Treatise on Nature and Grace PDF
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TREATISE ON NATURE AND GRACE TREATISE ON NATURE AND GRACE NICOLAS MALEBRANCHE Translated with an introduction and notes by PATRICK RILEY CLARENDON PRESS · OXFD.RG 1992 Oxfurd Universit}l Press, Walton Street, Oxfurd OX2 6DP Oxfurd New Yurk Turon10 Delhi Bombay Calcuna Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapure Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dares Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin lbadan Oxfurd is a trade mark of Oxfurd Universit}l Press Published in the United States by Oxfurd Universit}l Press, New Yurk © Patrick Riley 1992 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Malebranche, Nicolas, 1638-1715. [Traite de Ia nature et de Ia grace. English) Treatise on nature and grace I Nicolas Malebranche; translated, with an introduction and notes by Patrick Riley. Translation of· Traite de Ia nature et de Ia grace. Includes bibliographical references and index. r. Nature--Religious aspects-Christianity-Early works to r8oo. 2. Grace (Theology~Early works to 1800. 3· God-Will-Early works to r8oo. I. Riley, Patrick, 1941- . II. Title. BT695·5·M35I3 1992 234-de2o 92-9612 ISBN o-19-824832-6 Typeset by Hope Seroices (Abingdon) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd. Guildford and King's Lynn In Memoriam MICHAEL OAKESHOTT 1901-1990 Acknowledgements It is a pleasure to be able to acknowledge the kindness of those who have made possible the first English version of Malebranche's Treatise of Nature and Grace to appear since 1695. First and foremost, Mrs Angela Blackburn of Oxford University Press deserves thanks for countless, thoughtful helps which sustained me during the two years' labour which went into the volume. Encouraging notes-usually granting extra time!-made the whole enterprise possible. It is also satisfying to be able to thank Princeton University Press for its generous permission to reuse some parts of my The General Will before Rousseau (1986) in the Introduction; without that permission I would have had to rewrite passages which (I thought) were already as adequate as I could make them. And I would not have had enough free time to produce this edition at all, had not the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded me a timely research grant which liberated me-a grant fleshed out by the Research Committee of the University of Wisconsin (Madison), which has treated me with unfailing generosity for twenty years. Various libraries in France and England also offered me much appreciated help. The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, kindly furnished the portrait of Malebranche which appears on the dust-jacket; and at Oxford University both the Philosophy Library and the Maison Fran<;aise cheerfully placed needed volumes at my disposal. The whole project would have come to nothing without the constant support of my wife, Joan A. Riley, who generously typed the whole manuscript, and who pulled me out of errors and absurdities which her fine Catholic education made visible to her. It is she who makes my whole scholarly life possible-and the rest of my life as well. I dedicate this edition of Nature and Grace to the memory of Michael Oakeshott, who died in December 1990 in his ninetieth year. It is to Oakeshott that I owe my whole intellectual life: my reading of his introduction to Hobbes's Leviathan when I was 17 was so inspiring viii Acknowledgements that I determined to take up moral and political philosophy for my life's work. Later he was my tutor at the London School of Economics-he taught me much of what I know, and the memory of his elegant, graceful lectures is unforgettable. Mter his retirement he was able to reread all of his favourite works-not least those in theology (which bad been the subject of his earliest published essays in the late 192os). At our last meeting, in May 1990, he generously encouraged my work on Malebranche, and gave me helpful advice about seventeenth-century French theology. And in his last long letter to me he said that during the last couple of yean since I came to live here [in Dorset), spending much of my time re-reading all the books which I lint read so or 6o yean ago, I have gone back to 'theology' -or rather, to rcllection upon religion. And I would like, more than anything else, to extend those brief pages in On HrmuJn Corrdru:t into an essay (you know how I admire and value this literary form) on religion, and particularly on the Christian religion. This ambition came to me, partly, from my re-reading all that St Augustine wrote-St Augustine and Montaigne, the rwo most remarkable men who have ever lived. Had Oakeshott lived, he would surely have discussed the Malebranche who synthesized Augustinian theology and modern French thought; now that work wiJI never appear, and we are permanently the poorer for it. P.R. Oxford Jum 1991 Contents Biographical Note xi A Note on the Text xiv Biographical Sketches xvii Introduction Treatise oa Nature aad Grace by Nicolas Malebranche 105 Excerpt of a Letter 107 Notice 110 Discourse I On the Necessity of General Laws of Nature and of Grace Ill Discourse II On the Laws of Grace in Panicular, and on the Occasional Causes Which Govern Them and Which Determine Their Efficacy 138 Discourse III On Grace. On the Way in Which It Acts in Us t69 Illustration What It Is to Act by General Wills, and by Particular Wills 195 Selected Critical Bibliography lt7 lnd~x ZZl
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