Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 677 conclusion of an argument that it "is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that 1 mentally conceive it" (161 ff.). Despite my conviction that Judovitz does not establish the primacy of literary and rhetorical modes in the genesis, maintenance, and discursive limitations of Cartesian dualism, I recommend her book to scholars complacently dependent on traditional contexts of Cartesian interpretation. Judovitz's representation of the crisis of modernism and her attack on the autonomy of philosophical discourse challenge us all. RICHARD A. WATSON Washington University Steven M. Nadler. Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. Studies in Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pp. ix + 195. $~9.5 o. Apparently, when Malebranche published the Recherche de la veritY, Arnauld thought it a fine, though somewhat unorthodox, exemplar of Cartesian philosophy. Malebranche then published the Trait~ de la nature et de la gr&e and Arnauid changed his mind about Malebranche's Recherche, coming to understand that its doctrines would lead to antiJansenist views on such issues as grace. Arnauld replied to the Recherche with Des vraies et des fausses idles, Malebranche replied to the reply, and Arnauld replied to Malebranche 's reply and published the R~flexions philosophiques et theologiques sur le nouveau systkme de la nature et de la gr6,ce. The debates continued and involved most of the important thinkers of the late seventeenth century: Leibniz, Bayle, Locke, Foucher, and Desgabets, among others. Nadler's book concerns this debate, restricted to the exchanges between Arnauld and Malebranche. Considering the centrality of these events for the intellectual life of the late seventeenth century, it is indeed surprising (as Daniel Garber asserts on the front flap) that until now no extended treatment of the debate has been published in English. This deficiency has been remedied by Nadler's book, which is particularly welcome given that it is part o1 a new series (M. A. Stewart and David Fate Norton, editors) devoted to encouraging "studies which present a broad view of a subject's contemporary context, and which make an informative use of philosophical, theological, political, scientific, literary, and other collateral materials, as appropriate to the particular case" (i). Moreover, Nadler's aims in his study fit very well with the announced goals of the series. Nadler states that he wishes "to provide a philosophical and historico-phiiosophical analysis of Arnauld's account of our perceptual acquaintance with the external world" (6). By this he means that he intends to discuss such issues as what it means for something to be an object of perception, what is involved in the veridical perception of an object, and how something is made known or rendered present to the mind. But he also means that he intends to place Arnauld's concerns with those philosophical issues in the context of his intellectual commitments and theological agenda: "Arnauld's account of perception cannot be understood apart from his Cartesianism, nor apart from his Jansenism and his general philosophicotheological debate with Malebranche" (6-7). 678 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:4 OCTOBER 1991 Nadler accomplishes very well the first half of his program. He carefully analyzes Arnauld's and Malebranche's theories of perception and makes several convincing claims about them. For Malebranche, an idea is an object present in the mind representing the outside world to that mind; for Arnauld, an idea is a mental act, not a representative proxy standing between the perceiver and the outside world. Nadler argues that Arnauld's theory faithfully interprets Descartes and provides a foundation for a direct realist theory of perception. Moreover, he places Arnauld's account of intentionality within the tradition of late Scholastic doctrines to which they are indebted. He also argues that, in the light of Arnauld's developments of Cartesian theories, one can see that the attribution by some modern commentators to Descartes of the historical roots of contemporary epistemic problems is mistaken. Nadler develops his theses skillfully, paying close attention both to the primary texts and to the important secondary literature ; he not only discusses the readings of Lennon, Watson, and Yohon, but also those of Guerouh, Robinet, and Rodis-Lewis. Nadler's...