Issued also as thesis, Universit́e de Paris. / "Bibliographie": p. [121]-122.

Descartes and Malebranche often seem to argue that the self (or I) is identical to an immaterial thinking substance distinct from the body. But there are also many passages where they insist that the body is part of the self. This means that Descartes and Malebranche have a problem, since they seem to endorse three mutually inconsistent propositions: (1) I am an immaterial thinking thing. (2) Immaterial things don't have bodily parts. (3) I include my body as part of myself. I call this puzzle the self-body problem. It is a problem about understanding how we - the immaterial thinking subjects who engage in the self-reflective project of the Meditations - can incorporate our bodies into ourselves. I argue that Descartes and Malebranche have an elegant solution to this inconsistency. On my interpretation, the Cartesian self is not identical to an immaterial thinking substance. Rather, the Cartesian self is a variably constituted being that has different parts at different times and in different possible situations. Sometimes the self exists with both an immaterial thinking part and a bodily part. Other times it exists with only an immaterial part. The immaterial part is essential to the self, the bodily part is not. When Descartes and Malebranche say that I am immaterial, what they really mean is that I essentially have an immaterial part. But that is consistent with the claim that my body is part of myself. / Philosophy

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1999. / Bibliography: leaves 56-57.

De la Méthode, le VIème et dernier livre de la Recherche de la Vérité, a été consacré par Malebranche à l’exposition de sa méthode. Ce traité est toutefois demeuré en dehors des cercles d’intérêt des études malebranchistes. Le premier objectif de notre travail consiste donc à tenter de suppléer à ce manque en proposant une étude de la méthode qui mette en lumière ses aspects fondamentaux, dont, en premier lieu, le rapport qu’elle entretient avec la doctrine cartésienne des Regulae ad directionem ingenii. L’hypothèse a été soulevée que Clerselier ait pu transmettre à Malebranche le manuscrit cartésien, encore non publié à l’époque de la rédaction de la Recherche. Pour approfondir cette question, nous avons reconstruit et analysé toutes les correspondances avec les Regulae présentes dans l’œuvre. Ce dossier montre que l’hypothèse mentionnée ci-dessus est fondée : Malebranche s’inspire profondément du texte cartésien dans l’élaboration de sa méthode. Un autre aspect nous ayant semblé digne d’intérêt est le rapport entre la méthode et le problème de l’erreur, auquel Malebranche consacre les cinq premiers livres de la Recherche. L’incidence de la doctrine cartésienne de la IVème Méditation n’émerge pas sans révéler l’originalité de certaines thèses et traités du parcours de l’oratorien. Apparaît également le thème de la science universelle, ou la question de l’ordre, des questions essentielles exigeant une comparaison avec Descartes. Une comparaison qui reste toujours en toile de fond : il ne pourrait pas en être autrement puisque Descartes n’est pas seulement à l’origine de la vocation philosophique de Malebranche, mais aussi de la constitution de sa méthode. / Malebranche dedicates the sixth and final book of the Recherche de la Vérité, entitled De la Méthode, to presenting his method. This treatise has been left outside of the sphere of interest for studies on Malebranche. The primary goal of my work is to fill this gap and provide a study on the method by highlighting some of its key aspects. The first of these concerns its relationship with the Cartesian doctrine of Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Clerselier is assumed to have notified Malebranche of the Cartesian manuscript, which had not yet been published at the time of writing the Recherche. To examine this very question, I have reconstructed and analysed all correlations with the Regulae found within the work. This dossier demonstrates the validity of the above assumption: that his knowledge of this Cartesian text greatly inspired Malebranche as he developed his method. Another noteworthy aspect I have explored is the method’s relationship with the issue of error, which is addressed by Malebranche in the first five books of the Recherche. The influence of the Cartesian doctrine of the fourth Meditation does not emerge without revealing the originality of certain arguments and certain parts of Malebranche's development. There is also the topic of universal science and that of order – essential issues that naturally allude to the comparison with Descartes. This comparison always and inevitably remains in the background: Descartes is found not only at the origin of Malebranche’s philosophical calling, but also in the construction of his method.

Simon Foucher fait partie des philosophes mineurs du dix-septième siècle qui sont passés à la trappe de l’histoire de la philosophie. En effet, ses textes n’ont quasiment pas été republiés après sa mort, et peu de philosophes et d’historiens se sont penchés sur sa pensée, et s’ils l’ont fait, c’est avant tout pour l’intégrer dans une histoire critique du cartésianisme. Il semble pourtant que Foucher ait eu une importance réelle à son époque, si l’on en juge par sa correspondance avec Leibniz ou par ses débats avec Malebranche et certains cartésiens concernant les difficultés inhérentes au cartésianisme. En outre, Foucher est l’un des rares auteurs de l’époque à s’être présenté comme un authentique disciple de l’académisme, dont il voulait ressusciter la méthode et les résultats, pensant du coup contrecarrer les ambitions de ce nouveau dogmatisme qu’était pour lui le cartésianisme. En prenant l’œuvre de Foucher au sérieux, cette étude a pour but d’offrir une reconstruction de sa pensée philosophique. Pour y parvenir, il sera d’abord question de son rapport à l’académisme, et de la manière dont il interprète et reconstruit l’histoire de ce courant philosophique. Ensuite, la méthode et les principes philosophiques qu’il propose seront abordés, afin de voir comment on peut philosopher sans jamais devenir dogmatique. Pour conclure, les différents thèmes qui ont occupés Foucher dans ses polémiques avec Malebranche et Desgabets, principalement dans les domaines de l’épistémologie, de la théologie et de la morale, seront traités afin de proposer une lecture systématique d’une figure réellement originale de la philosophie moderne, qui méritait qu’on s’y attarde.

No description available.

No description available.

Cette étude est consacrée à l’analyse malebranchiste de la sensibilité. Elle montre comment, par une analyse couplée de ses conditions concrètes et de sa constitution métaphysique, développant une véritable psychologie de l’intériorité et de l’expérience ordinaire et faisant du sentiment le point nodal de la double union de l’homme au monde et à Dieu, Malebranche parvient à produire une description puissamment originale de la conscience sensible. En témoigne en particulier le profond réaménagement qu’il impose aux cadres cartésiens de la noétique et de la psychologie, au cours de l’élaboration des concepts structurants de son analyse du sentir. Pourtant, s’il nous faudra souligner d’indéniables lignes de fracture entre les pensées, dont nous aurons à réévaluer le rapport, nous montrerons aussi en quoi l’analyse malebranchiste du sensible peut être comprise comme le prolongement – assurément critique et parfois paradoxal – de certaines suggestions cartésiennes. / This study address Malebranche's analysis of consciousness ans sensibility. It tends to show how Malebranche, by an accurate account of its concrete conditions and metaphysical setting, developing a psychology of interiority and day to day experience and considering sensation as a key phenomenon, involving both mind and body union and God's action, achieves to give an utterly original description of what he refers to as consciousness or 'inner feeling'. This appears mainly through the shifts Malebranche impulses to the cartesian framework of noetics and psychology.However, despite obvious differences between their conceptions, this study will show that Malebranche's analysis can as well be undestood as an extension, yet critical and paradoxal, of some lines of inquiry Descartes himself had suggested.

Théologien du Grand Siècle, minor de la République des Lettres, Isaac Papin (1657-1709) est né calviniste. Il appartient à l'École théologique dite de Saumur : fils spirituel du théologien novateur Claude Pajon (son oncle), il adopte les théories de ce dernier sur la grâce et, lecteur de Spinoza dès 1681, développe une conception originale de la tolérance à une période d’effervescence sur cette question dans la pensée protestante. Au moment de la révocation de l'édit de Nantes, Papin rejoint le Refuge : il est alors proche de citoyens des Lettres comme Jacques Lenfant, Jean Le Clerc et Pierre Bayle. Il s’installe d'abord en Angleterre où il est ordonné prêtre de l'Église anglicane puis se rend aux Provinces-Unies, puis dans le Saint-Empire où il tente de s'installer comme pasteur d'une Église wallonne. Son identité de novateur déclenche l'opposition de l'orthodoxe Pierre Jurieu (déjà ennemi de Pajon) qui l'empêche d'atteindre son but. Il décide alors de se convertir et revient en France en 1690, où il passe au catholicisme grâce à Bossuet. Jusqu’alors nomade huguenot de la République des Lettres, Papin se mue en catholique sédentaire dans sa ville natale, Blois : il devient l'un des acteurs de la controverse antiprotestante et se rapproche du jansénisme grâce à l’un de ses amis,également pasteur calviniste converti. En associant histoire sociale des réseaux théologiques et religieux et histoire des idées et des controverses, cette biographie intellectuelle retrace la trajectoire théologique particulière d’un converti du Grand Siècle passé de l’humanisme réformé de Saumur à un jansénisme entre Nicole et Quesnel. / Theologian of the Grand Siècle, minor of the Republic of Letters, Isaac Papin (1657-1709) was born Calvinist. He belongs to the so-called theological school “École de Saumur” : spiritual son of pioneering theologian Claude Pajon (his uncle), he adopts his theories on grace and, as Spinoza reader from 1680, he develops an original design of tolerance during a boom period on this issue in Protestant thought. At the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Papin joins the Refuge : he is then close to Letters’ citizens such as Jacques Lenfant, Jean Le Clercand Pierre Bayle. He first moves to England where he is ordained priest of the Anglican Church. Then he goes to the United Provinces and to the Holy Empire, where he tries to settle as a pastor of a Walloon Church. His innovative identity triggers opposition from the Orthodox Pierre Jurieu (Pajon’s former enemy) that prevents him from reaching his goal. He decides to convert and returns to France in 1690, where he becomes a Catholic under the authority of Bossuet. Until then nomadic Huguenot of the Republic of Letters, Papin turns into a sedentary Catholic in his hometown, Blois.He becomes one of the actors of the anti-Protestant controversy and approaches the Jansenism thanks to a friend who is also a converted Calvinist pastor. By combining social history of theological and religious networks and history of ideas and controversies, this intellectual biography traces the particular path of a theologian converted of the Grand Siècle, from reformed humanism of Saumur to Jansenism, between Nicole and Quesnel.

The general distinction between uses of the term "idea" which we draw is between occurrences in the mind and dispositions for them as opposed to concepts. Locke uses "idea" in the first way, Malebranche uses it in the second. Leibniz allows that the mind is infinite and that dispositions in the body correspond to dispositions in the mind; thus he is able to maintain that idea are both concepts and dispositions in the mind. We explain concepts in terms of conventional rules, for the most part linguistic and especially mathematical. We call a system of conventional rules an objective structure and, as those who took ideas to be concepts held that they are concepts of divine science, we treat God as the unique objective structure. The question in seventeenth century theories of ideas is how that body of knowledge comprising ideas and their relations is applicable to thing. In the first four chapters, we consider concepts and the Cartesian programme to reduce the description of everything but that which applies concepts to mathematical descriptions. Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz held that the lack of simplicity and exactness in human knowledge arises from the correspondence between microscopic activities in the body and mental occurrences. With occurrences in the body explained mechanically, it was held, the world can be described with maximum simplicity and exactness. Extended things are law-obeying configurations to which concepts are applied; thinking things are rule-following things by virtue of applying these concepts. But the parts played by convention and behaviour are left out of their accounts and, omitting these, the world cannot be shown to be anything more than a diagram, perhaps portrayed only in the mind of the investigator. In the antepenultimate chapter, we discuss two related views which led the rationalists to maintain that all rational beings naturally follow a unique objective structure: their position on the correspondence between the activity of the body and occurrences in the mind (illustrated in their theories of vision) and the view that divine science is the standard for all scientific formulations. In the penultimate chapter, we present evidence that rationalist accounts of cognition were in fact modelled on rule-governed activity, Plato's theory of knowledge and Ideas is compared with rationalist accounts and is found to have less relevance to rule-governed activity, Kant, we admit, saw the relevance of rules, but no more than the rationalists. In the ninth chapter, we discuss Malebranche's vision in God (which most clearly presents ideas as concepts), its relation to Descartes' and Leibniz's positions and its dependent on occasionalism. In the fifth chapter, we argue against Chomsky's innatist position and, more generally, claims in the behavioural and social sciences to explain human knowledge in terms of internalized components and covert activities. It is also maintained that Chomsky's innatism bears little resemblance to that of seventeenth century rationalism. We discuss in the sixth through the eighth chapters the Scholastic back-ground to the use of the term "idea" and theories of ideas. In the sixth chapter, the pervasive influence of Suarez is established, as is the prevalence of nominalism in the seventeenth century and its connection with Gaszendism and eventually Locke. Suarez combined aspects of Thomism and nominalism, Thomism was concerned with so-called spiritual objects of knowledge, which roughly act as standards and are the contribution of the knower to what is known; rationalism's account of knowledge maintained these aspects of Thomism, nominalism, on the other hand, presented what we shall call a causal or genetic account of knowledge (according to which our knowledge arises from causal relations and operations of the intellect) and was concerned with so-called material objects got from sensation (while allowing for spiritual operations). The distinction between spiritual and material objects and faculties is introduced in the sixth chapter. In the seventh chapter, we discuss the bridge between these facilities, the intellectus agens, which served as an objective structure in Thomist accounts. In the eight chapter, we discuss uses of “spiritual”, “idea” and “mind”, beginning with Scholastic uses, but concentrating on the differences between Descartes and Gassendi. Locke's causal account is discussed in the final chapter. We emphasise his divergence from Cartesianism, such as his view on the narrow compass of the understanding, his treatment of mathematical ideas as signs and his reliance on mental dispositions. Locke's position suffers from the omission of concepts.