Le mouvement de l’idée chez Malebranche. Entre l’attention humaine et la garantie divine

Abstract

Malebranche's Movement of the Idea: Between Human Attention and Divine Guarantee

The aim of this article is to analyze the concept of attention in the work of Nicolas Malebranche and to suggest an explanation for its ambivalent status concentrated in the phrase "natural prayer". The goal is therefore to understand the relationship between the theology and the Malebranchist method and to determine the consequences generated by the definition of the idea as an external object that moves towards the mind. The mobility of the idea and the epistemological guarantee offered by the divine Word thus describe a phenomenological space that exposes occasionalism to a strong internal tension.

Keywords: Malebranche, occasionalism, idea, attention, freedom, knowledge, theology


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