Abstract
The preceding chapter has shown that God’s wisdom is “practical” as well as “speculative.” He is able to order all the levels and stages of the perfections to be included in the final design of His creation such that both that end and the means of producing it shall reflect and balance His attributes. His power and His wisdom, ways and ends are coordinated in that Order which He Himself follows in all acts of willing (volontés pratiques). Yet because these ends are part of an eternal plan, they are in that sense timeless; and His ways are general laws, practical truths which are productive in character, but still general. So far, then, His Order has no actuality. There are no beings in it, no instances of those practical truths, those productive laws which shall be the dynamic of any creation. As yet, so to speak, nothing in particular has happened. No statements have delineated a theory of causality. It is at this juncture that the theory of occasionalism comes into play. But before any particulars are discussed in that theory, Order requires us to examine why the term “occasionalism” is used, why it is meaningful, and what makes this approach an integral part of God’s creative dynamic. When these questions are clarified, it will be seen that, far from being a face-saving device hauled in by an epistemologist hungering for apodictic truths and unable without occasionalism even to approach actual human experience,1 Malebranche has on the contrary presented a tenable theory of experience which offers guidelines for an experimental methodology. This will be done not as an apodictic, but as an explicitly experimental approach to the human experience of estimating goods and determining conduct.
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References
Concerning the interpretations of Malebranche which see occasionalism as a face-saving device or “deus ex machina,” cf. supra introduction, nt. 17. Concerning those interpretations which find Malebranche unable to balance the tensions of experience, cf. infra Chapter X.
Descartes often uses the phrase, “Donner l’occasion.” In the years between his death and Malebranche’s Recherche Geulincx, De la Forge and Cordemoy developed Descartes’ suggestion in their own ways. The use of the term, therefore, is not an innovation by Malebranche. The meaning of the term, as set forth in chs. III and IV, is an innovation by Malebranche. He moves from a theory of causality to a theory of experience. Cf. Gouhier, op. cit. pp. 108–115.
RdV 15e Eclaircissement, O.C. III, pp. 203–252. The quotation is taken from p. 241, author’s translation.
TNG II/I/addition to art. 7, Sault trans., p. 86; O.C., V, p. 75.
TNG First Clarification (x68r), art. is, Sault trans., p. 182.
cf. Gueroult, op. cit. II/ch. 7/sec. I; Because the system of occasional causes is that whereby the world is made, thence making God’s laws effectual, Gueroult notes that the created world “enters into a history whose philosophy — supported by religion — reveals its sense to us by discovering to us, in its final cause, the raison d’être of the world”.
Ibid. II/1/3, Sault trans., p. 65. Emphasis added
Ibid. II/1/7, Sault trans., p. 68; O.C., V, p. 70. Emphasis added.
Ibid. II/1/4, Sault trans., p. 66; O.C., V, p. 68. Cf. Gueroult, op. cit. II/ch. 7/sec. 5, and III/ch. Hip. 211.
RdV 15e Eclaircissement, O.C. III, p. 242.
When the discussion is concerned with Reason and the activity of thinking, the French word “esprit” has been translated as “mind.” Occasionally it is best translated as “spirit,” but more often, as in this instance, it would suit Malebranche’s meaning more closely to read “esprit” as “self.” It is the perfectable being of man which requires and can experience the inward operations occasioned by “Jesus Christ-as-man.”
The others are the “principle” of all being, viz. “the Holy Spirit,” and our instinctive desire for “happiness.” Cf. chapters V, VI and X below.
Cf. chapters IV and V.
Malebranche notes marginally: `By the True Cause I understand the Cause which acts by its own strength.“
TNG, II/I/I, Sault trans., p. 64; O.C., V, p. 66.
Ibid. II/I/29, Sault trans., p. 97.
Ibid. II/1/3, Sault trans., p. 65.
Ibid., WI 15 & 6, Sault trans., pp. 65–67.
Ibid., II/1/addition to 16, Sault trans., pp. 75–82.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 82. Cf. II/1/21, Sault trans., p. 91.
Ibid. First Clarification (1681), art. 12, Sault trans., p. 171; O.C., V, p. 156.
Ibid. Second Clarification (1683), Sault trans., pp. 190 ff.; O.C., V, p. 156. There is even one indication that Malebranche saw Jesus Christ not only as desighed to work, but as a working design, as energy made actual, Incarnate, such that His incarnation is “the principal of God’s designs.” The quoted phrase is in the title of that Clarification. However, the Third Clarification describes God as having two designs — the Incarnation and the Eternal Temple. Most often the latter is predominant, the former providing the means. Still, if one examines the arguments why man had to fall and be redeemed by the Incarnation, and finds them as unsatisfactory as do Martial Gueroult (op. cit. t. III, p. 231 f.) and Ginette Dreyfus (op. cit. pp. 182–186 and 246–252), one might then argue that Malebranche is “malgré lui” even closer to Aristotle than the use of a Greek “archai” would indicate.
RdV Bk. 3, pt. 2, ch. 1, O.C. I, pg. 414.
Ibid. 15e Eclaircissement, O.C. III, pg. 226.
Ibid. 11e Eclaircissement, O.C. III, pp. 167f.
Ibid. Bk. 3, pt. 2, ch. 6, O.C. I, p. 444.
Ibid.
Ibid. pp. 444–447. Also cf. IIe Eclaircissement, O.C. III, pp. 163–171.
Ibid. Bk. 3, pt. 2, chs. 1–8; especially ch. 7.
The argument is drawn RdV Bk. 3, pt. 2, ch. 7, O.C. I, pp. 448–455•
Cf. Ibid. tre Eclaircissement, O.C. III, pp. 163–171.
TNG II/I/addition to art. 17; O.C., V, pp. 86–87.
“Reflection upon what occurs within ourselves,” the chief investigation by which the science of ethics is to proceed, is discussed below. Chapter IV is concerned with the pre-conditions of such reflection; Chapter V goes into Malebranche’s meaning of “reflection.” Chapters VI-IX cover certain “findings” and applications of what Malebranche has learned by turning within to his experiences of acts of willing. Acts of willing are the subject-matter of ethics, i.e., experiences of judging and doing. There is no available a priori subject-matter such as an idea of the self. The “grace of feeling,” introduced above, will play one of the chief roles in our investigation of these experiences, as Malebranche’s theory provides guidelines for investigation.
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Walton, C. (1972). Occasionalism and Experience. In: De la Recherche du Bien. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6561-9_4
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