Nicolas Malebranche Quotes on Knowledge
Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), the principal continental Cartesian of the second post-Cartesian generation, developed in The Search after Truth (1674–75) and the Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (1688) the doctrine that we see all things in God: the ideas through which the human intellect grasps the truths of geometry, of the natural world, and of the moral order are not produced by created minds but are the divine archetypes themselves, in which created minds participate when they know. The framework grounds Malebranche's parallel doctrine of occasionalism — only God is a genuine cause, and the apparent causal interactions among created beings are the regular occasions on which God acts — that shaped the broader debates of late-seventeenth-century European philosophy.
Quotes
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Attributed to Nicolas Malebranche:
“We see all things in God.”
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Attributed to Nicolas Malebranche:
“Attention is the natural prayer of the soul.”
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“I am not my own light unto myself.”
Dialogues on Metaphysics (1688) Dialogue III | Variant translation: I am not a light unto myself . -
“Dialogues on Metaphysics (1688) Dialogue III”
I am not my own light unto myself. -
“Variant translation: I am not a light unto myself .”
I am not my own light unto myself. -
“I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am — of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain — or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things … I have no idea whatever of my soul.”
Dialogues on Metaphysics (1688) Dialogue III -
“Dialogues on Metaphysics (1688) Dialogue III”
I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am — of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain — or the mutual relations that obta