Hume 1748/2007, 67; Kail 2008b, 55–80.

  77. 77.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 238–239.

  78. 78.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 330–331. See also James 2005 for an account of Hume’s appropriation of Malebranche.

  79. 79.

    Malebranche 1678/1997, 114.

  80. 80.

    At least, we are all disposed to respond to the effects of a particular passion in the same manner. The actual phenomenological quality of sadness, say, may differ between minds; this is a question we could never resolve given that we do not have access to each other’s phenomenological experiences. While we cannot be sure that sensations between minds are phenomenologically equivalent, we can at best be confident that they are functionally equivalent. See Malebranche 1678/1997, 63–66, 238–239.

  81. 81.

    Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 302.

  82. 82.

    Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 302.

  83. 83.

    Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1, 303.

  84. 84.

    For more detailed accounts of Hume’s moral philosophy see Book 3 of Hume 1739–1740/2000, Vol. 1. Many ideas therein have been reworked and published in Hume 1751/1998. Important discussions include Capaldi 1989; Cohon 2008; Loeb 1977; Mackie 1980.

  85. 85.

    Stephen Buckle argues that Hume’s account of the passions is ‘implicitly materialist’. See Buckle 2012, 204.

  86. 86.

    See McCracken 1983, 257–261; Kail 2008b.

  87. 87.

    Hume’s letter to Ramsay can be found in Hume 1748/2007, 203–204.

  88. 88.

    More prominent studies on the various Malebranche-Hume connections include McCracken 1983; James 2005; Kail 2008a, b; Buckle 2001; Gaukroger 2010, 439–440.

  89. 89.

    McCracken 1983, 255. Cf. Buckle 2001, 192.

  90. 90.

    McCracken 1983, 286.

  91. 91.

    Kail 2008b, 76.

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Acknowledgments

Versions of this paper were presented at the Sensibilité conference in Brisbane, December 2010, and at the inaugural conference of the Centre for the History of Philosophy in York, UK, May 2011. I wish to thank all audience members who provided feedback. Thanks also to Stephen Buckle, Devin Curry, Karen Detlefsen, Daniel Garber, Stephen Gaukroger, Nabeel Hamid, Martyn Lloyd, Verónica Muriel, and Alison Simmons for helpful discussions, and most importantly to John Sutton, whose prompts and comments have proved indispensable.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 433 Cohen Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Jordan Taylor

  2. Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia

    Jordan Taylor

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  1. Centre for the History of European Discourses and School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Henry Martyn Lloyd

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Taylor, J. (2013). Emotional Sensations and the Moral Imagination in Malebranche. In: Lloyd, H. (eds) The Discourse of Sensibility. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02702-9_4

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