Leibniz and Malebranche were very famous philosophers who lived and worked in 17th -18th centuries. Both of them were prominent thinkers whose minds influenced a lot of people after them. Their teachings remain relevant today, and to understand and evaluate certain historical events, modern philosophers often go back to where philosophy started. Of course, the birth of it goes back to ancient Greece and Rome, but Leibniz and Malebranche were those who developed the ideas of the distant past. They both concentrated on how the role of the divine was important in the flow of life. Such teachings were not welcome during the Dark and the Middle Ages, and it can surely be said that philosophers kept quite during that time. During the Renaissance and some time after, philosophy rose again. Although Leibniz was highly influenced by Malebranche, their doctrines differed. In some questions, they were on the opposite sides, which can be understood from Leibniz’s essays, where he passionately argues against Malebranche. In this paper, I’m going to talk about their views on the connection between body and mind (physical and spiritual sides) and examine the way, in which Leibniz explains his point of view and argues Malebranche’s.
One of the major differences between Leibniz and Malebranche is the take on God’s creation of the world. For Leibniz, the world created by God is perfect and is the best from all possible options. In his essays, Leibniz criticizes those who thinks that the perfection of the world of God can be questioned: “Nor can I approve of the opinion of some moderns who maintain boldly that what God has made is not of the highest perfection and that he could have done better” (Leibniz 36). It is believed that in his essays, Leibniz mentions Malebranche’s works but never points them out directly.
Malebranche claims that the world, which God created, was far from its perfect state. It’s close to it, but still not perfect and thus should be taken and respected as is. If the world isn’t perfect, then the minds are not perfect either. Here, Leibniz disagrees and claims that minds are perfect substances and thus are “the mirrors of God” (Leibniz 61). Similarly to a very famous philosophical question “What is being?” Leibniz asks himself “What is substance?” According to him, mind is the only substance, and it is perfect and is only influenced by God’s vision, not by occasionalism. Occasionalism is going to be explained in the following part of the paper.
It’s interesting how much the two have in common (they both protect God and the biblical take on how minds function) and how much different they still are. In many of his works, Leibniz argues against Malebranche’s philosophy of occasionalism. To make a long story short, this teaching claims that mind and body cannot influence each other on their own due to the fact that they are absolutely independent. But the connection is still there; they are still related and cannot exist without each other, which means that there is God’s interaction. Only with God’s interaction do mind and body work together. God is the only reason why they do work together.
Malebranche exaggerates the role of God, saying mind and body interact not because of some real motive, but because God decides to act in a certain way in a certain situation (which can be a complete accident.) His main point of view is that the world doesn’t function by itself, but it is God who makes it function, and thus it is fully dependent on God. “All essential existences (essences) come before our ordinary conception; they cannot be such excepting by God’s presence in the mind and spirit. He it is who contains all things in the simplicity of His nature. It seems evident that mind would not be capable of representing to itself the universal Notions of species, kind, and suchlike, if it did not see all things comprehended in one.” (Malebranche 102) Clearly, Malebranche doesn’t view either body or mind as independent substances that are capable of functioning on their own. It seems like he claims that all the choices that a human being makes in his life are nothing but a fulfillment of God’s wills in a given moment. And if the body and mind depend on God, then how could the bad choices be explained? Leibniz might have asked a question like that.
Another interesting take of Malebranche on the role of God in the connection of body and mind was vividly expressed in the following quote: “God indeed sees but He does not feel sensuous things. If we see something sensuous, sensation and pure thought are to be found in our consciousness. Sensation is a modification of our spirit; God occasions this because He knows that our soul is capable of it” (Malebranche 103). Malebranche claims that we see things through God, which comes back to his doctrine of the influence of God in everything one does and in the way his mind functions. Even sensation is something that wouldn’t be possible if not put into the mind by God. Leibniz disagrees. How, he asks, can the minds be perfect, if they fully dependent on the will of God? “Bodies act as if there were no souls (though this is impossible); and souls act as if there were no bodies; and both act as if each influenced the other” (Leibniz 223). Although Leibniz is deeply religious as well, his philosophy stands for independence of body and mind from God and from each other. It cannot be claimed, however, that Leibniz totally opposes Malebranche in the question of the importance of God in anything that is created. But he clearly thinks that body and mind do function together and independently without God’s interaction.
Moreover, for Leibniz, there is no occasionalism. He thinks that God has certain goals when it comes to creation, and thus nothing happens accidentally. For him, God’s ultimate goal is to create perfect, healthy and happy minds, while God of Malebranche looks a lot different. Again, if there were occasionalism, Leibniz’s teachings would be simply ruined. His ideas are based on the fact that nothing happens without a purpose, even if that purpose is divine. Thus, a divine purpose cannot be accidental, because God plans out everything what happens in the world and inside one’s mind, according to Leibniz.
Leibniz has his philosophy of monism, while Malebranche supports the idea of dualism, which has been present in the world philosophy for a long period of time. The idea that is carried by the doctrine of monism is that there can be only one category of thing and truly one conscious being, while there can be many substances (monads) within it. For Leibniz, the words “being” and “one” are synonyms, and so for something to be considered a being, it was necessary to be “genuinely one.” For him, body is a category, which is truly “one,” and thus even if it interacts with mind, it is not a causal interaction. Malebranche, on the other hand, supports dualism, which says that although mind and body are two distinct institution, mind can influence body (usually through the will of God.)
Philosophers of 17-18th were very much influenced by religion. It becomes clear from the essays of the two prominent philosophers of that time, Malebranche and Leibniz. The latter lived several decades later, and thus his takes on the connection between body and mind was a little different than that of Malebranche. Malebranche was closer to the Middle Ages, when things dependent on God, and God was the only power that could make things work. The philosopher’s main ideas were centered on the doctrine of occasionalism, which is mainly about the role of God in everything. And the actions of God, according to Malebranche, are completely accidental, and everything what created by the will of God turns out to be good, although not always perfect.
Leibniz, his successor, stood for the importance of God as well. But for him, body and mind are independent from God and from each other (although they still depend on each other on some levels.) Moreover, for Leibniz, there is no occasionalism, and the world of God is perfect, because God had a purpose to make it such.
In this paper, the differences of the two philosophers were examined with the help of their quotes. I have mentioned the way the idea of occasionalism influenced Malebranche’s understanding of the interaction between mind and body, and why Leibniz, being so similar to him, opposed this idea. Often, it was hard to interpret the words of the philosophers, and comparing them with each other definitely helped understand their ideas.
Works Cited:
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Essays. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1989. Print.
Malebranche, Nicolas De, and Jean-Christophe Bardout. De La Recherche De La Vérité. Paris: J. Vrin, 2006. Print.
