Philosophical Selections [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONLife and WorksNicolas Malebranche was born in Paris on August 6, 1638, one of the many children of Nicolas Malebranche, a royal secretary, and his wife, Catherine de Lauzon. Because of a malformation of the spine that would affect him for the rest of his life, he was kept at home for his education, under the direction of his intelligent and pious mother, until the age of sixteen. In 1654, he entered the College de la Marche, from which he graduated two years later as Maître es Arts. The education he received there, heavily laden with Aristotelianism, left Malebranche highly dissatisfied. After studying theology for three years at the Sorbonnea Scholastic curriculum with which he was equally discontentand rejecting the offer of a canonry at Notre-Dame de Paris, Malebranche entered the Oratory in 1660. He was ordained on September 14, 1664.His four years in the Oratory proved to be of great intellectual consequence for Malebranche, particularly with respect to his philosophical and theological development. The order had been founded in 1611 by Cardinal Bérulle, who had a deep veneration for St. Augustine and who was also a good friend of Descartes (although the Oratory was, on the whole, firmly anti-Cartesian in its sentiments). While studying Biblical criticism, ecclesiastical history, and Hebrew, Malebranche, like other Oratorians, immersed himself in the writings of Augustine. He also certainly knew of the doctrines of Descartes through those professors of the order who considered themselves adherents of this new philosophy. He did not actually read any of Descartes's works until 1664, however, when, strolling down the rue St. Jacques, he happened upon a copy of Descartes's Treatise on Man (L'homme) in a bookstall. The event was life-changing: Malebranche's early biographer, Father André, tells us that the joy of becoming acquainted with so many discoveries "caused him such palpitations of the heart that he had to stop reading in order to recover his breath." Malebranche devoted the next ten years of his life to studying mathematics and philosophy, especially of the Cartesian variety. He was particularly taken by Descartes's critique of the Aristotelian philosophy that he had earlier found so stultifying and sterile.