Author Description

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was one of the most important philosophers of the seventeenth century after Descartes, and one of the ablest champions and most penetrating critics of Cartesian ideas. Andrew Pyle examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous Search After Truth, which was admired and criticised by both Leibniz and Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and the 'Vision in God'. He goes on to explore and assess Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace and the freedom of the will. This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to philosophers and also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or seventeenth-century thought.