Nicolas Malebranche

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Nicolas Malebranche

Nicolas Malebranche ( Nicole de ) (born August 6, 1638 in Paris ; † October 13, 1715 ibid) was a French philosopher and oratorian .

Life

Malebranche's father was the royal councilor and treasurer of Richelieu , his mother Catherine de Lauson came from the lower aristocracy, her brother Jean de Lauson was governor of Canada. He was the youngest son of a large family (between ten and 13 children, depending on the source) and had a delicate constitution from his youth, so that he did not begin his studies at the Collège de la Marche at the University of Paris until he was 16. He studied with the Aristotelian M. Rouillet and in 1654 he completed his master's degree. He then studied theology for three years at the Sorbonne . In 1660 he joined the Oratorians. There he also studied Plato and Augustine and came into contact with the teaching of Descartes during this time . In 1660 he was ordained a priest. 1674 he was officially a professor of mathematics at the seminar of the Oratory, but he had already students like Jean Prestet (1648 to 1691), which the mathematiques Elemens he published in 1675, the Cartesian philosophy followed (the connection was so tight that John Wallis , the Book thought it was a work by Malebranche). His own De la recherche de la vérité , which he began to write from 1668, did not appear until 1674 due to difficulties with censorship. He continued his efforts to achieve his own synthesis of Cartesian and theological ideas with the following editions of his main work and continued with the Traité de la nature et de la grâce of 1680. It emerged from discussions with Antoine Arnauld (also a Kartesian and also a Jansenist ), who sharply criticized the book when it was published, which led to a dispute lasting several years. At the instigation of Arnauld's followers, his traité was even placed on the papal index in 1690 , as was his main work, Recherche , in 1709 . But the painting branch not only had critics; in his time as a philosopher he was in high regard, for example Pierre Bayle named him in his philosophical dictionary one of the greatest philosophers of his time.

In mathematics, Malebranche was an early patron of L'Hospital , who wrote one of the earliest textbooks on analysis, which, like Malebranche, he got to know in the early 1690s from Leibniz and Johann I Bernoulli . In the process of dealing with and discussing with Leibniz, Malebranche also developed his ideas on dynamics (including elastic collisions, but also optics, gravitation) in the 1690s. This work led to his admission to the Académie des sciences in 1699.

In 1713/1714 he exchanged philosophical letters with his former pupil Jean Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan , a follower of Spinoza . He was also in correspondence with Leibniz , whom he had met in Paris in 1675.

Since the 1660s, Malebranches spent most of his life in his oratorio on Rue Saint-Honoré , apart from two trips to Normandy and Périgord . However, his writings were spread throughout Europe and reached China, where they were copied by Jesuit missionaries .

philosophy

Malebranche took the point of view that there is just as little causal interaction between body and soul as there is between purely physical or purely mental phenomena. He tried to explain the Cartesian dualism of body and soul as a coexistence led by God ( occassionalism ), which has no causal connection. Rather, all interactions would be caused by the supernatural assistance (assistentia supernaturalis) of God.

Following Plato and Augustine , Malebranche explained the knowledge of truth, perceptions and ideas through the participation of the human spirit in the divine ideas according to which God created everything. Knowledge, sensory perception and thinking are only possible through these ideas.

His main work is From the Exploration of Truth ( De la recherche de la vérité ) (1674/75).

Fonts

  • Entretien d'un philosophe chrétien et d'un philosophe chinois sur l'existence et la nature de dieu , Paris 1708
  • Oeuvres complètes , 20 volumes, Paris, 1958–1968 (editor André Robinet, with manuscripts and letters)
  • De la recherche de la vérité , Paris, 1st edition in 2 volumes 1674/75, 6th edition in 4 volumes 1712, German editions:
    • Research into the truth , editor Artur Buchenau, 3 volumes, Munich, Müller 1914
    • On the investigation of the truth , editor and translator Alfred Klemmt, Felix Meiner 1968
  • Traité de la nature et de la grâce , Amsterdam, 1680, German translation Abhandlung von der Natur und der Gnade (translator and editor Stefan Ehrenberg), Felix Meiner 1993
  • Éclaircissement, ou la suite du Traité ... , 1681

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Malebranche, Nicolas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Malebranche, Nicole de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and monk without religious vows
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1638
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1715
Place of death Paris