Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Malebranche and Method
- 2 Malebranche on the Soul
- 3 Malebranche on Ideas and the Vision in God
- 4 The Malebranche-Arnauld Debate
- 5 Malebranche on Causation
- 6 Metaphysics and Philosophy
- 7 Malebranche's Theodicy
- 8 Malebranche on Human Freedom
- 9 Malebranche's Moral Philosophy
- 10 The Critical Reception of Malebranche, from His Own Time to the End of the Eighteenth Century
- 11 Malebranche's Life and Legacy
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Malebranche on Human Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Malebranche and Method
- 2 Malebranche on the Soul
- 3 Malebranche on Ideas and the Vision in God
- 4 The Malebranche-Arnauld Debate
- 5 Malebranche on Causation
- 6 Metaphysics and Philosophy
- 7 Malebranche's Theodicy
- 8 Malebranche on Human Freedom
- 9 Malebranche's Moral Philosophy
- 10 The Critical Reception of Malebranche, from His Own Time to the End of the Eighteenth Century
- 11 Malebranche's Life and Legacy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Malebranche was deeply committed to the position that human beings have “freedom of indifference.” However, he was equally committed to occasionalism, according to which God, and God alone, is the true cause of everything real outside of Himself. As Malebranche put it, “It is God who does all in all things (fait tout en toutes choses)” (TNG, OC 5:148; R 196). It is hard to see how these two positions are compatible. Malebranche touched upon freedom of indifference and its relation to causality in all of his major works, and in the process worked out an unusual position on human freedom. Although there is reason to disagree with Jean Laporte's judgment that this position is “coherent in all its parts” it continues to deserve the attention of philosophers and theologians for at least two reasons.
First, it shows one way in which seventeenth-century dualism influenced discussion of freedom of will. Malebranche's dualism was more extreme than Descartes7 because Malebranche not only held that mind and body are distinct substances, but that they do not really act on one another. This extreme dualism helps to account for his identification of human freedom with freedom of will, and his narrow focus on freedom of will as opposed to freedom of overt human actions.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche , pp. 190 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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