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Hume, Malebranche and ‘Rationalism’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

P. J. E. Kail
P. J. E. Kail
Affiliation:
St. Peter's College, Oxford
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Abstract

Traditionally Hume is seen as offering an ‘empiricist’ critique of ‘rationalism’. This view is often illustrated – or rejected – by comparing Hume's views with those of Descartes'. However the textual evidence shows that Hume's most sustained engagement with a canonical ‘rationalist’ is with Nicolas Malebranche. The author shows that the fundamental differences (among the many similarities) between the two on the self and causal power do indeed rest on a principled distinction between ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’, and that there is some truth in the traditional story. This, however, is very far from saying that Hume's general orientation is an attack on something called ‘rationalism’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 311 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2008

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References

1 Millican, Peter, ‘The Context, Aims and Structure of Hume's First Enquiry’, in Reading Hume on Human Understanding ed. Millican, (Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press, 2002), 50–51Google Scholar.

2 Op.cit., 38.

3 Buckle, Stephen, Hume's Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 36Google Scholar.

4 Cottingham, John, The Rationalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 2Google Scholar. See also Loeb, Louis, From Descartes to Hume: Continental Philosophy and the Development of Modern Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981)Google Scholar and Rée, Jonathan, ‘Philosophy and the History of Philosophy’ in Philosophy and its Past, ed. Rée, , Ayers, & Westoby, . (Bristol: Harvester Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

5 Although Millican and Buckle concern themselves with the first Enquiry, I shall concentrate on the Treatise. The interesting differences between the Hume of the Treatise and the Hume of first Enquiry are not relevant to my concerns.

6 Op. cit, note 1, 29–30.

7 In mitigation of his illustrative focus on Descartes, Millican writes ‘Malebranche's influence on Hume was immense . … [u]nfortunately, however, his writings are relatively little known in the English-speaking world, so here I shall focus exclusively on his mentor Descartes’ (Op. cit., note 1, 28).

8 Op. cit., note 1, 28.

9 References to Meditations on First Philosophy in Philosophical Works (ed. Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, Vol II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) (CSM Vol. 2: 20).

10 CSM 2: 21.

11 CSM 2: 20–21.

12 CSM 2: 22.

13 References to The Search After Truth, trans. T. Lennon and P. Olscamp, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and volume and page references to Oeuvre Complètes de Malebranche ed. A. Robinet (20 vols.) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958–78). Hence Search 561, OCM III: 44.

14 Philosophical Commentaries §810.

15 Norton, and Norton, (eds.), A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, following the convention of book, part, section and paragraph numbers. Page references to A Treatise of Human Nature ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H. Nidditch (2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon, 1978) (SBN). Hence Abstract 6; SBN 648.

16 T 1.1.1.7; SBN 4.

17 T 1.2.1.7; SBN 72.

18 Search 16, OCM I: 66.

19 T 1.2.1.7; SBN 72.

20 See e.g. Search Book 3, part 2, chapter 4.

21 For discussion, see Jolley, NicholasThe Light of the Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Op. cit., note 3, 38. Buckle adduces other reasons why rationalism is not Hume's target. First, he voices a general (and well-placed) scepticism about the historiography of ‘warring schools’ of Empiricism vs. Rationalism (35–36). Second, the Enquiry targets those who give a ‘shelter to superstition’ and according to Buckle rationalism does not fit here (36–37). Third, the fact that editions of the Meditations were difficult to get hold of in Scotland in the 1740s suggests absence of interest in Cartesianism. This he sees as part of a more general chauvinism in favour of Newton over Descartes (65). I have elected not to discuss these points.

23 See my ‘Berkeley, the Ends of Language and the Principles of Human Knowledge’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (2007), 265–278.

24 See Ayers, Michael, Locke: Ontology (London: Routledge 1991), 154ffGoogle Scholar.

25 Wright, John, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1983.)Google Scholar

26 The most recent discussions include my ‘On Hume's Appropriate of Malebranche: Causation and Self’ European Journal of Philosophy in press and sections of my Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007). See also McCracken, Charles, Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, the relevant sections of Jones, PeterHume's Sentiments: Their Ciceronian and French Context (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982)Google Scholar and Wright, John, op. cit., note 24 and ‘Hume's Criticism of Malebranche's Theory of Causation: a Lesson in the Historiography of Philosophy’ in Brown (ed.) Malebranche and his Critics (Assen/Maarstrict: Van Gorcum, 1991)Google Scholar. Earlier studies include Church, Ralph, ‘Hume and Malebranche’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1 (1938) 143–161Google Scholar and Doxee, C. W., ‘Hume's Relation to Malebranche’, The Philosophical Review, 25 (1916), 692–710CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other discussions include Laird, J, Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature (London: Methuen, 1932), 100ffGoogle Scholar; Nadler, Stephen, ‘Malebranche on Causation’ in Nadler, (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 133ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar; , Church, Hume's Theory of the Understanding (London: Allen and Unwin 1935), 92ffGoogle Scholar; Charles, Hendel Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 57Google Scholar and Buckle, op.cit., note 3.

27 Op. cit, note 25, 692.

28 See McCracken, op. cit., note 25.

29 Wright, op. cit, note 24, 232, McCracken, op. cit., note 25, 287 and James, Susan, ‘Sympathy and Comparison: Two Principles of Human Nature’ in Frasca-Spada, and Kail, (eds.) Impressions of Hume (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2005)Google Scholar.

30 James op. cit., note 28.

31 See my ‘Projection and Necessity in Hume’, European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2001), 24–54.

32 See Wright op. cit, note 24, 64ff for discussion.

33 Search 134–5, OCM I: 275.

34 T 1.2.5.20; SBN 60–61.

35 This is, for both thinkers, the basis of our disposition to anthropomorphize, a phenomenon they illustrate with similar examples. Malebranche talks of seeing a ‘face in the moon’ and ‘chariots, men, lions or other animals in the clouds’ (Search 135, OCM I: 276), and Hume in the Natural History of Religion says we ‘find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds’ (in Gaskin, (ed.) Dialogues and Natural History of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993: 141)Google Scholar). See my ‘On Hume's Appropriation of Malebranche’ for discussion.

36 Search Elucidation 15, 658, OCM III: 205.

37 T 1.3.14.7; SBN 158.

38 For others, see McCracken, op. cit., note 25, 257 and Jones, op. cit., note 25 19ff.

39 Edinburgh University library has Hume's copy of the 1684 edition of Recherche de la Vérité.

40 Op.cit, note 25, 57.

41 T 1.2.3.9; SBN 223.

42 Beauchamp, (ed.) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, following the convention of book, part, section and paragraph numbers. Page references to Hume's Enquiries ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H. Nidditch (rev. ed., Oxford: Clarendon, 1975) (SBN). Hence EHU 7.1.21; SBN 69.

43 T 1.3.14.25; SBN 167.

44 Search Elucidation 15, 660, OCM III: 208.

45 Search Elucidation 15, 660, OCM III: 209.

46 Search 58, OCM I: 138. See also Search 657, OCM III: 203 and elsewhere. The metaphor is quite common in the Search.

47 Buckle's concentration on Descartes rather than Malebranche here misleads him. Hume's concern with the observability of causation argues for Buckle that Hume is joining Descartes in targeting the ancient philosophical view of ‘cognitive impressions’ (Op. cit., note 3, 41). Whilst it is quite true that Hume sides with Descartes, or more properly Malebranche, that causal power is not perceivable, the target is also the ordinary commitment to the perceivability of power and not a distinct philosophical doctrine. See my review of Buckle's book in European Journal of Philosophy 11 (2003), 439–443.

48 Search 448, OCM II: 312.

49 T 1.4.3.9; SBN 222.

50 T 1.4.3.10; SBN 224.

51 T 1.4.3.9; SBN 223.

52 Search 658, OCM III: 205.

53 Search 659, OCM III: 207.

54 For a discussion of the important and centrality of this notion, see Blackburn, Simon, ‘Hume and Thick Connexions’ in Richman, and Read, (eds.) The New Hume Debate (London: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar and more extensively my Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy.

55 See e.g. Nadler, op. cit., note 25.

56 See Lewis, David, ‘Causation’, Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), 556–567CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Search, 448, my emphasis, OCM II: 313.

58 T 1.3.14.13; SBN 161 my emphasis.

59 T 1.3.6.1; SBN 87 T 1.3.6.1; SBN 87.

60 Hume offers two other objections. The first is a parity objection to occasionalism: the arguments that supposedly deprive created objects of genuine powers apply equally to God's will (EHU 7.1.25; SBN 72–73), and so he takes this as a reductio. The second objection to occasionalism is this: the thesis of occasionalism extends beyond common or everyday experience, and analogies drawn from common experience (op. cit.). This objection is empiricist in holding that any thesis that extends beyond the bounds of everyday experience is epistemically dubious.

61 T 1.3.14.10; SBN 160.

62 For a fuller discussion, see my Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy, chapter six.

63 This commonality was one of the main themes of Doxee's 1916 paper, and later Ralph Church argued that Malebranche ‘anticipates Hume's sceptical analysis of personal identity’ (A Study in the Philosophy of Malebranche, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931) 49–50). John Laird (op. cit., note 25) concurred, tracing Hume's claim that perceptions pass with ‘inconceivable rapidity’ to Malebranche's view of perception's vitesse inconcevable (Search 221, OCM I: 420). Some commentators are more sceptical of any influence. Reacting against Church's claim that Hume merely pushes Malebranche's ignorance claim to its logical conclusion, Charles McCracken argues that the two thinkers are very different inasmuch as the reasons each offers for rejecting an idea of the self are ‘entirely different’ (op.cit., note 25, 271). McCracken, though allowing a ‘certain affinity’ between Hume and Malebranche, believes that the differences outweigh the similarities. But as I show in the body of this paper, Hume's argumentative strategy is very similar to Malebranche's. To this extent he and others have missed the real line of influence of Malebranche on Hume.

64 Pyle, Andrew, Malebranche (London: Routledge, 2000), 208Google Scholar.

65 Search 561, OCM III: 44.

66 Search 634, OCM III: 164.

67 Search 238, OCM I: 452.

68 E.g. Search 480, OCM II 369–70.

69 Search 243, OCM I: 459.

70 Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, ed. Jolley and Scott. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 6, OCM XII: 34.

71 Op. cit., note 25.

72 Op. cit., note 25, 148.

73 Andrew Pyle remarks that ‘Hume's discussion ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’… shows traces of Malebranche's influence on almost every page’ (op. cit., note 63 275n43).

74 T 1.4.4.3; SBN 232.

75 T 1.4.5.5; SBN 233.

76 T 1.4.4.6; SBN 234.

77 T 1.4.6.4; SBN 252.

78 T 1.4.6.3; SBN 252.

79 T 1.4.6.3; SBN 252.

80 Op. cit., note 25, 271. McCracken traces this to Berkeley.

81 See my ‘On Hume's Appropriation of Malebranche’.

82 The substance of this paper was written whilst on AHRC research leave, for which I am very grateful. During that time I was fortunate enough to be a scholar in residence in the helpful, friendly and stimulating environment of the Newberry Library in Chicago. I owe this wonderful time to Sara Austin, Mike Green, Jim Grossman, Dan and Mary-Ann Hamilton, Louis Nelson, Frank Valadez and Betsy Wright. Peter Millican offered his views on an earlier version of this paper, and I took on board all of his genuinely useful remarks. John P. Wright was as ever very helpful. Thanks also to John Mayer, Leo Fender, P. F. B. Edmund and S. M. S. Pearsall.