Malebranche and British Philosophy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 431 events to the facticity of the human world. For Vico a concrete social world satisfying natural needs was made possible by the creation of a metaphoric being. There is need for dialogue between interpretations which stress the "true" and those the "artifactual," both concrete and narrative artifact, in Vico's view of "science." Tagliacozzo 's recent critique of historicist interpretations of Vico,2 and Verene's comment in his article that the philosopher-historian is, like the first men, a maker of the new science as "true" narrative, may provide the basis for such a dialogue. In providing a vehicle for that dialogue, the co-editors reflect the vitality, and respond with sensitivity to the needs, of contemporary students of Vico. SANDRA RUDNICK LUFT San Francisco State University Charles J. McCracken. Malebranche and British Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, The Clarendon Press, 1983. xiv + 349. $58. Those of us who admire Malebranche's thought, respect the profundity of his ontology , and are charmed by his style can only be pleased with the publication of this book. Part 1 is an exposition of Malebranche's philosophy. Part 2, somewhat longer, deals with Malebranche's influence in Britain. Malebranche in Colonial America is discussed in the Appendix. Pierre Bayle may indeed have hailed Malebranche "as 'the premier philosopher of the century,' " (23) and English interest may have been such as to result in two translations of Malebranche's major work, the Search After Truth, in the 169os, yet his philosophical reputation quickly went into decline. Berkeley , Hume, and Reid read Malebranche, but although well-known in France he has, since the eighteenth century, largely been ignored in the English speaking world. Perhaps this book (and Daisie Radner's) together with the recent new translation of the Search by Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp (Ohio State University Press, 198o), will remedy the situation. McCracken presents, in a clear and straightforward way, the main elements in Malebranche's metaphysics: sensations, Ideas, causation, will, perception, and God. One doubt: to the extent that it is McCracken's view that Malebranche claims that a relation of likeness holds between Ideas and material things (e.g., 58-59, 207, 23a, but see ~93), I disagree. It has long seemed to me that Descartes and Malebranche are both committed to the thesis that conceptual ideas make known objects, but not by resembling them, unless one says that mathematical formulae resemble the entities which they make known, a move which trivializes the issue. Critics of Malebranche, like Foucher, seem to require that if an idea is to represent something, it must be like, or similar to, that something. I do not find textual evidence to support McCracken's reading on this point, or on the related notion that Malebranche's ideas " "Vico: A Philosopher of the Eighteenth--and Twentieth--Centuries," Italica (Summer 1982): 93-1o8. 432 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:3 JULY 198 5 are "abstracted" (~38). Cartesians from Descartes to Berkeley reject abstractionism as a theory about concept acquisition. For them, one cannot abstract, as it were, across a real distinction. Indeed, occasionalism is essentially the denial of likeness, h is an admission, so to speak, that while there may be a relation between the mind and the world, or even between language and the world, these remain opaque relations. Likeness, abstraction, and ostension are notions without explanatory power. If one attributes them to Descartes or Malebranche one gives an empiricist basis to a rationalist position. One must then interpret the resultant philosophy as incoherent. McCracken casts light on what has always seemed to me most mysterious: why did a philosopher of Malebranche's stature disappear from the mainstream of modern philosophy in the English-speaking world? He writes: "By 1693, innatism showed signs of waning, but a new anti-empirical theory of ideas... [to Locke's distress] seemed to be growing in popularity" (x 19). I think one can now usefully distinguish empiricist from empirical. The former is a philosophical position; the latter simply means 'scientific'. Descartes and Malebranche are both scientists. They both believe that precisely because their theories of the acquisition of knowledge are anti-empiricist they provide...