Nicolas Malebranche , born with Paris the August 5th 1638 and died in Paris the October 13rd 1715, is a Philosophe and theologist French, considered as Cartesian.

Biography

His/her father is treasurer of Richelieu and, in 1658, secretary of the king. He is the last of ten or thirteen children (the number varies according to the sources). Deformed and of an extremely fragile constitution, it shows great intellectual abilities very early. It makes its studies with the Collège of Walk and obtains in 1656 the rank of Master of arts in the Université of Paris. He studies during three years the Théologie with the Sorbonne. As a whole, its studies, as well Aristotélicienne S as Theological S, disappoints it much.

It enters to the Oratoire in 1660, after the death of his mother, then of her father, at a few weeks of interval. He becomes honorary member of the royal Académie of sciences in 1699.

Metaphysics

The Métaphysique occupies a fundamental place in the thought of Malebranche:

“One wants that I make a metaphysics. I believe indeed that is extremely necessary and that I would have there more facility than many people. It is the good metaphysics which must all regulate, and I will try to establish well there the principal truths which are the base of the religion and morals. ” (Letter)

Reason and modifications

Metaphysics is thus the true base of all the fields of the Pensée and the action. Two rational principles of the malebranchism can be stated:

• “Nothing is more obvious, than all the creatures are particular beings and than the reason is universal and common to all the spirits. ”
• “the man is not with itself its own light. ”

What is the Homme is for itself a mystery, and it is thus the Raison which is the object of the thought.

Existence of God

What we think, it is the to be, because nothing to think is not to think of the whole . We think, therefore the Being exists: for Malebranche, the Cartesian Cogito is the immediate proof of the existence of God. This to be, it is the pure and simple being, the being without restriction, division, without limitation, “in a word the being. ” As we, we think are a fragment of this being:

“All the particular beings take part in the being, but no one does not equalize it. The being contains any thing, but all the beings and created and possible, with all their multiplicity, cannot fill the vast wide one to be it. ”

This being is discovered by us in each one of our Idée S who emanate from the Infini. Before the idea that we can be done ourselves, before any certainty as for the reality of the external world, we see ourselves in ourselves the infinite one; in ourselves, i.e. as a God:

“One can see it only in itself God, who there does not exist: one cannot see the gasoline of an infinitely perfect being without seeing the existence of it: one cannot simply see it like a possible being: nothing includes/understands it, nothing cannot represent it. If thus one thinks of it, it is necessary that it is. ”

Works

• Of the research of the truth. Where one treats Nature of the Spirit of the man, & use that it must about it make to avoid the error in Sciences (1674-1675) Text on Wikisource
• Traité nature and grace (1680)
• Christian Conversations
• Traité of morals
• Entretiens on metaphysics, the religion and death (1688)
• Traité of the love of god
• Entretien with a Christian philosopher and a Chinese philosopher on the existence and the nature of god (1708)
• Lettres with Dortous of Mairan
• Reflections on the physical prémotion
• Collection of all the answers to Mr. Arnauld

Related articles

• Descartes

• Spinoza
• Hegel
• Augustin d' Hippone

External bonds

• '' the intellectualism of Malebranche '', Boutroux
• '' the philosophy of imagination at Vico and Malebranche '', by Paolo Fabiani Florence University close
• Critical of wise stoical of Sénèque by Malebranche ''' video Version '''