Occasionalism and experience in Malebranche

• Grant number: 17/02659-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: June 12, 2017
• End date: June 11, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Tessa Moura Lacerda
• Grantee: Sacha Zilber Kontic
• Supervisor: Paul Rateau
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/03661-3 - Metaphysics, experience and perception in Malebranche, BP.DR

Abstract

This project aims to analyze the role of experience in Malebranches occasionalism, having as our starting point the notion of experience understood through what he called inner sentiment or conscience. The research will be structured on three main points: (I) The role of experience in the malebranchean method, (II) the relation between experience and the knowledge of the laws of nature, especially the ones regarding the organic bodies, and (III) the role of the affective experience and of the disorders in Malebranches theodicy. We aim to show that the experience does not have in his occasionalism only the role of a counter-proof, but that it also has a structural and fundamental role in the knowledge of the laws that rule the occasional causes. (AU)