Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

This article aims to highlight the strategies that Nicolas Malebranche uses in order to subvert the patristic interpretation of the Scripture and to impose a hermeneutical neutralization of the patristic tradition. I refer to the general problem of the relationship between reason and faith and to the particular problem of the rationality of the divine action in the theology of Incarnation. The main question to which Malebranche has tried to answer is if we can interpret the Christian theology in order (...) to “deduce” the norms of the divine action. However, this interpretation leads Malebranche into conflict with his direct rival and with other indirect opponents. (shrink)

The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, and (...) opens up investigation of important material that is all but ignored in the English literature and only incompletely addressed in the French. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is Malebranche’s relation to Descartes on the question of method. Using recent commentary as a springboard, it examines whether Malebranche advances a nonpsychologistic account of method, in contrast to the psychologism typically thought to characterize the Cartesian view. I explore this question with respect to two issues of central importance to method generally: doubt and free will. My argument is that, despite superficial differences of emphasis, Descartes and Malebranche adopt positions on doubt and free will (...) that effectively ensure that their respective accounts of method aresubstantially the same. (shrink)