Természettörvény és gondviselés
Law of Nature and Providence

Summary/Abstract: Trying to apply the Cartesian standards of rationality to the problems of theology, Nicolas Malebranche, perhaps the most famous Cartesian of the period after the death of Descartes, goes well beyond the boundaries of the theoretical philosophy defined by his great predecessor. His much-debated theory of grace, exposed in his Treatie on Nature and Grace, works out a close parallel between the law-based divine agency in the realm of nature and the working of providence in the history of salvation. Thus the same metaphysical set of universal concepts applies both to the scientific explanation of nature and the theological understanding of revelation. In my essay I try to show the working of this system through a limited though central problem, the question of evil – a point where the impersonal patterns of scientific explanation clash most directly with the personal requirements of a religious answer. (In Malebranche’s view ‘le mal physique’ is but a necessary consequence of the main characteristic of divine action: generality. The divine will being general does not always meet the particular needs of a particular being. However it is this generality which best expresses the divine perfection and reflects in the two aspects of the divine governance, its laws’ being general and working in a way called occasionalist. In my view these two sides of the theory point into two different directions. While Malebranche’s occasionalism makes the reader realise that divine activity is immediately present in all possible events of the created world, the theory of general will subsumes the singular facts of the providential history under the universal character of metaphysical laws God cannot dispense with.) Nevertheless I try to show that in final analysis the philosopher’s attempt to work out a singular set of concepts which holds good for both realms is not so much a move of a scientific reduction as an attempt to forge a systeme, where these two realms can work together in a..

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