malebranche's method: knowledge and evidence
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [The University Of Melbourne Libraries]On: 26 September 2013, At: 06:51Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
British Journal for the History ofPhilosophyPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbjh20
Malebranche's Method:Knowledge and EvidenceDavid Scott aa University of Victoria,Published online: 09 Feb 2009.
To cite this article: David Scott (2009) Malebranche's Method: Knowledge and Evidence,British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 17:1, 169-183
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608780802548440
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
DISCUSSION
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND
EVIDENCE
David Scott
Malebranche’s doctrine of method or of how one comes to possessknowledge or truth is arguably the central concern of his magnum opus,the Search After Truth, and it is often regarded as Cartesian in itsessentials.1 In recent years, however, Thomas Lennon has sought to recastMalebranche’s relation to Descartes on this issue, by demonstrating thatwhereas Descartes’ method is primarily psychologistic in nature, Male-branche’s is not. In his widely cited and justly lauded ‘PhilosophicalCommentary’ (1980, hereafter ‘PC’) on the Search After Truth andElucidations of the Search After Truth, and again in ‘Malebranche andMethod’ (2000, hereafter ‘MM’), two of the ways in which Lennon makeshis case are given in the closely related claims, (a) that ‘Malebranche’smost significant departure from the Cartesian methodology’ concerns hisnon-psychologistic vision of what knowledge is; and (b) that ‘evidence’ is anon-psychological item, a property not of minds, but of non-mental ideaslocated in God.2 Both these contentions are the subject of the followingdiscussion, in which I focus first on Lennon’s interpretation of the moregeneral question of the relation of Malebranche’s vision of knowledge tohis account of method, and then on the interpretation of Malebrancheanevidence. Neither question – in particular, that concerning the status ofMalebranchean evidence – has received much attention in the literature,but as Lennon’s work demonstrates, both are extremely important for howone interprets Malebranche.
1Cf. Pyle’s assessment that ‘Malebranche adopts from Descartes, first and foremost, the famous
method’ (2003, 5); and McCracken (1983, 51n. 84). For an earlier account of just how infused
the Search is by Cartesianism and the Cartesian method, cf. Alquie (1974, 29ff.).2Lennon develops ‘(a)’ in greater detail in ‘Malebranche and Method’, his contribution to the
Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (2000). However, that paper proceeds mainly from the
separate consideration of Malebranche’s treatments of free will and doubt rather than from
Malebranche’s strict account of ideas.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17(1) 2009: 169–183
British Journal for the History of PhilosophyISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online ª 2009 BSHP
http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/09608780802548440
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
A. KNOWLEDGE AND METHOD
Here is the full statement of (a), the claim that Malebranche’s mostsignificant departure from Cartesian methodology pertains to his non-psychologistic vision of knowledge:
For Descartes knowledge qua true awareness is an adequation between amental state and some extramental reality; method is the means to the state,
the means of creating the conditions sufficient for its occurrence, which can beidentified by the attending indubitability, a criterion having the singular virtueof being itself unmistakable. This is . . . fully blown psychologism . . . For him
it is a psychological fact that only what is true constrains assent, hence hisconception of method as a psychological preparation of the mind, strippingaway its prejudices for example. His only assumption is that the mind at leastunder optimum conditions can arrive at truth. For Malebranche, on the other
hand, knowledge is the bare apprehension of an objective order of reality thatis fully constituted independently of minds, and that he identifies with thedivine essence. This means of course that the divine verities cannot be created.
It also means that thought is its own guarantee of its contact with this order,for without it thought could not occur. Hence the method of doubt plays norole for Malebranche: it is both irrelevant (since there is no necessary
connection between dubitability and the objective order) and unnecessary(since this order is already available as the condition of thought).
(PC 770)
According to Lennon, ‘Malebranche’s most significant departurefrom the Cartesian methodology’ arises from his (Malebranche’s) non-psychological vision of what knowledge is. As Lennon explains later in MM,psychologism is,
[s]pecifically . . . the view that the normative concepts of logic and epistemol-ogy are reducible to the nonnormative concepts of psychology. The former tell
us what we ought to believe and, in terms of standards, why we ought to; thelatter tells [sic] us what we in fact believe and, in terms of causes, why we do.3
Thus, as Lennon sees psychologism, it is the reduction of logical orepistemological norms to psycho-causal ones, and for the purposes of thispaper I shall not dispute this definition.4 Here at the outset I shall, however,slightly expand it, to include a further sense in which it applies to the
3MM 15–16.4Nonetheless it seems to me that there are problems with the way Lennon employs the term in
his characterization of the debate between Malebranche and Arnauld. He claims that the status
of clarity and distinctness as ‘properties of mental states’ ‘was at the core of Malebranche’s long
debate with Arnauld’ (MM 19). As an account of psychologism in the Malebranche-Arnauld
debate, this departs from the standard view that that debate was over the status of ideas, not
clarity and distinctness.
170 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
Cartesian and Malebranchean epistemologies. Cartesian psychologism(also) refers to Descartes’ view that, in addition to the form of an idea (orwhat Descartes terms its ‘formal reality’), the content of an idea (what heterms its ‘objective reality’) is, ontologically speaking, a mode of the mind.5
By contrast, Malebranchean anti-psychologism is the view that while the so-called ‘form’ of an idea is mental or subjective – it is what Malebranche callsa ‘perception’ – an idea’s content is something non-mental, as external to themind as a table or chair might be (although, of course, it is nothing materiallike a table or chair). Motivated by epistemological, moral and ultimatelyreligious concerns, the standard story goes, Malebranche de-psychologizesideas. He does this by locating them in God, where a sufficiently attentivehuman mind can behold them in a mental act of ‘simple perception’(perception par simple vue), which Lennon aptly describes as ‘bareapprehension’.6
On Lennon’s view, these different conceptions of knowledge leadDescartes and Malebranche to have different conceptions of method. Asnoted, I do not dispute Lennon’s interpretation of Descartes’ position,which is that ‘method is the means to [a specific mental] state, the means ofcreating the conditions sufficient for its occurrence’ (PC 770).7 And certainlyMalebranche sounds as if he holds that view of method when he writes that‘to keep our perceptions clear, it is absolutely necessary to observe exactlythe rule we have just prescribed’ (LO 453, OC II 321).8 Nonetheless, theseapparently similar general accounts of method prompt a question ofprinciple: does the epistemological difference between Cartesian adequationand Malebranchean bare apprehension really need to make for amethodological difference? Does not knowledge – be it by adequation orbare apprehension, i.e. by the having of ideas (for Descartes) or the beholdingof them in God (for Malebranche) – in either event require the mind to be ina specific psychological condition; and is that condition not precisely what
5Cf. Meditations III (AT VII 40–3).6For Malebranche’s perception par simple vue, cf. e.g. LO 481 (OC II 371). For an authoritative
history of the Scholastic origins of this doctrine, cf. Day (1947). For an account of the moral
and religious significance of this anti-psychologism, H. M. Bracken, ‘The Malebranche–
Arnauld Debate; Philosophical or Theological?’ in Nicholas Malebranche: His Philosophical
Critics and Successors, edited by Stuart Brown (Assen/Maastricht, The Netherlands: Van
Gorcum, 1991) 35–48.7For the purposes of this paper, I accept Lennon’s general characterization of Descartes’
method. For more detailed accounts, cf., e.g. Leslie J. Beck, The Method of Descartes: A Study
of the Regulae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the
Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins, Descartes to Kant (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969)
79–155; Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995) 104–34.8Lennon acknowledges a strong similarity between the methodological rules of Descartes and
Malebranche ‘[V]ery early in the Search, and more emphatically even than Descartes,
Malebranche proposes a general rule for avoiding error that sounds very much like Descartes’
first rule’ (MM 17).
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 171
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
method for these philosophers is intended to engender? In the terms inwhich Lennon discusses the Cartesian and Malebranchean methods, wemust answer this affirmatively: whether it has or beholds ideas, the mind isin either case required to be modified in one way rather than another, fornot just any old perception will do. It is therefore difficult to grasp whatbearing of itself either the adequation or the bareness of an apprehensionshould have on the fact that Descartes requires perception to be ‘clear anddistinct’, and Malebranche similarly requires it to be ‘clear’ or ‘pure’ or‘simple’. Absent further logical or epistemological considerations – inparticular, the status of ‘evidence’ to be examined in Section B, below –there seems to be no reason to hold that their differing conceptions ofknowledge as adequation and bare apprehension, or indeed their differentconceptions of the significance or value of scientific knowledge,9 shouldcause Descartes and Malebranche to regard method differently, i.e. assomething other than the cultivation of a particular kind of perception.10
Perhaps we can throw this point into sharper relief by examining moreclosely the key difference (beyond the difference between adequation andbare apprehension) between the Cartesian and Malebranchean accounts ofknowledge. Malebranche holds the ideas of which we have bare apprehen-sion to constitute, as Lennon puts it, an ‘objective order [in God] that is fullyconstituted independently of minds’, and this unquestionably constitutes aninsuperable breech between him and Descartes.11 In this straightforward
9Here again I allude to the fact that Malebranche’s epistemological orientation is ultimately
moral and religious, not scientific. As Alquie notes on a general level (1947, 58), Malebranche’s
religious orientation does not prevent him from finding Descartes’s philosophy well-suited to
his own agenda.10In other important respects their theories of knowledge may not be so far apart.
Malebranchean bare apprehension arguably involves some kind of (mind-nonmind) adequa-
tion, namely adequation between our perceptions on the one hand, and the non-mental ideas
Malebranche associates with the divine substance on the other. As noted, the perceptions
involved in bare apprehension are not just any old mental entities; they ‘pure’ perceptions and
in this capacity they are differentiated from other kinds of perception as adequate as receptors
of divine agency. This suggests that some kind of adequation is required on the Malebranchean
account, since for him ideas are as extra-mental as Cartesian material things are in relation to
clear and distinct modes of the mind. Obviously, this is not to say that Malebranchean ideas are
the same kind of extra-mental thing as Cartesian (or Malebranchean) corporeal substance.11Lennon’s additional claim that Malebranche ‘identifies [this objective order of ideas] with the
divine essence’ seems too strong, as it fails to account for Malebranche’s repeated and strenuous
efforts to qualify the sense in which ideas and God are identified. The following is typical of
Malebranche’s position:
Thus, God, the infinitely perfect Being, including eminently in himself all that there is
of reality or perfection in all beings, can represent them to us in touching us with his
essence, not understood absolutely, but taken insofar as it is relative to those beings,
because his infinite essence includes all there is of true reality in all finite beings.
(DCCP 88, OC XV 23)
On the interpretation of this passage, and of the many passages similar to it, depends
Malebranche’s attempt to reconcile divine simplicity with the doctrine that God possesses
individual, discrete ideas of things.
172 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
respect Malebranche’s position is non-psychologistic, and Descartes’ ispsychologistic. However, I suggest that the best way to characterize thisMalebranchean departure from Descartes is as an ontological rather than asan epistemological or methodological difference; for although it hasepistemological implications, it concerns the ontological conditions for theobjectivity in knowledge, rather than any methodological requirements wemight encounter meeting those conditions. As Malebranche (rightly orwrongly) appraises this difference between himself and Descartes, hispredecessor’s fundamental mistake has not to do with methodologicalpsychologism, but is rather the misapprehension of the reality of ideas.
Certainly, as noted, this difference has epistemological consequences:because he subjectivizes ideas, thinks Malebranche, Descartes ends up in ascepticism in which he takes himself, i.e. his own mind, as his real object,rather than the world.12 As Andre Robinet notes in his exposition of theCartesian and Malebranchean methods, Malebranche reasons that withoutthe (for Malebranche) crucial distinction between perceptions and ideasthe method of clear and distinct ideas remains ill-founded.13 However, thequestion of what is required to ground the method as an account ofthe process leading to knowledge of a certain kind of object, is not thesame as the question of what the method is. The significance ofMalebranche’s ontological corrective (about the status of ideas) is certainlyepistemological – without the reification of ideas we are doomed tosolipsism – but this is not a methodological point. Pace Lennon, that theobject of apprehension is ontologically different for each philosopher seemsto have little if any bearing on the methodological question of how theapprehension of that object – the correct requisite mental posture in respectof it, as it were – is achieved.14
12 The perception I have of intelligible extension belongs to me, it is a modification of my
mind. It is I who perceive this extension. But the extension I perceive is not a
modification of my mind. For I am well aware that it is not myself I see when I think
of infinite spaces, of a circle, of a square, of a cube, when I look at this room or turn
my eyes to the sky.
(DM 16, OC XII 45)13Robinet (1965, 327).14Whether ideas be in the mind or in God, in important ways these two doctrines of knowledge
share strong affinities. First, for each philosopher the order ideas represent or to which they
correspond is the order of the non-mental world. Were this not the case for Malebranche, then
he would be committed to claiming that in apprehending non-mental ideas we would be
apprehending God alone, not the world; we would be apprehending God’s substance, not God’s
substance in so far as it is representative of or participable by creatures (to employ the stock
Malebranchean phrase that distinguishes perception of ideas from perception of God). In
general, Malebranche denies that the two perceptions (of God and things in the world) are the
same, although this issue arises most acutely in connection with his doctrine of intelligible
extension, a doctrine that in the eyes of many brings him close to Spinozism. Cf. Moreau (1947).
Second, the content of ideas in these disparate ontologies is, in effect, the same for each
philosopher. With allowances for Malebranchean modifications of Cartesian physics and
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 173
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
B. EVIDENCE
I come now to Lennon’s account of Malebranche’s doctrine of evidence.The issue is important, because how one interprets the status of evidence inMalebranche’s philosophy bears significantly on how one interprets thedoctrine of method. This is because Malebranche’s chief methodologicalinjunction just is the preservation of evidence;15 so if evidence is somethingnon-psychological, then Malebranche’s method, not just his vision ofknowledge, acquires a correspondingly non-psychological hue, and Len-non’s case for the difference between Malebranche and Descartes looks tobe well-founded on a level which arguably trumps the more general concernsjust expressed in Section A.
Lennon argues his case for the non-psychological nature of Malebran-chean evidence mainly in his PC. There, he urges the non-mental status ofevidence in the context of his contention that Malebranche’s rules of method‘all avoid the Cartesian psychologism’ (LO 773). For Lennon, ‘the specificmethod Malebranche details in book six [of the Search] reflects his stronganti-psychologistic concern’, and it is along those lines that he interpretsMalebranchean evidence:
[Malebranche] draws as a consequence of [the general rule of method of Book
One] . . . that evidence must be preserved in our perceptions (OC II 246–47),and it is this principle that is discussed in Book Six, and that becomes the basisfor all the specific rules of method (OC II 246–7). It suggests, as one would
expect, (1) that evidence is not something induced into our perceivings, but is aquality of what is perceived, and (2) that evidence is therefore prior to ourperceivings, there to be uncovered. The search after truth is less a matter ofseeking out, or of constructing, something than of realizing fully what is always
present to us.(LO 772, emphasis added)
The first and more basic claim here is that evidence is a quality of ideas, nota property of minds or perceivings. I limit my response to this claim inparticular, since it is so important,16 and the primary thrust of my response
mathematics, and for Malebranche’s attempts to reintroduce teleology, each philosopher
possesses and seeks to advance the same mathematico-mechanical vision of the material world.15‘Here is the first [general rule for avoiding error], which concerns the sciences. We should
never give complete consent except to propositions which seem so evidently true that we cannot
refuse it of them without feeling an inward pain and the secret reproaches of reason’ (LO 10,
OC I 55).16I agree with Lennon’s implied view that how one takes evidence, i.e. psychologistically or non-
psychologistically, determines whether one regards it as prior to perception, i.e. as ‘there to be
uncovered’, or as instead constructed in perception itself. However, apart from the reasons I
adduce in this body of this paper, I believe there is further reason to reject Lennon’s secondary
claim that evidence is pre-existing and ‘there to be uncovered’. Against the contention that ‘[t]he
search after truth is less a matter of seeking out, or of constructing, something than of realizing
174 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
is textual. Clearly, evidence has a normative meaning according to which itis tied modally to truth, and this meaning is not immediately or obviouslyrelated to human psychology. Nonetheless, I maintain, in the Search,Malebranche defines and uses this term in such a manner that it must beconstrued as a mental or psychological property. At the outset he writes, aswe have just noted, that ‘[t]ruth is almost never found except with evidence’.He continues: ‘evidence consists only in the clear and distinct perception of allthe constituents and relations of the object necessary to support a well-founded judgment’ (LO 10, OC I 54–55, emphasis added). Here,Malebranche expressly defines evidence mentalistically, as ‘clear and distinctperception’, which he distinguishes from the non-mental direct or immediateobject of the perception, i.e. from the non-mental idea.
This distinction between subjective perception and objective idea inMalebranche’s philosophy, discussed earlier in Section A, is apparent fromMalebranche’s well-known definition of an idea: ‘[B]y the word idea, I meanhere nothing other than the immediate object, or the object closest to themind, when it perceives something, i.e. that which affects and modifies themind with the perception it has of an object’ (LO 217, OC I 413–14). Note,Malebranche retains the connection between evidence and truth: evidence iswhat we need to have truth. This renders evidence a condition of truth; butwhat kind of condition? Because it is a clear and distinct perception, it mustbe a psychological or subjective condition, i.e. a condition in which thethinking subject needs to be in order to possess truth.
One cannot adequately grasp the nature and status of evidence inMalebranche’s philosophy without considering his oft-repeated phrase ‘thesecret reproaches of reason’, for these reproaches are what we experiencewhen we withhold consent from or refuse to acquiesce in evidencespecifically. In the same psychological sounding terms, Malebrancheusually refers to an ‘inward pain’ when we withhold such consent. Thebearing of this on the status of evidence becomes apparent fromMalebranche’s claim that ‘[t]o submit to the false appearances of truthis to enslave oneself against the will of God; but to submit in good faith tothese secret reproaches of our reason that accompany the refusal to yieldto evidence is to obey the voice of eternal truth that speaks to us inwardly’(LO 10, OC I 55). On this account, it is to evidence that we yield consent,and secret reproaches steer us away from doing otherwise.17 In ElucidationSix, Malebranche writes that ‘in the case of mathematical demonstrations’we yield or consent ‘because we perceive with an evidence necessitating usto believe’ (LO 574, OC III 63). When we yield or consent, we ‘obey thevoice of eternal truth’, and the reference to truth indicates that this is the
fully what is always present to us’, can be juxtaposed Malebranche’s claim that ‘there are two
sorts of things that can produce and preserve this evidence’ (LO 409, OC II 246). This suggests
that evidence is generated in us in our apprehension of ideas, not discovered in ideas themselves.17Elsewhere, he says we yield to propositions which are evident; cf. OC I 5 (LO 9).
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 175
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
logical dimension of our act. However, says Malebranche, this eternaltruth ‘speaks to us inwardly’, and when it does it produces evidence in usto which any refusal to yield on our part is accompanied by reproach andpain.18
This link between evidence, in particular the secret reproaches and inwardpain of reason, is illuminated by Malebranche’s comment on his firstmethodological injunction in the sciences. This first rule of scientific methodis: ‘We should never give complete consent except to propositions whichseem so evidently true that we cannot refuse it of them without feeling aninward pain and the secret reproaches of reason . . .’ (LO 10, OC I 55).19
Malebranche’s comment on this reveals him to be deliberately flaggingevidence-producing propositions in particular, by means of his distinctive‘inward-pain-and-secret-reproaches’-clause. By this clause he distinguishesthese propositions especially, because, he argues, without such a mark theymight be confused with other propositions to which we should not yieldconsent, but which nonetheless affect us in a similar way. Consider how hecarefully distinguishes the two kinds of consent:
But it must be noted here that when the things we perceive appear to us quiteprobable, we are strongly led to believe them; we even feel pain when we donot let ourselves be persuaded by them. Consequently, if we are not wary, werun the risk of consenting to them and consequently of being mistaken; for it is
unlikely that truth should conform completely to probable opinion. For this
18Lennon repeatedly claims that Malebranche’s talk of ‘pain’ in this connection is metaphorical
only. This strikes me as a breach of the rule of interpretive charity, viz. that we always should
assume, in the absence of modifying expressions like ‘so to speak’, ‘as it were’, etc., that a
writer’s literal meaning is the intended meaning. Consider how a metaphorical reading of the
following passages leads Lennon flatly to contradict what the putative metaphor affirms.
Malebranche writes:
The Master who teaches us inwardly wills that we listen to Him rather than to the
authority of the greatest philosophers. It pleases Him to instruct us, provided that we
apply ourselves to what He tells us. By meditation and very close attention we consult
Him: and by a certain inward conviction and those inward reproaches He makes to
those who do not submit, He answers us.
(LO 13, OC I 60)
Lennon interprets: ‘This Master is not the kind who forces us slavishly to believe, but the kind
who as a teacher shows us what we ought to believe. Once again, it is only metaphorically that
we hear a voice at all’ (MM, 18–19). Aside from the fact that Lennon proffers no textual
evidence for his metaphorical interpretation, to this author’s ears Malebranche’s terms ‘Master’
and ‘submission’ suggest a strong pathology on our part when it comes to our encounter with
truth. This contrasts starkly with the Lennon’s strictly normative or non-psychologistic reading,
according to which ‘[t]his Master is not the kind who forces us slavishly to believe, but the kind
who as a teacher shows us what we ought to believe’. On that non-psychologistic interpretation,
there is no Cartesian psychological compulsion, but merely an evidentiary recommendation
which we might or might not elect to follow.19Malebranche’s second main methodological injunction, ‘which concerns morals, is this. We
should never absolutely love some good if we can without remorse refuse to love it’ (LO 10, OC I
55).
176 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
reason I have expressly made it a point in these two rules that nothing should beconsented to until it is clearly seen that we would make ill use of our freedom ifwe were not to consent.
(LO 10–11, OC I 56)
Here Malebranche makes it ‘express’ that he has flagged true propositions,to which consent should be yielded, with the ‘inward-pain-and-secret-reproaches’-clause, because it is only those propositions that are known tobe true.20 His invocation of this clause is expressly intended to set a highersubjective standard on consent to demonstrably true propositions than is seton consent to probably true propositions. Subjectively speaking, Male-branche acknowledges, ‘we are strongly led to believe’ by both propositions;indeed, ‘we even feel pain when we do not let ourselves be persuaded by[probably true propositions]’.21 But there is this difference: ‘inward pain andsecret reproaches’ do not feature in our denials of propositions that are onlyprobably true.22
20In a passage vaguely reminiscent of Leibniz’s distinction between inclining and necessitating
reasons, Malebranche contrasts constraint of our belief ‘through evidence’ and constraint
‘through impression’. The former is much stronger:
It is true that we have a strong propensity to believe that there are bodies surrounding
us; I agree here with Descartes. But this propensity, as natural as it is, does not
constrain our belief through evidence; it merely inclines us toward belief through
impression. Now, our free judgments should follow only light and evidence; and if we
let ourselves be led by sense impressions, we shall be mistaken almost always.
(LO 573, OC III 62)
For the Leibnizian distinction between inclining and necessitating reasons, cf. New Essays on
Human Understanding 2.1.15, 2.21.8, 12, 49; and Theodicy xx43, 45, 53, 132, 280. A referee of
this paper notes that Malebranche’s position here seems to imply that the existence of extra-
mental things (bodies) cannot be known with evidence. Malebranche’s discussion of
philosophical doubt seems to bear this out: existential propositions lack the evidentiary force
of mathematical propositions, and assent to them is ultimately derivative, based on knowledge
of God’s non-deceptive nature. Cf. OC II 372–3, 377; OC III 59–60. An intimation of
Malebranche’s belief that matter’s existence cannot be demonstrated by reason alone, but
requires faith as well, is given in his assessment that ‘Descartes has given the strongest proofs
that reason alone can muster for the existence of bodies’ (LO 572, OC III 60).21In his ‘Remarks on what was said concerning the necessity of evidence’, Malebranche writes
that ‘probabilities need not be utterly despised, because several probabilities joined together
generally can produce as much conviction as can very clear demonstrations. An infinity of
examples of this are found in physics and morals . . .’ (LO 15, OC I 64). One of the referees of
this paper rightly notes that Malebranche’s acknowledgement in the Search that the subjective
effects of both highly probable and demonstrably true propositions are easily confused, is
echoed in his claim in the Traite de Morale that sometimes we can confuse a mere prejudice with
the authentic voice of God. This general concession by Malebranche may spell trouble. It is
hard to see what use the ‘inward-pain-and-secret-reproaches’ clause (and, with it, evidence) can
have, given that ‘we even feel pain when we do not let ourselves be persuaded by [probably true
propositions]’ (LO 15, OC 1 64). The problem is the general Cartesian one of disentangling clear
and distinct perceptions from perceptions merely thought to be clear and distinct.22Precisely because it is psychological and causal, the series of psychological events involved in
acquiring truth or yielding consent to evidence has a specific temporal sequence. First ‘[t]he
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 177
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
Malebranche’s talk here of what strongly ‘leads us to believe’ or of what‘lets us be persuaded’ demonstrates a marked preoccupation with thesubjective side of knowledge by way of clear and distinct perceptions, apreoccupation of the kind traditionally attributed to Descartes. His generalpoint is that the self-examination, of the kind just witnessed, is requisite for aproper understanding of method, i.e. of how we are to apply the rule ofconsent. Without a proper self-examination, we run the risk of self-deception, especially where the subjective effect of failing to consent tostrong probability closely resembles the subjective effect of failing to consentto truth:
It is therefore necessary to become well accustomed to distinguishing truth from
probability by inward self-examination, as I have just explained because it is forlack of having attended to self-examination of this sort that we feel affected inalmost the same way by two things so different. In short, it is of the greatest
importance to make good use of our freedom by always refraining fromconsenting to things and loving them until forced to do so by the powerful voiceof the Author of Nature, which till now I have called the reproaches of our
reason and the remorse of our conscience.23
(LO 11, OC I 57)
That Malebranche is exploring, as much as Descartes ever does, thepsychology of truth, could not be made more apparent by his unambigu-ously Cartesian claim that we ‘distinguish truth from probability by inwardself-examination’. Look inwards, he says, to discern the mark that truth (asopposed to probability) leaves upon you. The inner mark that identifiestruth is evidence. As Malebranche puts this later in the Search: ‘The mindrests when it finds evidence, and it is agitated when it does not, becauseevidence is the mark of truth’ (LO 280, OC II 35). Overall, his contention isthat an accurate and careful self-examination reveals that, in the case whereit has evidence, the mind has an experience different from the experience ithas in its encounter with mere probability (or indeed with falsehood).
unknown aspects must be examined in order to enter fully into the nature of the thing . . . [in
order] then to consent fully if the evidence obliges us to do so’. In this respect we ‘make good use
of our freedom by always refraining from consenting to things and loving them until forced to
do so by the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’. The culmination of this series of
psychological events is that we are ‘obliged’ to consent by ‘evidence’, or consent is ‘forced’ from
us ‘by the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’ (LO 11, OC I 57).23Malebranche’s claim here that ‘the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’ has so far been
called ‘the reproaches of our reason and the remorse of our conscience’, need not be taken to
imply that these reproaches and this remorse are not psychological items. Remorse and
reproach are the voice of God in the sense that they are its inner, i.e. psychological
manifestations. As Malebranche puts this a few paragraphs earlier, ‘to submit in good faith to
these secret reproaches of our reason that accompany the refusal to yield to evidence is to obey
the voice of eternal truth that speaks to us inwardly’ (LO 10, OC I 55).
178 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
In making the case that Malebranchean evidence is, like Cartesiancertainty or clarity and distinctness, subjective or psychological, it isimportant to recognize that Malebranche’s chief rule of method entails a useof ‘reason’ that is equally psychological. By a use of reason I am herereferring to reason with a small ‘r’, not Reason – capital ‘R’ – which inMalebranche’s philosophy is synonymous with God’s mind.24 WhileMalebranche often speaks of preserving evidence in our perceptions, healso speaks of preserving certainty or evidence ‘in our reasoning(s):’ ‘If wewant, therefore, always to preserve evidence in our perceptions, together witha complete certainty in our reasonings, we should first study arithmetic,algebra, analysis, and geometry, both simple and compound’ (LO 483, OCII 374–5). Here Malebranche in effect speaks of preserving evidence orcertainty in both perception and reason, reasoning here being progressionfrom one pure perception of an idea to another pure perception.
That the constant preservation of evidence in our perception amounts to‘complete certainty in our reasonings’ is what makes reasoning (or reason)something itself psychological – in the sense that it is an activity of a mind orthinking subject. Specifically, Malebranche is referring to reason as a mentalfaculty.25 In Elucidation Six we see the same usage, where Malebranche,again linking knowledge (properly speaking) with the possession of evidenceon our part, writes:
This direct and immediate union, which according to Saint Augustine isknown only by those whose mind is purified, enlightens us in the most secret
recesses of our reason, and exhorts and moves us in the most intimate part ofour heart. Through it we learn what God thinks and even what He wills,eternal truths and laws, for it cannot be doubted that we know at least some of
them with evidence.(LO 569, OC III 55)
When he speaks of ‘our reason’ here, Malebranche is assuredly not talkingabout Universal Reason, or the Master, etc. For in the first place Reason(capital ‘R’) (a) is not ours, i.e. it is not a mental faculty; and in the secondplace it has no secret recesses. Quite the contrary, capital ‘R’, Reason, thedivine mind, is repeatedly characterized as ‘luminous’ or intelligible initself.26 Instead, Malebranche is talking about the mental faculty of reason,upon which Universal Reason acts. That mental faculty is the means by
24‘God is His own wisdom. Sovereign Reason is coeternal and consubstantial with Him’ (DM
168). Cf. DM 32, 124.25I say this despite Malebranche’s general disparagement of faculties, cf. DM 40–1 (OC XII 74).
On occasion, it should be noted, Malebranche talks freely of mental faculties or capacities (of
which, he argues nonetheless, we have no idea, cf. DM 34 [OC XII 67]). For the view that the
doctrine of efficacious ideas vitiates Malebranche’s usage of reason as an innate faculty, cf.
Jolley (1994), and a reply to that position, Peppers–Bates (2005).26Cf., e.g. DM 32, 34, 35.
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 179
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
which ideas in God are apprehended: ‘Through it we learn what God thinksand even what He wills, eternal truths and laws, for it cannot be doubtedthat we know at least some of them with evidence’.27 On this account,evidence is a property of the mind generally, but of reason qua mentalfaculty particularly.28 Evidence serves as created reason’s personal,subjective guide to Universal Reason, as the means by which the created,thinking mind can be brought to God.
It is here, I suggest, that Malebranche’s difference with Descartes emergesmost clearly, for he (Malebranche) does not believe we possess UniversalReason within ourselves. ‘Created reason, our soul, the human mind . . . canindeed see the light, but [it] cannot produce or draw it from [its] ownresources . . . cannot engender it from [its] substance’, he writes in the thirdof his Dialogues on Metaphysics. In the continuation of this passage,Malebranche succinctly states the relation between created reason andUniversal Reason:
For it is Universal Reason which provides inner consolation to those whofollow it; it is Universal Reason which recalls those who leave it; it is, finally,Universal Reason which, by means of terrible reproaches and threats, fills those
resolved to abandon it with confusion, anxiety, and despair.(DOM III 32–3, OC XII 64–5)29
As these passages make apparent, evidence, along with reproach (itsnegative counterpart), are the subjective means by which the human soul orcreated reason comes or is recalled to God.
CONCLUSION
In the foregoing I discussed some of the problems associated withinterpreting the difference between the Malebranchean and Cartesianmethods as a function of the former’s non-psychologism and the latter’spsychologism. I argued, first, the principled position that whatever thedifferences between these philosophers over the question of psychologism inknowledge, those differences need not have any direct impact on theirrespective views of method. I then focused on the narrower question of thestatus of Malebranchean evidence in particular; my conclusion was thatMalebranche’s pronouncements on evidence cast him firmly in thepsychologistic mould of Descartes.30
27Emphasis added.28Indeed, Malebranche treats evidence here is as support for the fact that through the faculty of
reason we come to learn ‘what God thinks and even what He wills’.29Emphasis added.30A reviewer of this paper points out that Lennon’s claim that evidence is non-psychological
might be defended on Robinet’s ‘developmental’ interpretation of Malebranche’s relation to
180 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
It is true that, because for Malebranche we are ultimately darkness toourselves,31 talk of a Malebranchean psychological method is fraught tobegin with. For as there is nothing in his view that could count asknowledge of our pure perceptions of non-mental ideas, method as theproduct of a deductive psychology is simply out of the question.Nonetheless, for Malebranche such perceptions as result from divine ideastouching the mind do have an undeniable ‘experiential’ component,namely, evidence or clarity and distinctness. Evidence, unique to pureperception, is what we have when a mind-independent idea touches or actson us (or when we see things in God), it is evidence that provides thecornerstone of the psychologism of Malebranche’s method. Although wecannot know what the pure perceptions are that we have in respect ofideas, we can know that we have them (and thus that we are in thepresence of ideas) when we have evidence or clarity and distinctness. Andmethod is the cultivation of evidence, through the practice of rules andmathematical disciplines known to generate it.
A full investigation of the relation between Malebranche and Descarteson the question of method would require a wider discussion, to encompassall of the many areas in which the concerns of these philosophers overlap onthis issue. There is, for instance, much to be said concerning the question ofhow each philosopher regards the relation of philosophical doubt tomethod.32 This admittedly modest beginning, in the form of a discussion ofMalebranchean knowledge and evidence in their relation to method, hashopefully managed to highlight just how strongly psychologistic Male-branche’s methodological leanings are, despite his strongly non-psycholo-gistic position on knowledge and ideas.
University of Victoria
Descartes – the interpretation that over time Malebranche comes to reject many of the
Cartesian positions with which he begins. Although Robinet’s view holds in respect of many
Malebranchean positions, I find no evidence that it extends to the psychologism of
Malebranche’s method. Most of the relevant discussion occurs in the Search; and the standard
edition (OC I, II), which records the historical changes in the text, reveals that neither the
designation of evidence as ‘the clear and distinct perception of all the constituents and relations
of the object necessary to support a well-founded judgment’ (LO 10, OC I 54–5), nor the prime
methodological recommendation that to ‘preserve evidence in our perceptions, together with a
complete certainty in our reasonings, we should first study arithmetic, algebra, analysis, and
geometry, both simple and compound’ (LO 483, OC II 374–5), changes from the first edition to
the last.31Cf. Search, Book III; Elucidations of the Search, Elucidation XI.32Supra n. 2.
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 181
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
AT¼Rene Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, vols I–XI, edited by C. Adamand P. Tannery (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1964).
CSM¼Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols I–II,edited and translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–1985).
CSMK¼Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes vol. III,edited and translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch andA. Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
DCCP¼Dialogues between a Christian and a Chinese Philosopher on theExistence and Nature of God, translated by D. A. Iorio (Washington, DC:University Press of America, 1980).
DM¼Nicholas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion,edited and translated by N. Jolley and D. Scott (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997).
GA¼Rene Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, translated byM. Grene and R. Ariew, in Rene Descartes, Philosophical Essays andCorrespondence, edited by R. Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett PublishingCompany, Inc., 2000).
LO¼Nicholas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, translated by T. M.Lennon and P. J. Olscamp, and Elucidations of the Search After Truth,translated by T. M. Lennon (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980).
OC ¼ Oeuvres completes de Malebranche, edited Andre Robinet (Paris:J. Vrin, 1958–1984).
Secondary Sources
Alquie, F. Le Cartesianisme de Malebranche (Paris: J. Vrin, 1974).Day, S. Intuitive Cognition: A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics
(St Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1947).Dreyfus, G. La volonte selon Malebranche (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958).Gueroult, M.Malebranche, 3 vols (Paris: Aubier, 1955 (vol. 1), 1959 (vols II,
III)).Jolley, N. ‘Intellect and Illumination in Malebranche’, Journal of the History
of Philosophy, 32 (1994): 209–23.Labbas, L. L’idee de science dans Malebranche et son originalite (Paris: Vrin,
1931).
182 DAVID SCOTT
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13
Lennon, T. M. (PC) ‘Philosophical Commentary’ on The Search AfterTruth, translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, and onElucidations of the Search After Truth, translated by Thomas M.Lennon (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980) 755–848.
Lennon, T. M. (MM) ‘Malebranche and Method’, in The CambridgeCompanion to Malebranche, edited by S. M. Nadler (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000) 8–30.
McCracken, C. Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1983).
Moreau, J. ‘Malebranche et le Spinozisme’, inMalebranche: Correspondanceavec J.-J. Dortous de Mairan (Paris: J. Vrin, 1947) 1–98.
Nadler, S. M. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Peppers-Bates, S. ‘Does Malebranche Need Efficacious Ideas?The Cognitive Faculties, the Ontological Status of Ideas, and HumanAttention’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 43 (2005) No. 1: 83–105.
Pyle, A. (2003) Malebranche (London: Routledge, 2003).Radner, D. ‘Review of LO (supra)’, International Studies in Philosophy, 14
(1982): 106–8.Robinet, A. Systeme et existence dans l’oeuvre de Malebranche (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1965).Rodis-Lewis, G. Nicolas Malebranche (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1963).Schmaltz, T. M. Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian Interpreta-
tion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
MALEBRANCHE’S METHOD: KNOWLEDGE AND EVIDENCE 183
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
The
Uni
vers
ity O
f M
elbo
urne
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
6:51
26
Sept
embe
r 20
13