Abstract
Not much attention has been paid to Malebranche’s philosophy of time. Scholars who have written on it have typically written about it only in passing, and by and large discuss it only in relation to his philosophy of religion. This is appropriate insofar as Malebranche doesn’t discuss his views of time in isolation from his religious metaphysics. I argue that Malebranche’s conception of how created beings have their properties commits him to saying that God is omnitemporal rather than atemporal. For just as bodies get their spatiality by participating in God’s omnipresence, so all creatures get their temporality by participating in God’s omnitemporality. Moreover, Malebranche is a substantivalist about space and time: infinite space and time are one and the same divinely simple substance, God (partially considered), who contains the world. My exploration of Malebranche’s metaphysics sheds light on his views of eminent containment, participation, and causation.
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Notes
E.g., Schmaltz (2000, 63).
It is controversial whether the absolute space theorists rejected nullibism by holding to God’s being extended partes extra partes, or whether they held to holenmerism. For example, Leech (2013, 187) thinks Clarke believes in God’s non-holenmeric presence, while Reid (2012, 229) thinks Clarke is holenmerian.
‘his essence … is participable or imperfectly imitable, for God contains every creaturely perfection, though in a divine and infinite way.’ (LO, 625).
LO 90; LO 144; DMR 51.
DMR 137–8.
DMR 132–3.
There is an upshot for contemporary defenders of such divine simplicity (e.g. Brower 2008; Leftow 2006; Wolterstoff 1991), who likewise identify God’s perfections with one another and with Him. For since simplicity implies that wherever God’s power is, all of him is there, this would imply his whole-in-each-part omnipresence. If one maintains divine simplicity, the only way to abscond from holenmeric omnipresence, which seems incomprehensible, is to say God’s power is everywhere only in the (diluted?) sense that his effects are everywhere.
DMR 132.
In this paragraph I follow Reid (2003) closely. I have added to his interpretation with the aid of some quotations from DMR.
C.f., Descartes’ causal principle (CSM 2: 28).
This includes also his mentality (DMR, 134; see my discussion above regarding Spinoza).
What of evil itself? Denis Moreau (2001, §2.1) argues that Malebranche absconds from Augustine’s view that physical evil is a privation. If so, then physical evil is a reality, and given my interpretation of Malebranche on causation, that abhorrently implies God is physically evil in a divine and infinite way. Moreau cites OC 8: 770, where Malebranche says “a monster is an imperfect work,” saying the ‘is’ here implies rejecting imperfection as mere privation (2001, 87). Further, that a monster “disfigures” the world it inhabits (OC 8: 765) indicates that disfigurement is a genuine property (Moreau 2001, 88), and Malebranche says “nothingness has no properties” (OC 12: 32). Moreau suggests Malebranche would say physical evils are “worse than nothingness” (Moreau 2001, 88), but admits in footnote 18 that Malebranche only ever says this about the state sinners find themselves in.
In reply: To say a monster is an imperfect work or disfigurement might well be a loose way of speaking, just as to say ‘there is a hole or blemish in the wall’ doesn’t commit one to anything more than a local privation of cement or paint. Indeed, Malebranche explicitly says that when we “ordinarily” speak of evil, we mean evil things, which are “but privations of good” (LO 348). In the very next section of his article, Moreau (2001, 88) cites Malebranche again: “There are monsters whose deformity leaps to the eye … A world made up of creatures who lack nothing that they ought to have is more perfect than a world full of monsters” (OC 8: 770). But this passage seems precisely to clarify that the deformity is a “lack” of something: among other realities, it lacks holenmeric extension, which is extension par excellence. Moreover, some privations are obviously “worse” than others. A lack of friendship or physical comfort is worse than a lack of cement. Privations can be said to have properties only derivatively on the way the realities are.
What Malebranche seems to have a problem with is evil understood not as “things” but as “sensations of … pain,” which he terms “a real and true evil” (LO 348). But he freely admits that God as Christ suffers pain, and that he does so “in honor of the true good” (TNG, 190). As for why there is any pain at all, Malebranche may have recourse to the simplicity of God’s ways (LO 230). He may also point to Adam in his unfallen state, who had “pain” that could “neither enslave him nor make him unhappy”; Adam could even stop such pains once they had “performed their advisory function” (LO 22). This may indicate that what reality may be found in pain God must have in an eminent way that doesn’t make him unhappy, and which isn’t evil. Perhaps, in God, pain consists in “the horrors or distastes” that gives Him, as for us, an appropriate “aversion” to things qua falling short of Himself (TNG 151); there Malebranche seems to contrast the sinner’s pleasures and pains with appropriate ones that God replaces them with, which confers on us “the grace of feeling” (ibid.). Alternatively, it may even be that just as holenmeric extension isn’t material unless particularized or qua partially conceived, eminent pain isn’t painful in its characteristic way unless particularized and thus limited. Malebranche does, after all, equate particularity with finitude, and being in general or “universal being” with infinite being (LO 251). The point is that there is some combination of moves available to Malebranche that allows God to confer limited or imperfect versions of the perfections he has onto creatures, including pain, while adhering to his causal likeness principle.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this objection.
For example, he explicitly rejects Augustine’s view that God is truth and that we see God in virtue of seeing truth. Instead, Malebranche says that truths are relations between (God’s) ideas, truths are not God himself, and that we see God in seeing the ideas of these eternal truths (LO 233–4).
By buying into the causal likeness principle, thus requiring that God have all realities including extension, it seems to me Malebranche is at least partly motivated by the mind–body and body-body interaction problems, contra Nadler’s suggestion (2000, 136). For he requires a kind of resemblance between cause and effect, such that the reality of the effect may be found in the (partially conceived) cause: e.g., we can see how part-in-each-part extension can come from whole-in-each-part extension. And unlike creaturely extension which lacks power, Malebranche identifies God’s holenmeric extension with his power, according with simplicity. Now some think Malebranche identifies God with his ideas (e.g. Jolley 1990, Cook 1998: 531, Yang 2005: 35). Together with the causal likeness principle, this seems to imply that Malebranche maintains that ideas, to represent, must resemble (though far exceed) the represented. Nadler (1992, 46), Ott (2017, 203), and Nolan (2022, §7) say Malebranche rejects resemblance-representation. I demur (e.g. DC 54, 88), but that is for another time.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Walter Ott, Susan Peppers-Bates, Antonia LoLordo, Frederick Johnson, and several anonymous referees for helpful feedback. Remaining mistakes are my own.
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Appendix
Appendix
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Arnauld:
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OA = Oeuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 43 volumes (Paris: Sigismond d’Arnay; reprinted in Brussels, 1780/reprinted 1967).
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K = On True and False Ideas, New objections to Descartes’s Meditations and Descartes’s Replies, trans. E.J. Kremer (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1990).
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Descartes:
AT = Oeuvres de Descartes, C. Adam & P. Tannery, eds. (Paris: 1897–1910 and 1964–1978; Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin 1996).
CSM = The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, v. 1 & 2, J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, & D. Murdoch, trans., and v. 3, J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, & A. Kenny, trans. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1984, 1985, 1991). References are to volume and page number.
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De Mairan:
WG = Malebranche’s First and Last Critics: Simon Foucher and Dortous de Mairan, Richard Watson and Marjorie Grene, trans. and intro. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press 1995).
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Malebranche:
DC = Dialogues Between a Christian Philosopher and a Chinese Philosopher on the Existence and Nature of God, Dominick A. Iorio, trans. and intro. (University Press of America 1980).
DMR = Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, N. Jolley and D. Scott, trans. (Cambridge University Press 1997). A translation of Entretiens sur la metaphysique et la religion (1688).
LO = The Search After Truth, Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp, trans. and eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1997).
OC = Oeuvres Completes de Malebranche, Directeur A. Robinet, 20 volumes (Paris: J. Vrin 1958–1967).
TNG = Treatise on Nature and Grace, trans. Patrick Wiley (Oxford University Press 1992).
Trois Lettres = Trois Lettres De L'Auteur De La Recherche De La Verite, Touchant La Defense De Mr. Arnauld Contre La Reponse Au Livre Des Vrayes & Fausses Idees (1685), or Oeuvres Completes, Vol.6.
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Henry More:
Manual = Manual of Metaphysics, Alexander Jacob, trans., Vol 1. (Hildesheim, 1995).
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Newton:
Mathematical = Sir Isaac newton’s ‘Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’ and His ‘System of the World’, Andrew Motte, trans. and Florian Cajori, appendix, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University Press 1: 6, 1966). Translation of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (July 5, 1687).
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Olle-Laprune:
Philosophie = La Philosophie de Malebranche (Hachette Livre-Bnf, 1870).
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Raphson:
Spatio = De Spatio Reali (London 1697).
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Von Guericke:
Magdeburg = The New (So-Called) Magdeburg Experiments of Otto von Guericke (Herb. Tandree Philosophy Books, UK 1994).
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Fung, T. Malebranche on Space, Time, and Divine Simplicity. Int J Philos Relig 94, 257–280 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-023-09880-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-023-09880-3