Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) has been has been a surprising philosophical find for me. Although I have heard about him, one usually reads of brief dismissals, such as "occasionalist." I learned that the French value him greater than do German or English philosophical tradition. At least in the translations I read, I found him delightful, insightful, and thought provoking. Since there were no reviews when I bout the book, I thought I would try to the wet the appetite of others.
One example is that while he is proudly a follower of Descartes, he often has an intriguing of putting his thought. Concerning the principle of doubt, he says the spirit with which we doubt is something to which we need to pay attention. The point is not to doubt everything in the fashion of a skeptic. Rather, one must doubt from the perspective of caution, distrust, wisdom, and insight.
He offers an interesting interpretation of Adam. He turned away from the pleasure of the presence of God to the pleasure of his body. In doing so, he became a slave to sense and passion, which then blinded him from the source of his true pleasure and joy. We now have the obligation to struggle against the errors of sense that bind us to the body and the physical world. Yet, this binding is actually through our will and freedom, which have experienced the deepest corruption from sin.
Consistent with Descartes, he refers to people who have a mind to prefer the minds of others in the search for truth, rather than the mind God has given them. One must learn to receive guidance from one's own eyes rather than the eyes of others. One who has good eyes would not think of closing them or removing them in order to have others guide them. What I like about this is that one must train oneself to think and gain wisdom for one's life, rather than go through life blindly trusting someone else. No one else will become the authority for living the unique life God has given you.
He has a controversial notion of the relation between God and the human mind. God has the ideas of all the beings God has created within the mind of God. God sees all these beings by considering the perfections God contains to which they are related. Through the divine presence, God is in close union with our minds, such that one might say that God is to the human mind what space is to the senses. The mind can see what in God represents created beings. Such beings are intelligible and present to the mind. The mind can see the works of God in God. This view of things places the human mind in complete dependence on God.
Consistent with Descartes, Malebranche discusses what he considers the most persuasive proof of the existence of God. He refers to the idea we have of the infinite, a proof that he thinks assumes the least. The mind perceives the infinite, even if it cannot comprehend it. The mind also has a clear and distinct idea of an infinitely perfect being, God, an idea that one could not create. In fact, the mind actually has the idea of infinite before it has an idea of finite. We conceive of being before we conceive of it as either infinite or finite. The general notion of being is prior to our carving out of being something finite. The general notion of being must always come first.
He has an interesting insight. God has created us to depend on each other. In fact, we are to some extent joined to the entire universe. We experience a bond with our country our goods, or parents, and so on, by a natural union that does not now depend on our will. He notes that great people actually depend upon more things than do others. Great generals must rely upon many fellow officers and soldiers. Our minds unite to the things closest to us, for they are the things that relate to the preservation of our lives.
