## 1. Life and Works



Antoine Arnauld was born in Paris on February 6, 1612, the twentieth
and last child of an important French family. He is often referred to
in the French literature as *Le Grand Arnauld*. Another famous
member of the family was his sister, Mere Angelique
Arnauld. Installed by her wealthy and powerful father as abbess of the
convent of Port-Royal in 1602 at the age of eleven, she later reformed
the convent and it became a center of intense religious life. Several
of Arnauld's sisters were nuns at Port-Royal, where his mother
joined them after the death of his father in 1621.



The young Antoine attended the *College de
Calvi-Sorbonne*, where one of his fellow students was his nephew,
Isaac Lemaitre de Sacy. Arnauld went on to study philosophy at
the *College de Lisieux*, and then decided to follow in
his father's steps as a lawyer. However, under the influence of
his mother and her confessor, Jean Duvergier, the *abbe de
Saint-Cyran * he changed his mind and began studies in
theology in 1633.



About 1640, he joined a small group of *solitaires* who lived
in the countryside near Port-Royal and were associated with the
convent. They included Pierre Nicole, Claude Launcelot, and Sacy. The
*solitaires* initiated the *petites ecoles de
Port-Royal* which continued in various locations from the late
1630s until 1660. Their students included the dramatist Jean Racine.
Later on, Arnauld cooperated with Sacy in the first important French
translation of the
 Bible.[1]
 He also co-authored the *Grammaire generale et
raisonnee* with Lancelot and *La Logique ou l'Art
de penser* (hereinafter *Logic*), with Nicole. All of these
collaborative projects had their origins in the *petites
ecoles*. Blaise Pascal was closely associated with the
*solitaires* beginning in 1655.



The year 1641 was an eventful one for Arnauld. He was ordained a
priest on September 21. During the year, he completed the
"Fourth Objections" to Descartes'
*Meditations* and wrote *De la Frequente
communion* (published in 1643). The first work established his
reputation as a philosopher. The second went through many editions and
had an effect on Catholic sacramental practice up to the end of the
nineteenth century. Jansen's *Augustinus* was also
published in Paris in 1641, having been published posthumously in the
Netherlands a year earlier. It was attacked by the official theologian
of Paris, Isaac Habert, who preached a series of sermons against
Jansen in the cathedral of Paris during Lent, 1643. Arnauld, who had
arrived at an interpretation of Augustine similar to, though not
identical with, that of Jansen, undertook, at the request of
Saint-Cyran, to defend Jansen against the accusation of heresy. This
he did in his *Premiere Apologie pour Jansenius*,
1644, and *Seconde Apologie*, 1645. Although Arnauld did not
agree with important details of Jansen's view, he continued to
defend Jansen against the charge of heresy off and on for the rest of
his life.



In 1653 the famous five propositions attributed to Jansen were
declared to be heretical by Pope Innocent X in the Constitution
"*Cum Occasione*." Arnauld and most of the
Port-Royal group claimed that the five propositions, although
heretical on their most likely interpretation, were not in fact in
Jansen's work. The dispute led to Arnauld's expulsion from
the Sorbonne after a celebrated trial, which lasted from December 1,
1655 to January 30, 1656. Pascal came to Arnauld's defense with
the *Provincial Letters*, published in installments from
January 23, 1656 to May, 1657. The dispute lasted until 1669, when the
French bishops who supported Arnauld worked out a compromise with Pope
Clement IX, and Arnauld enjoyed almost a decade in the good graces of
both the court and the Pope. During this time, Arnauld wrote
voluminously on the Eucharist, but he also found time to co-author the
Port-Royal *Grammar* and *Logic*, and to write his
*Nouveaux elements de geometrie*.
However, in the late 1670s, the attacks on Port-Royal by civil and
religious authorities resumed, and in 1679 Arnauld fled to the
Netherlands, where he remained until his death, in Liege, on
August 8, 1694.



The last fifteen years of Arnauld's life, spent in self-imposed
exile, were among his most fruitful in philosophy. During this period,
he carried on his debates with Malebranche and Leibniz, and also
reexamined his position on human free will. Arnauld's published
criticism of Malebranche began in 1683 with *On True and False
Ideas* (hereinafter *Ideas*). But the central topic of the
exchange was Malebranche's use of occasionalism to explain how
it is that not all human beings are saved. Arnauld provided a
systematic criticism of that position in the three volumes of
*Reflexions philosophiques et theologiques sur le
nouveau systeme de la nature et de la grace*
(hereinafter *Reflexions*), published in 1685 and 1686.
Arnauld's famous correspondence with Leibniz was initiated by
Leibniz in 1686, when he sent Arnauld the section headings of his
projected *Discourse on Metaphysics*.


## 2. Arnauld on the Distinction between Philosophy and Theology



Arnauld considered it important to be clear about the distinction
between philosophy and theology. This concern is present in his work
from the beginning, in 1641, to the end of his published writings.
Thus, he divides the "Fourth Objections" to
Descartes' *Meditations* into "the possible
philosophical objections regarding the major issues of the nature of
our mind and of God" and "the problems which a theologian
might come up against in the work as a whole"
(*Descartes*, 2:169). One of Arnauld's criticisms of
Malebranche is that he does not establish many of the principles in
his system of nature and grace either by the proper methods of
philosophy or of theology. Again, in *Regles du bon
sens*, written the year before his death, Arnauld warns,



> 
> Be very careful about the nature of the question in dispute, whether
> it is philosophical or theological. For if it is theological, it must
> be decided principally by authority, whereas if it is philosophical,
> it must be decided principally by
>  reason.[2]
> 



According to Arnauld, the chief purpose of theology is to defend the
truths revealed by God through Sacred Scripture and the teaching
tradition of the Church. Part of the ceremony in which he received the
doctorate in theology from the Sorbonne was a vow, made before the
altar of the Holy Martyrs, "that we will give our life before
leaving the truth undefended." In the speech he gave on that
occasion, Arnauld emphasized the vow, which he said was instituted
because



> 
> the obligation to defend the truth with force and courage is so
> indispensable in a theologian that those whose courage in this regard
> could weaken, should be committed to it by the holiness and piety of a
> solemn public vow (*Traduction du Discours latin prononce
> par M. Arnauld en recevant le Bonnet de Docteur*, *OA*, 43:12).
> 



This intense religious commitment to his role as a theologian
continued throughout his life. Combined with his combative
personality, it helps to explain the passion with which he defended
individual theologians, especially Saint-Cyran and Jansen, as well as
what he took to be the truths of revelation.



Regarding philosophy, Arnauld, like Descartes, held that its purpose
was to acquire useful knowledge through reason. That reason ought to
be employed only in the pursuit of useful knowledge is emphasized in
the opening pages of the *Logic*. Arnauld and Nicole say that
"speculative sciences, such as geometry, astronomy, and
physics" can be used as instruments for perfecting judgment and
reason. This provides a use for some of the "nooks and
crannies" of those sciences, which would otherwise be
"completely worthless." They go on to say,



> 
> People are not born to spend their time measuring lines, examining the
> relations between angles, or contemplating different motions of
> matter. The mind is too large, life too short, time too precious to
> occupy oneself with such trivial objects. But they are obligated to be
> just, fair, and judicious in all their speech, their actions, and the
> business they conduct. Above all they ought to train and educate
> themselves for this (*Logic*, 5).
> 



Arnauld did not think, however, that philosophical sciences are useful
only as instruments for acquiring virtues. Natural philosophy or
physics can be made to serve the good of human life in many ways and
even metaphysics is useful in that it can help the theologian in the
task of defending the truth.



An outstanding example of that sort of usefulness, in Arnauld's
view, was Descartes' argument for the distinction of the soul or
mind from the body. Arnauld refers to Descartes as a "Christian
philosopher," echoing Descartes' own use of the phrase in
the letter dedicating the *Meditations on First Philosophy* to
the Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne, where Descartes says that he
carried out the injunction of the Fourth Lateran Council
(1512-17) that "Christian philosophers" should try
to prove the immateriality of the soul (*Descartes*, 2:4).



The authorities most often cited by Arnauld are Augustine and Aquinas
in theology, and Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes in philosophy.
Arnauld's attitude toward these predecessors is complex. From
the outset of his published work in philosophy, he claimed that
Augustinian themes were present in Descartes. However, in his late
work, beginning with *On True and False Ideas* in 1683, he
began to cite Aquinas frequently, as well as Augustine, both in
philosophy and theology. Thus, in the 181 folio pages of
*Ideas*, which Arnauld describes as dealing with a purely
philosophical topic, he cites Augustine twenty times and Aquinas six
times, always claiming that they agree with Descartes and with his own
position. Similarly, in the theological part of
*Reflexions*, Arnauld relies heavily on Aquinas's
Christology while arguing that Malebranche's theodicy leads him
into heterodox, if not downright heretical, positions (*OA*
39:777). Again, in his late work on the problem of human free will and
*grace efficace par elle-meme*, Arnauld took over
what he says is the Thomistic position that the will is free when it
is a *potestas ou facultas ad opposita.* And in the controversy
with Nicole and others over Nicole's theory of a *grace
generale*, Arnauld relied heavily on Aquinas's
account of cognition. So frequently did Arnauld rely on Thomistic
formulations in his late work that his friends reproached him for
"abandoning Augustine in order to follow Aquinas, thus
preferring the disciple to the master" (*Regles du bon
sens*, *OA*, 10:154). This reproach had to do directly with
Arnauld's rejection of the "Platonism" in Augustine
and Jansen. But as shown below, Arnauld, late in his career, also
parted company with Augustine and Jansen on the nature of human free
will, and with Jansen's account of the nature of actual
grace.



Arnauld had a scholarly knowledge of the history of philosophy and
theology, and was certainly aware of the important differences among
Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes on such issues as the role of sense
perception in human knowledge, the relation of the mind to the body,
and the nature of human freedom. But Arnauld wanted to emphasize the
continuity of Descartes with the Christian past. Arnauld feared that
Descartes' philosophy would be made into a weapon against the
Christian tradition. Emphasizing those elements in Descartes'
philosophy that are in continuity with Augustine and Aquinas was part
of Arnauld's effort to make of Cartesianism an ally, rather than
an enemy, of the faith.


## 3. Arnauld's Cartesianism



Unlike Saint-Cyran, Jansen, and most of the Port-royalists, Arnauld
had a positive appreciation of philosophy, and a lively interest in
the subject (See Nadler 1989, 18 ff.). His philosophy is typically,
and correctly, classified as Cartesian. Indeed, Leibniz said, in 1691,
that Arnauld had been "in all ways for Descartes for a long
 time."[3]
 Arnauld enthusiastically endorsed Descartes' physics and the
approach to mind-body dualism to which it gave rise. He also adopted
some parts of Descartes' views on philosophical method.



Arnauld's Descartes, however, is unlike the Descartes who is
seen as the father of the enlightenment and who anticipated many of
the preoccupations of recent analytical philosophy. Arnauld claims to
set forth the gist of Descartes' philosophy, but he did not
hesitate to replace parts of Descartes' philosophy with
different though related propositions, especially when doing so made
Descartes a more reliable ally in what Arnauld took to be his primary
task, to defend the truths of the faith.


### 3.1 Philosophical method



In the Fourth Part of the *Logic*, "On Method,"
Arnauld and Nicole present an account of the distinction between
analysis and synthesis that they say is taken from a manuscript of
Descartes lent to them by Clerselier. What they present is a free
translation of Rule Thirteen of the *Rules for the Direction of the
Mind*. They then paraphrase the four rules given by Descartes in
Part Two of the *Discourse on the Method*, saying that although
the rules are "often difficult to follow," yet "it
is always helpful to bear them in mind, and to heed them as much as
possible whenever we try to find the truth by means of reason"
(*Logic*, 234-39). But Arnauld developed the Cartesian
position on philosophical method in a distinctive way. In particular,
he reshaped the notion of an idea, of a confused idea, of a clear and
distinct idea, and of methodic doubt.



An idea, according to Arnauld, is the same thing as a perception (in
the broad sense of the term characteristic of seventeenth-century
philosophy), and every perception has an object distinct from the
perception itself. Every idea, i.e., every perception, is, in
addition, a consciousness of itself. But this "implicit
reflexion" makes present to the mind a perception that is, in
the first place, of an object distinct from itself. As Arnauld puts
it, "I know myself in knowing other things"
(*Ideas*, 6). It is obviously true, he says, that we can know
objects only through the mediation of our perceptions, i.e., our
ideas, of them:



> 
> But if, by not knowing them *immediately*, is meant being able
> to know them only by *representative beings* distinct from
> perceptions, I hold that in this sense we can know material things, as
> well as God and our soul, not only *mediately* but also
> *immediately*, i.e., that we can know them without there being
> any intermediary between our perceptions and the object (*Of True
> and False Ideas*, hereinafter *Ideas*, 31).
> 



Arnauld says that the object of any perception has *objective
being* in the perception. Furthermore, the object has objective
being in the perception *as having properties.* If an object
exists objectively in a given perception as having a given property,
then Arnauld says that the perception *represents* the object
as having that property, that is, makes the object present to the mind
as having that
 property.[4]
 Furthermore, an idea (or perception) can represent its object to the
perceiving mind as having this or that property contingently or
necessarily. Arnauld cites the dictum, "it is in the idea of
each thing that we see its properties," and takes it to refer to
an explicit reflection upon an idea that represents its object as
having certain properties necessarily.



Arnauld argues at length that this theory of ideas was also held by
Descartes (*Ideas*, 26ff.). This claim has puzzled philosophers
from Thomas Reid to the present (Reid 1785, 169). A good example of
the more common interpretation of Descartes' theory is provided
by Ian Hacking, who also attributes the theory, as he understands it,
to the Port-Royal *Logic*. Hacking begins with the first
sentence of the First Part of the *Logic*: "We have no
knowledge of what is *outside* us except by the mediation of
the ideas within us," and continues,



> 
> The Cartesian *ego* has set the stage. The *ego* able to
> contemplate what is within it ponders what lies outside. There are
> some objects that we can contemplate without being logically committed
> to the existence of anything other than the ego. These objects are
> ideas (Hacking 1975b, 29).
> 



Borrowing an example from Elizabeth Anscombe's comment on
Berkeley, Hacking says that in the Cartesian (and Port-royalist)
theory, "Ideas [in the mind] are paradigm 'objects'
and coins [in a man's pocket] are not" (Hacking 1975b,
28-30). But the sentence that Hacking quotes from the First Part
of the *Logic* does not demand the interpretation he gives it.
It is consistent with the position Arnauld develops in *Ideas*
(published in the same year as the fifth and last edition of the
*Logic*), according to which ideas are primarily perceptions of
external objects distinct from the perceiver, objects like coins in a
man's pocket; and only secondarily objects of reflexive
perception. Arnauld makes a good case for the claim that this position
was also held by Descartes, but the claim is not universally
accepted.



Arnauld's account of clarity and distinctness, obscurity and
confusion of ideas can be found in the First Part, Chapter 9, of the
*Logic*. The discussion proceeds by way of examples, rather
than general definitions, but it can be summarized as follows: The
basic properties of ideas are clarity and confusion. Clarity of ideas
is the same as vividness, and this is a matter of degree; the opposite
of clarity is obscurity. Confusion of ideas results when a number of
ideas are connected by false judgments, and confusion produces
obscurity. Opposite to confusedness of ideas is distinctness. Arnauld
and Nicole apply these distinctions to the idea of pain:



> 
> We can say that all ideas are distinct insofar as they are clear, and
> that their obscurity derives only from their confusion, just as in
> pain the simple sensation which strikes us is clear and also distinct.
> But what is confused, namely that the sensation is in the hand, is by
> no means clear in us (*Logic*, 48).
> 



Again, Arnauld and Nicole speak of "the obscure and confused
ideas we have of sensible qualities, the soul adding its false
judgments to what nature causes us to know" (*Logic*,
49-50). The simple idea of pain, for example, is a clear and
distinct idea of a sensory state in the mind, and the idea of the pain
in the hand is a compound and confused idea of something in the hand
that exactly resembles pain. Being confused, the idea is also obscure,
because what it is in the hand that exactly resembles pain is
"by no means clear to us." Arnauld's theory of clear
and confused ideas implies that ideas, as they are given to us by
nature, and thus by God, are clear and distinct, and therefore cannot
be deceptive, or "materially false." Any deceptiveness in
our ideas derives from their confusedness and is the result of our
misuse of freedom. It is not God who confuses us, but we who confuse
ourselves.



Arnauld's comments on the idea of pain are part of a larger
position on "ideas of sensation." In a famous passage in
the "Fourth Objections," Arnauld objected to
Descartes' statement, "If cold is merely the absence of
heat, the idea of cold which represents it to me as a positive thing
will be materially false" (*Descartes*, 2:145). As part
of his reply, Descartes says,



> 
> If cold is simply an absence, the idea of cold is not coldness itself
> as it exists objectively in the intellect, but something else, which I
> erroneously mistake for this absence, namely a sensation which in fact
> has no existence outside the intellect (*Descartes*, 2:163).
> 



Arnauld developed a general account of sensory ideas that builds on
this part of Descartes' reply. He sets out his account clearly
in a*Ideas*: Sensory ideas, like the idea of pain and the idea
of cold, are perceptions of mental states. Taken apart from the
judgments in which we falsely identify these mental states with states
of material things, sensory ideas are clear and distinct. They become
confused, and hence obscure, only as a result of the precipitous,
false judgments of childhood. Arnauld quotes Descartes'
*Principles of Philosophy*, Part I, #68 in support of his
account:



> 
> We know pain, color and the other sensations clearly and distinctly
> when we consider them simply as thoughts, but when we would judge that
> color, pain, etc., are things which subsist outside our thought, we do
> not conceive in any way what that color, that pain, etc., is (Quoted
> by Arnauld in *Ideas*, 132).
> 



Arnauld also gave a distinctive interpretation of Descartes'
method of doubt. In the "Fourth Objections," Arnauld
offers, as the first of "the problems which a theologian might
come up against in the work as a whole," the following: "I
am afraid that the author's somewhat free style of
philosophizing, which calls everything into doubt, may cause offence
to some people" (*Descartes*, 2:151). Arnauld recommends
that the First Meditation be "furnished with a brief preface
which explains that there is no serious doubt cast on these matters
but that the purpose is to isolate temporarily those matters which
leave room for even the 'slightest' and most
'exaggerated' doubt," and that the clause
"since I did not know the author of my being" be replaced
by "since I was pretending that I did not know the author of my
being."



Arnauld was asking Descartes to make clear that his method did not
involve real doubt, but only a consideration of what would happen
*if* one were to doubt. Consider this passage from the
Port-Royal *Logic*:



> 
> If there were people able to doubt that they were not sleeping or were
> not mad, or who could even believe that the existence of everything
> external is uncertain ... at least no one could doubt, as St.
> Augustine says, that one exists, that one is thinking, or that they
> are alive... From this clear, certain, and indubitable knowledge
> one can form a rule for accepting as true all thoughts found to be as
> clear as this one appears to be (*Logic*, p.
>  228).[5]
> 



This is as close as Arnauld comes to using methodic doubt, but it does
not imply that one can really doubt the existence of an external
world, much less that one ought to do so, even once in one's
lifetime.



It is not clear to what extent Descartes would have agreed with that
interpretation of methodic doubt. He did not adopt the first of
Arnauld's two suggested revisions. Perhaps he thought that the
point was covered in the "Synopsis" of the
*Meditations*. But he did adopt Arnauld's second
recommendation by adding some words in parentheses in the Sixth
Meditation, thus:



> 
> The second reason for doubt was that since I did not know the author
> of my being (or at least was pretending not to), I saw nothing to rule
> out the possibility that my natural constitution made me prone to
> error even in matters which seemed to me most true
> (*Descartes*, 2:53).
> 



On the other hand, Descartes begins the *Principles of
Philosophy* with the remark,



> 
> It seems that the only way of freeing ourselves from these [prejudices
> of childhood] is to make the effort, once in the course of our life,
> to doubt everything which we find to contain even the smallest
> suspicion of error (*Descartes*, 1:193).
> 



Here Descartes advocates an effort to develop a real doubt on a wide
scale, the sort of advocacy that had aroused Arnauld's
theological concern in the "Fourth
 Objections."[6]


### 3.2 Arnauld's identification of ideas with perceptions in the light of his notion of an extrinsic denomination



As pointed out in 3.1 above, Arnauld identifies an idea with a
perception (in the broad sense of the term characteristic of
seventeenth-century philosophy). Kenneth L. Pearce employs the notion
of an extrinsic denomination to throw new light on that position. In
Pearce's words, "Arnauld does not intend a straightforward
identification of ideas with perceptions, for he draws a semantic
distinction between 'perception' and
'idea;'." "Careful examination of this
semantic distinction," he says, "will help us ...
achieve a proper understanding of the relationship between perceptions
and ideas" (Pearce 2016, p. 380). To that end, he makes use of
the notion of an "extrinsic denomination," a notion which
occurs in Arnauld's *Ideas*, in the statement,
"Being conceived, in regard to the sun that is in the sky, is
only an extrinsic denomination, i.e., only a relation to the
perception which I have of it" (quoted by Pearce on p. 382).
Pearce adds that:



> 
> The *Logic* defines an 'extrinsic denomination' as
> a mode "taken from something that is not in the substance, such
> as 'loved', 'seen', 'desired',
> names derived from the actions of something else" (Pearce, 2016,
> p 382).
> 



Talking about perceptions and talking about ideas, Pearce says, are
two different ways of describing a situation in which a person
perceives an object:



> 
> Such a situation is relational, involving a relation of the perceiver
> to the object and a relation of the object to the perceiver. The first
> relation is a real mode in the perceiver; the second is not a real
> mode, but rather a mere extrinsic denomination in the object (Pearce,
> 2016, p. 382).
> 



Pearce concludes:



> 
> This explains the sense in which the perception and the idea are
> identical: just as one and the same worldly state of affairs entitles
> Mary to the (intrinsic) denomination 'lover' and John to
> the (extrinsic) denomination 'beloved', so one and the
> same worldly state of affairs entitles my mind to the (intrinsic)
> denomination 'perception' [*sic*] and the sun to
> the (extrinsic) denomination 'idea' (Peatce, 2016, p.
> 382-83)
> 



Pearce suggests that "The reason Arnauld's ideas are not
objectionable intrermediary entities is that they are not really
distinct from the external objects they represent" (p. 376). To
put the point in another way,



> 
> Arnauld denies that the idea is a distinct third term in perception
> *not* by identifying it with the perceptual act, but rather by
> identifying it with the *external object* conceived by me
> (Pearce, 2016, p. 389).
> 



In a subsequent article, Pearce shows how Arnauld uses the notion of
an extrinsic denomination to resolve three apparent contradictions
between what Arnauld says about representation and his



> 
> sparce Cartesian ontology on which there are just two kinds of
> substance, thinking and extended ... [and] every feature of a
> thinking substance is a way of thinking, and every feature of an
> extended substance is a way of being extended (Pearce forthcoming, p.
> 1-2).
> 



The first apparent contradiction arises because Arnauld maintains that
we directly perceive extended objects and yet that we do so by means
of ideas in our mind. The solution is that the perception, e.g., of
the sun, is a real mode of thinking which essentially makes the sun
present to the mind, and in virtue of which the sun deserves the
extrinsic denomination 'idea of the sun' (p. 22). The
second apparent contradiction arises from the Port-Royal theory of
language. According to the *Logic*, language consists of sounds
and visible characters which are signs of ideas. But signs are
representations and "representing is not a mode of extension and
therefore cannot modify an extended object such as a sound [or] a
written word" (p. 19). The solution is that the idea which a
word signifies "is connected to [the sign] only by a
habit," the habit, namely "of conceiving of a certain
object whenever [the mind] perceives the symbol." Consequently
"the object is entitled to the name 'sign' on
account of the state of some mind or minds. In other words,
'sign' is applied to the object by extrinsic
denomination" (p. 19-20). The third apparent contradiction
arises in Arnauld's rejection of Malebranche's position
that "the soul actually becomes red, blue or yellow [and] when
one smells a carcass the soul becomes formally putrid." Arnauld
agrees that colors and smells are modifications of the mind and not of
extension. But this does not imply, Arnauld says, that "our soul
should be called either 'green', or 'yellow',
or 'putrid'" (p. 23). Arnauld adds, "There are
infinitely many *names* which suppose no modification in the
thing to which they are given" (quoted by Pearce on p. 23 from
Arnauld's *Ideas* ). Pearce comments, "The
application of a name that 'supposes no modification in the
thing to which [it is] given' is extrinsic
denomination."



Pearce has also located Arnauld's account of ideas in the wider
context of early modern philosophy. He classifies accounts of ideas as
descriptivist or explanatory. In the explanatory approach,
"ideas are to be understood as posits in an explanatory
theory" (Pearce forthcoming, p. 2). Malebranche is the paradigm
practitioner of the explanatory approach. In the descriptivist
approach, by contrast, "claims about ideas are to be justified
only by direct introspection, and not by inference to the best
explanation" (Pearce, forthcoming, p. 9). Arnauld is the chief
practitioner of the descriptivist approach. He not only rejects
Malebranche's attempt to explain how the mind perceives external
objects, but he also maintains that no such explanation is needed. For
I know clearly by introspection that my nature is to think, and that
thinking is representational. As Arnauld puts it, "Just as it is
clear that I think, it is also clear that I think of something, i.e.,
that I perceive and know something" (quoted by Pearce from
*Ideas* in Pearce, forthcoming, p. 8). It is similarly clear
what it is that I think of, perceive or know, and in particular it is
clear that I think of, perceive or know extended things. Pearce argues
that Locke follows Arnauld in his descriptivism, although not in his
direct realism (Pearce, forthcoming, p. 10). Berkeley too adopted the
descriptivist approach, a fact which helps to explain the absence of
arguments for Berkeley's view that we cannot form abstract
general
 ideas.[7]


### 3.3 Mind-body dualism



If there is one part of Descartes' philosophy that met with
Arnauld's enthusiastic approval, it is Descartes'
mind-body dualism. Yet even here Arnauld's version of the
Cartesian philosophy departed in important ways from Descartes'
own views. Arnauld's departure did not have to do with the
distinction between mind and body; here he largely contents himself
with endorsing what Descartes
 says.[8]
 It had to do rather with the union of the mind and body in a human
being. Arnauld rejected a claim at the core of Descartes'
position, namely, that the union of a person's mind and body
makes it possible for the mind and the body to exercise real causal
action on one another. Arnauld explicitly says that a person's
body cannot act causally on his mind, and had at least some difficulty
with the notion that a person's mind can act causally on his
body.



In 1680 Arnauld wrote an extended defense of the "the philosophy
of Descartes" regarding "the essence of body and the union
of the soul with the body," against an attack by Fr. Etienne Le
 Moine.[9]
 Throughout this work, Arnauld quotes Malebranche as representative of
the Cartesian position, and what he defends under the heading,
"the philosophy of Descartes," is actually a modified
version of
 Malebranche.[10]
 According to the Cartesian philosophy, says Arnauld,



> 
> All the union (*alliance*) of the mind and the body which is
> known to us consists in a natural and mutual correspondence of
> thoughts in the soul with traces in the brain and of emotions in the
> soul with movements of the [animal] spirits.... It is not denied
> that there may be something unknown to us in the union God has brought
> about between our soul and our body (*Examen*, *OA*,
> 38:141).
> 



what we do know, however, suffices to show that the mind is not
related to the body as a pilot to his ship, but rather that the two
are united in "a greater and more intimate union" by which
they form a single whole (*Examen*, *OA*, 38:141).



Arnauld next takes up a criticism directed by Le Moine against the
Cartesian account of sense perception, and this leads to the
question,



> 
> whether it is the bodily movements [in the eye] that cause the
> perceptions in the soul; or whether they are only the occasion on
> which the soul forms [the perceptions] in itself; or whether God gives
> [the perceptions] to [the soul](*Examen*, *OA*, 38:146).
> 



Arnauld says that it is "easy" to eliminate the first
alternative: "For since the motion of a body can at best have no
other effect than to move another body (I say *at best* because
it may have not even that), who does not see that it can have no
effect on a spiritual soul?" (*Examen*, *OA*,
38:146). He adds that St. Augustine considered it beyond doubt that a
body can have an effect only on our body, and not on our soul. Arnauld
rules out the second of his three alternatives on the grounds that the
soul cannot form sensible perceptions in itself on the occasion of
particular motions in the bodily sensory apparatus because the soul is
not aware of those motions (*Examen*, *OA*, 38: 147).
This leaves Arnauld with the third alternative, which he accepts,
adding that God voluntarily undertakes to cause in our soul
perceptions of sensible qualities whenever the corresponding motions
occur in the sensory organs "according to the laws He himself
has established in nature" (*Examen*, *OA*,
38:148). He summarizes this conclusion by saying that our body does
not act on our soul as a "physical cause (*cause
physique*)" but only as a "moral cause (*cause
morale*)" (*Examen*, *OA*, 38:150).



Arnauld had a quite different position regarding the causation of
voluntary movements in the body. He held that, in general, it is
possible for immaterial, thinking beings to act causally on material
things, and that, in fact, God has on occasion given angels the power
to do so. He also held that the mind of Adam and of Eve had the power
to bring about voluntary motions in their bodies before the Fall, and
that the minds of the blessed in heaven will enjoy that power. He
suggests that the voluntary bodily motions of human beings in this
life here below are not caused by the person's volitions. His
reason for this negative position is that post-lapsarian human beings
do not know how to bring about the movements of the animal spirits
that cause the motions of their muscles and limbs. Thus he says,



> 
> *If* one can say [that God has not given our soul a real power
> to determine the course of the animal spirits toward the muscles of
> the parts of our body that we want to move], it is not [on the grounds
> of a general occasionalism like Malebranche's]... It is
> only because our soul does not know what must be done in order to move
> our arm by means of the animal spirits (emphasis added;
> *Dissertation sur les Miracles de l'ancienne loi*,
> *OA*, 38:690).
> 



Steven Nadler cites this text while arguing that Arnauld was an
"occasionalist" both about the causation of sensory
perceptions by bodies, and about the causation of voluntary movements
by the human mind (Nadler 1995, 138). Nadler recognizes that Arnauld
had quite different attitudes toward the two cases, but nevertheless
says that Arnauld "alone among Cartesians" recognized
mind-body interaction as a specific problem in Descartes'
metaphysics, and "used an occasionalist solution" (Nadler
1995, 144).



Arnauld's treatment of the union of mind and body shows that he
was not a docile follower of Descartes, and was prepared to develop
"the philosophy of Descartes" in ways that Descartes would
probably not have accepted. It also shows that Arnauld was prepared to
modify Descartes' philosophy in a way that increased its
similarity to Augustine. It is well known that Arnauld pointed out
similarities between Augustine and Descartes from the beginning of his
published work, in the "Fourth Objections." In the present
case, however, Arnauld changes the philosophy of Descartes in a way
that increases its similarity to Augustine. Arnauld did not mention
Aquinas, though he could have done so, as another authority who held
that a material thing cannot produce an immaterial effect. It was only
a few years later, in *Ideas*, that Arnauld began to claim an
affinity between the views of Descartes and those of Aquinas. But in
his development of the Cartesian position on the union of mind and
body, one can already see Arnauld attempting to make of Descartes a
Christian philosopher standing in continuity with his great patristic
and scholastic predecessors. (This attempt on Arnauld's part is
explored in the journal *Dix-Septieme Sciecle*, 2013/2 no.
259.)


### 3.4 The Creation of the eternal truths



There is a continuing discussion of Arnauld's attitude toward
the view which Descartes expressed in answer to Mersenne's
question "by what kind of causality God established the eternal
truths." Descartes replied, "by the same kind of causality
as he created all things, that is to say, as their efficient and total
cause" (Descartes, p.
 25).[11]
 The debate has been greatly influenced by Jean-Luc Marion's
interpretation, in *La theologie blanche de Descartes*,
according to which Descartes' position on the matter is
fundamental to his metaphysics. Consequently, to the extent that
Arnauld, in his mature writings, adopted Descartes' metaphysics,
it has seemed reasonable to say that Arnauld agreed with Descartes
about "the creation of the eternal truths." Indeed Denis
Moreau says, "Arnauld is therefore one of the rare (and if we
can grant him the adjective, the only great) post-Cartesian to accept
the thesis of the creation of the eternal truths" (Moreau, 1999,
p. 180).


### 3.5 Are God's actions reasonable?



Steven Nadler accepts Moreau's conclusion about Arnauld and the
creation of the eternal truths. As Nadler puts it,



> 
> There is no need for me to go into this question here in any detail,
> since Denis Moreau, in his magnificent study of the
> Arnauld-Malebranche debate, has, to my mind, persuasively shown that
> Arnauld does, in fact - and despite his refusal explicitly to
> endorse (or reject) the doctrine - accept the creation of the
> eternal truths (Nadler, 2008, p. 532).
> 



But he faults Moreau for not having gone "far enough along the
path that Arnauld traces," and thus having failed "to see
how radical Arnauld's conception of God really is. For
everything points to Arnauld's God being an ultimately arbitrary
deity who does not act for reasons at all - indeed a deity who,
in His being, transcends practical rationality altogether" (p.
533). In Nadler's view, Arnauld follows Descartes in holding
that God is absolutely simple and consequently that in God "will
and understanding are one and the same thing," not
distinguishable even by a distinction of reason. For Arnauld
(following Descartes),



> 
> the relationship between will and wisdom in God is so unlike their
> relationship in human beings - where will and undertanding
> *are* distinct faculties of the mind, and the former cannot
> function unless the latter presents to it ideas for consideration
> - that no analogy can be drawn from the human for the purpose of
> understanding the divine (p.
>  532).[12]
> 



Moreau gives a very different account of Arnauld's concept of
God. Invoking the doctrine of divine simplicity, Arnauld says that
God's will *is* His wisdom, for God's will
*is* God Himself and God's wisdom *is* God
Himself. There can, therefore, be no question of God's wisdom
limiting His will. Nevertheless, far from being a deity who does not
act reasonably, "God's action is both reasonable and
reasoned; it is the action of a *wisdom*"(Moreau, 1999,
p. 281). Arnauld holds that Gods attributes are
"integrated" and "unified"; Arnauld speaks of
the "reasonable will" of God and "affirms that
'God wills nothing except wisely, He wills nothing that His
wisdom does not will. In God the will wills and reasons, and the
reason reasons and wills." But if pressed to give God's
reasons for doing what He does, Arnauld can only reply that "God
does what He wills, we do not know why and can give no reason except
His will to do what he does" (Moreau, 1999, p. 295). In sum,
God's reasons for what He does are
"incomprehensible," but His actions are not
"irrational" (Moreau, 1999, p. 296, note 2).



In "Arnauld's God Reconsidered," Eric Stencil has
attempted to adjudicate this disagreement (Stencil, 2019).
Stencil's attempt is divided into two parts. The first is
focussed on the doctrine of divine simplicity, and takes up the
question of whether God's wisdom is distinct in any way from His
will. The second takes up the question of whether God acts for
reasons.



As Stencil points out Moreau and Nadler agree that Arnauld subscribes
to what Stencil calls "the identity thesis," that God,
God's action, and God's attributes are identical.
According to Nadler, however, Arnauld goes farther, and denies that
God's wisdom and His will are distinct even by a
"distinction of reason." Stencil disagrees. Against the
background of the treatment of abstraction in the *Port Royal
Logic*, Stencil maintains that Arnauld holds "the
distinctness thesis," that "God, God's actions, and
God's attributes are conceptually distinct" (Stencil,
2019, p. 24-5). Reflection on the clear idea of God. and on the
clear ideas of His attributes, which we form by abstraction, allows us
to establish various truths about God and His attributes. But that
reflection reequires that we distinguish conceptually among the
various attributes. Arnauld also subscribes to "the nonpriority
thesis," the thesis "that there are no conceptual
priorities among God, God's actions, and God's
attributes" (Stencil, 2019, p. 21). To deny the nonpriority
thesis is, in Arnauld's view, to "anthropomorphize"
God, to make him "operate like a finite being." Stencil
concludes, "So, *contra* Nadler, I suggest that we treat
Arnauld as allowing for conceptual distinctions - but not
conceptual priorities - among God's various
attributes" (Stencil, 2019, p. 26-7).



Stencil points out that his account of divine simplicity "is in
some ways a defense of Morearu's interpretation against
Nadler's objections" (Stencil, 2019, p.
 27).[13]
 He then turns to the question of whether Arnauld's God acts for
reasons. Here he finds evidence on both sides of the issue:



> 
> Moreau has highlighted passages where Arnauld is explicit about not
> denying that God acts for reasons or that God's actions have
> ends. Nevertheless, Nadler has presented systematic and compelling
> evidence for concluding that Arnauld's God does not act for
> reasons. (p. 28)
> 



Stencil claims, nevertheless, that



> 
> In fact, Arnauld offes a consistent position about whether God acts
> for reasons. Arnauld is 'agnostic' about whether God acts
> for reasons *absolutely* - whether God acts for reasons
> *in any sense at all*. (p. 29)
> 



Arnauld claims to know that "Malebranche's account of how
God acts for reasons ... treats God as a finite being - and
this makes his account unacceptable and false" (p. 29). But that
leaves open the question of whether God acts for reasons in some other
way. On Strencil's interpretation, Arnauld says that we cannot
know the answer. If Stencil is right about Arnauld's
agnosticism, then the most that Nadler's evidence can show is
that for Arnauld it is "beyond our epistemic means" to say
that God does, or that He does not, act for reasons. As for the
passages cited by Moreau in which Arnauld refuses to deny that God
acts for reasons, they do not affirm that God does not act for
reasons, but simply refuse to deny what we cannot know to be
false.



An interesting example cited by Moreau is Augustine's rhetorical
question, "Who would dare to say that God created all things
without reason?" (cited by Moreau on p. 295, note 2). Stencil
takes the question to be a way of saying "We dare not state or
could not prove a denial that God acts for reasons" (Stencil,
2019, p. 29). Unfortunately Moreau does not explain the context in
which Arnauld quotes Augustine's question. The context is
Arnauld's enthusiastic endorsement of Aquinas' argument in
*Summa Theologiae*, I, 19, 2 and 5 (Reflexions, II, 2,
*OA*, XXXIX, 430-31). Article 2 has to do with whether
God wills things other than Himself. Aquinas says that "the will
of God is directed to things other than Himself," and this is
because



> 
> it is a perfection of the will of God to communicate to other things
> the good He possesses ... So God wills that He be what He is and
> also wills that other things be. But He wills Himself as the end and
> other things as related to the end, insofar as it is appropriate to
> the divine goodness that other things participate in it. (translation
> of Arnauld's French rendering of Aquinas by author)
> 



Article 5 addresses the question of whether the will of God has a
cause. Arnauld comments,



> 
> [Aquinas] answers in the negative because it is not with God as it is
> with men. A man wills an end; he wills to be cured of an illness. His
> willing that end is the cause of his willing the means suitable for
> obtaining it. That is how [Malebranche] makes God act, not noticing
> that he falls into the mistake which he often says must be avoided, of
> speaking about God according to [our] ideas of the way that men act.
> 



Because God wills all things by a single act,



> 
> we cannot say that He wills what is for the end (that is to say, the
> creatures) because He wills the end, but we should say only that He
> wills that what is for the end be related to the end. He wills
> *x* to exist for the sake of y, but He does not will *x*
> for the sake of *y* (*VULT hoc esse propter hoc, sed non
> propter hoc vult
>  hoc*.)[14]
> 



Augustine's rhetorical question is raised as an objection: If
God does not will to create things in order to accomplish an end,
then, contrary to the import of Augustine's question, God
creates things without reason. Arnauld summarizes Aquinas'
reply:



> 
> The will of God is reasonable, not because He wills only if there is
> some reason which causes Him to will (*qui le fasse vouloir)*,
> but because He wills that among the things He makes some exist for the
> sake of others (*OA*, XXXIX, 431).
> 



Here Arnauld distinguishes the question of whether God's
creative action is reasonable from the question of whether in creating
God acts for a reason. He answers the first question, but not the
second, in the affirmative.


## 4. Arnauld and Malebranche



Nicolas Malebranche was born in 1638, when Arnauld was twenty-six
years old. In 1660, Malebranche joined the Oratory, a center for
priests in Paris that had many connections with Port-Royal.
Malebranche and Arnauld were on friendly terms in the early 1670s, but
late in the decade they had a falling out over Malebranche's
explanation of the fact that not all men are saved, and related
 matters.[15]
 In 1680, Malebranche published his position, against Arnauld's
advice, in the *Treatise of Nature and Grace* (hereinafter
*TNG*). The ensuing public controversy between the two was a
central event in the intellectual life of Europe in the late
seventeenth century.



Arnauld's attack on *TNG* began in a surprising way, with
the publication of *On True and False Ideas (*hereinafter
*Ideas*) in 1683. In it, Arnauld presents his own position on
the nature of ideas, which was described above, and argues that
Malebranche's view that we see all things (or at least all
bodily things) in God and by means of God's ideas is not only
mistaken, but thoroughly confused and wrong-headed. This work
engendered a preliminary debate that lasted for two years. The
publication of *Reflexions* in 1685-86, preceded
in 1685 by the publication of Arnauld's *Dissertation sur les
miracles de l'ancien loi*, provoked further exchanges
between the two in 1687, with a last gasp on Arnauld's part in
1694, the year of his death, and on Malebranche's part ten years
later, in
 1704.[16]


### 4.1 Malebranche's position in the *Treatise of Nature and Grace*



*TNG* provides a general account of God's reasons for
creating a world with the evils that the world contains. But
Malebranche is mainly interested in one particular evil, namely, that
not all men are saved. That not all men are saved he took to be a
datum of revelation, plainly expressed in the Scriptures. But he
denied that it follows that God does not want all men to be saved.
Indeed, he says his motive in writing *TNG* was to refute those
who concluded that God did not have a "sincere will" to
save all men:



> 
> If there were not in this century people determined to hold that God
> does not have a sincere will to save all men, it would not be
> necessary to establish principles suitable for destroying that unhappy
> opinion. But the need to combat errors brings to light principles
> suitable to that end. I protest before God that that was the principal
> motive that made me
>  write.[17]
> 



If God wants to save all men, something must prevent Him from doing
what He wants to do. In the "*Troisieme
Eclaircissement*" to *TNG*, Malebranche says that
since God is omnipotent, He can bring about whatever He wants to bring
about. But because His will is "the love He bears for His own
attributes," He cannot, by a "practical"
 will,[18]
 will anything or will in any way that is not wise: "The wisdom
of God renders Him impotent in this sense that it does not permit him
to will certain things, or to act in certain ways" (*OM*,
5:180). What prevents God from carrying out His will to save all men,
Malebranche concludes, must be that doing so would require ways or
manners of willing that are unwise. As he puts it a few pages later,
God's wisdom "holds His volitions in check, in the sense
that not all of His volitions are practical volitions"
(*OM*, 5:184).



Malebranche argues that God's wisdom restrains Him from
sanctifying and saving all men because it directs Him not only to
create a world that is good, but also to create "in a way worthy
of Him, by ways (*par des voyes*) that are simple, general,
constant, and uniform" (*OM*, 5:49). More precisely,
God's wisdom directs Him to an act of creating that best
combines goodness or perfection of the created world with simplicity
of ways of creating. An analogy may help explain Malebranche's
position. Suppose that someone sets out to buy a car and wants to do
the best possible job of car-buying. Suppose further that the
second-best car is available at a much better price than the best car.
In this case, doing the best job of car-buying might require buying
less than the best car. In a somewhat similar way, Malebranche holds
that the best job of creating, the one most worthy of God, involves
creating a world less perfect than He might have made it, in
particular, a world in which not all human beings are saved.



Malebranche's notion of the simplicity of God's ways of
creating depends on his occasionalism. According to that theory of
efficient causality, God is the only true efficient cause. When
creatures appear to be efficient causes, they are really only
occasional causes. That is, the events in which the apparent created
causes take part are followed by other events in accordance with laws
of nature, which are God's general volitions. But the created
"causes" do not really cause the events that follow. These
events, like every created reality, are really caused by
 God.[19]
 For Malebranche, the simplicity of God's ways depends on there
being a small number of laws of nature, and on there being few
exceptions to the laws. Malebranche maintains that in order to do the
job of creating that best combines goodness of the world created with
simplicity of ways of creating, God had to make a world with precisely
the natural evils (misshapen animals, human suffering, ugly
landscapes, etc.) that that are present in the world as it is.



The anomalies in the order of grace are explained in a similar way.
Malebranche divides grace, the divine assistance given to human
beings, into two kinds, which he calls "grace of light
(*lumiere*)" and "grace of feeling
(*sentiment*)" (*OM*, 5:96-97; 131). The
former is, quite simply, knowledge. Malebranche also calls it
"the grace of the Creator," because it is given, in
different forms, both to Adam and Eve and to human beings after their
Fall. Grace of feeling is "the grace of Jesus Christ," and
was merited for human beings by the life and death of Jesus.
Malebranche also describes it as a "pleasure
(*delectation*)" which makes a person love God
(*TNG*, *OM*, 5:135). According to Malebranche, the
grace of the Creator is "dry, abstract, entirely pure and
entirely intelligible" and does not lead us to love God. The
grace of Christ, in contrast, is "efficace par
elle-meme" in that it "always has its effect, always
carries us toward God" (*OM*, 5:132). Human beings, after
the fall of Adam, are unable to grow in holiness, or even to be saved
from damnation, without the grace of Christ. But the love of God
produced by grace is a sort of instinctive love, which is not
meritorious and is not sufficient for salvation. Whether the person
who receives the grace of Christ is saved depends on the
person's free consent to the movement toward God that grace
produces, which converts the instinctive love of God into a
"free and rational" love. This consent is not produced by
grace.



Now Malebranche holds that God could give to each person grace that
would assure the person's salvation:



> 
> God is the master of hearts. He can give to the impious a grace such
> that it will convert him, since God knows what degree of grace to
> give, and when it must be given, in order that it bring about the
> conversion of the sinner (*OM*, 5:186).
> 



Similarly, God knows what sort of grace would ensure that any person
is not only saved, but also attains the maximum holiness of which he
or she is capable. But many who receive grace do not grow in holiness
and are not saved. For example, many who enter the Church later fall
away.



> 
> God often distributes graces, without their having the effect that His
> goodness makes us believe He would make them have. He makes the piety
> of some people increase right up to the end of their life, but sin
> overcomes them at death and throws them into Hell. He makes the rain
> of grace fall upon hardened hearts as well as on earth that is
> prepared: people resist it and make it useless for their salvation.
> ... How can that be reconciled with wisdom? (*OM*, 5:48).
> 



Malebranche's answer is that God's wisdom dictates that He
act, in the distribution of both sorts of grace, according general
volitions determined by created occasional causes to particular
effects. In the case of the grace of the Creator, the general
volitions are laws of nature, and the occasional causes are "the
diverse movements of our will" and "the encounter of
sensible objects that act on our mind" (*TNG*, 5:102).
For the grace of Jesus Christ, the occasional cause is Jesus Christ,
in his human nature, and the general volition is that grace be given
to human beings if and only if Jesus, in his human nature, asks that
it be given. Jesus' requests for grace are made in view of the
needs of the Church. But Jesus, in his human nature, does not always
think of "the future determination of the will" of those
for whom he requests grace. The result is that, often enough, people
receive grace that does not lead to their holiness and salvation, or
fail to receive the grace that would have done so (*TNG*,
*OM*, 5:83).


### 4.2 Two themes in Arnauld's criticism of the *Treatise of Nature and Grace*



Arnauld thought that Malebranche's position was dangerous, and
that if accepted it would have ruinous consequences for the Catholic
faith. He was "furious," as Denis Moreau has aptly said,
"and decided to leave nothing standing in a philosophy that
clearly frightened him" (Moreau 1999, 240). Here only the
general lines of Arnauld's attack are set forth. First, two
pervasive themes in Arnauld's criticism are described: (1) that
Malebranche often did not proceed by the proper method of either
philosophy or theology; and (2) that Malebranche speaks of God in
anthropomorphic terms, as if He were subject to the limitations of a
human
 agent.[20]
 Then Arnauld's criticisms of Malebranche's position that
God acts by "general volitions" will be discussed.



1. Throughout *Reflexions*, beginning with the
"Avant-Propos" to the work, Arnauld challenges Malebranche
to make clear whether his claims are based on reason or on Scripture
and
 tradition.[21]
 He had mounted this sort of challenge even earlier, in
*Ideas*:



> 
> He does not say that he learned those grand maxims on which all of
> that [*Treatise of Nature and Grace*] turns by the revelation
> of God: *that if God wills to act externally, it is because He
> wills to obtain an honor worthy of Himself; that He acts by the
> simplest ways; that He does not act by particular volitions; but by
> general volitions which are determined by occasional causes*
> (*Ideas*, 174).
> 



Nor could all of those maxims be demonstrated, in Malebranche's
sense of the term. For Malebranche says that only necessary truths can
be demonstrated, and yet he admits that God does sometimes act by
particular volitions, namely, when He performs miracles. Hence
Malebranche himself would have to admit that the third maxim, at
least, is not demonstrable. In Arnauld's view, Malebranche came
to accept such principles because he thought they made God more
loveable and hence were favorable to the cause of religion. In this
way Malebranche introduces, on the basis of religious considerations,
principles that are not found in Scripture and tradition.



Arnauld thought that this unholy introduction of religion into what
ought to be treated as philosophical questions began with
Malebranche's theory of ideas, according to which "we see
all things in God." Thus, in the "Conclusion" of his
*Defense contre la Reponse au livre des vraies et des
fausses Idees* (*OA*, 38, 367-668; hereinafter
*Defense*), Arnauld takes up "two or three
objections" that might be raised against *Ideas*. The
second objection is one that had been raised by Nicole: "I could
have avoided this philosophical topic [of the nature of ideas] so as
not to interrupt what I had begun to write about the *Treatise of
Nature and Grace*." In reply, Arnauld says,



> 
> What was at the outset a question of philosophy ... is not such
> for [Malebranche]. For him it is a question of theology, very sublime
> and very elevated. He considers it a religious duty to devote his
> whole mind to its defense. He finds it bad that others should disagree
> with him, and even says that anyone who is not of his opinion must be
> 'either an unenlightened philosopher or a man insensitive to his
> duties.' Thus he has changed the form of the dispute. He has
> involved religion, and has become so devoted to his novel thoughts as
> to hold that anyone who does not approve of them lacks respect for the
> wisdom of God Himself. (*Defense*, *OA*, 38:666)
> 



In Arnauld's direct attack on *TNG*, he says again and
again that Malebranche relies on principles that have neither a proper
theological basis in Scripture and tradition, nor a proper
philosophical basis in reason. Clearly he thought that this criticism
applied as well to Malebranche's theory of ideas. But if Arnauld
took seriously the remark at the beginning of the *Logic*,
"The reflections we can make on our ideas are perhaps the most
important part of logic, since they are the foundation of everything
else," he may well have thought that Malebranche's theory
of ideas was an important source of the confusion of theology with
philosophy that plagues *TNG*. That, in turn, would help
explain his decision to begin his attack on *TNG* with a
treatise on the nature of
 ideas.[22]



2. Arnauld agreed with Malebranche that God's will is
reasonable, but he disagreed with Malebranche's way of
conceiving God's
 reasonableness.[23]
 In both Book I and Book II of *Reflexions*, he tries to
show that Malebranche conceives of God's reasonableness as if it
were the reasonableness of a human being. In the second chapter of
Book I, he reports a series of arguments given by Malebranche early in
*TNG* for the conclusion that God acts in the order of nature
only by general volitions. These arguments, says Arnauld, are
"only comparisons with men, which ... cannot prove anything
with regard to God; or popular thoughts not worthy ... of a
philosopher" (*OA*, 39:188). For example, Malebranche
says that God decides to create that which can be produced and
conserved by the simplest laws because he is an excellent workman, and
"an excellent workman ... does not do by complicated ways
what he could carry out by simpler ones" (*TNG*,
*OM*, 5:28). Arnauld objects that there is no similarity
between an excellent human workman and God,



> 
> since all the ways of executing His plans are equally easy for Him,
> and 'His power,' as the author [Malebranche] recognizes,
> 'makes Him so much the master of all things, and so independent
> of help from elsewhere, that it suffices that He will, in order for
> His volitions to be carried out' (*OA*, 39:189-90).
> 



Hence God's volitions are not based on reasoning about the means
to achieve a desired end.



Book II of *Reflexions*, which deals with God's
way of acting in the order of grace, opens with a related criticism.
Arnauld begins by analyzing a line of thought that Malebranche
presents in the *Troisieme Eclaircissement* to
*TNG* (*OA*, 39:425-51). The line of thought
begins with two claims: that "God can act only for Himself. If
He wills to act, it is because He wills to procure an honor worthy of
Himself" and that "God can receive an honor worthy of
Himself only from Himself." Yet I am created, so I must be able
to render to God an honor worthy of Him. This I can do, says
Malebranche, only by becoming a part of the Church, of which the
Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity is the cornerstone. More
generally, "God's great plan is to build in His own honor
a spiritual temple, of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone ...
His plan is that this Temple should be as large and perfect as
possible." Malebranche then draws an important conclusion:



> 
> God wills that all men enter into this spiritual building, to enlarge
> it. *God wills that all men be saved* ... God also hopes
> that men will merit outstanding degrees of glory: *His will is our
> sanctification*. (*OM*, 5:183)
> 



But although God wants the salvation and sanctification of all men,
"He loves His wisdom infinitely more," and His wisdom
requires that He act in the way that is wisest and most worthy of
Himself, that is, in "general, constant and uniform way,"
with the result that "He does not save all men, although He
truly wills that they all be saved" (*OM*, 5:185).



Arnauld has much to say against that line of thought, and he begins be
attacking its very first step, the claim that God "can act
externally only in order to procure an honor worthy of Himself"
(*OA*,
 39:428-40).[24]
 He objects that this is not a proper way to speak about an infinitely
perfect being. Once again, Malebranche is guilty of anthropomorphism.
For he says, in effect,



> 
> that [God] could resolve to create me, me and the other creatures,
> only for some advantage He wanted to obtain for Himself by creating
> us.... That is how [Malebranche] lowers [God], by claiming that
> He cannot decide to create anything externally, except to procure an
> honor worthy of Himself. (*OA*, 39:429)
> 



Arnauld goes on to contrast Malebranche's way of describing
God's creation with that of St. Thomas, who say that the reason
God creates is that His goodness tends to overflow and communicate
itself to other
 things.[25]



Arnauld also says that to speak about God as *consulting* His
wisdom before acting is to speak about God as one would about a human
being who wills an end and is thereby caused to will the means to that
end (*OA*, 39:432). It is to compare God to a man who consults
his wisdom about everything he wants to do "as if he were afraid
of not acting well, and his will needed to be ruled by something other
than itself in order to do only what is good" (*OA*,
39:599-600). "Is it an expression of *rigorous
exactitude* to say of God that *He consults His wisdom*,
and that is how it comes about that everything He wills is
wise," Arnauld asks,



> 
> as if the word *consult* is suitable for an infinitely perfect
> being when one professes not to speak in popular language? As if God
> needed to consult His wisdom so that what He wills should be wise? As
> if His will were not His wisdom? As if everything He wills were not
> essentially wise, by virtue of the fact that He wills it?
> (*OA*, 39:578)
> 



God's will is not a force that needs to be tamed. The truth,
according to Arnauld, is that it is impossible that God should have an
actual (sincere) will for something that is not in fact wise.



In a related criticism, Arnauld chides Malebranche for allowing
"very little freedom and indifference" in God's
creative action. Arnauld quotes Malebranche:



> 
> Assuming that God wills to produce outside of Himself a work worthy of
> Himself, He is not *indifferent* *in the choice;* He
> ought to produce the most perfect work possible by relation to the
> simplicity of the ways by which He acts; He owes it to Himself to
> follow the rules of his wisdom. (Quoted by Arnauld at
> *Reflexions*, *OA*, 39:598, from *TNG*,
> *OM*, 5: 110).
> 



Malebranche tries to save for God at least freedom and indifference
with regard to creating or not creating. But Arnauld suggests that
this move is ruled out by "the way in which he conceives
God's action," for supposedly, on Malebranche's
view, God would consult His wisdom before deciding whether to create
or not, and just as His wisdom advises Him to create this world rather
than a less perfect one, assuming that the two could be created in an
equally simple way, His wisdom would also advise Him that it is better
to create than not to create (*OA*,
 39:599-600).[26]


### 4.3 Does God act only by general volitions?



Arnauld devoted much of *Reflexions* to
Malebranche's position that God acts by general volitions and
not by particular volitions. In Book I of *Reflexions*,
his focus is on the order of nature and he tries to show that
Malebranche's claim that God acts only by general volitions is
confused and even self-contradictory. In Book II, his focus is on the
order of grace and he attacks Malebranche's claim that God does
not distribute grace by particular volitions.



Arnauld begins his criticism in Book I by claiming that Malebranche
confuses *acting by general volitions* and *acting according
to general laws*. Arnauld grants that God acts according to
general laws. But against the claim that God acts by general
volitions, he provides an argument that is simple, and, his view,
decisive:



> 
> Whatever [God] does, He does in particular, and not in general. But
> since *to will and to do*, in God, are the same thing, given
> that He creates each soul by a particular action, He must also will to
> create it by a particular will. (*OA*, 39:175)
> 



In some passages, Malebranche's language suggests that
God's wisdom dictates that He engage in the act of creating that
best combines the goodness of the world created with the simplicity of
the laws *according to which* the world is created, and not
with simplicity of the volition *whereby God creates*
(*TNG*, *OM*, 5:147). This suggests that for Malebranche
God does will particular created effects, though He wills that they
take place according to certain laws. But Arnauld did not think that
this was Malebranche's view. For suppose that God creates the
world according to a simple set of laws. Let these laws, as regards
bodies, be the laws of motion. A world created according to such laws
might be more perfect than a world not created according to general
laws, or created according to a different set of laws. But that would
be of no help to Malebranche. For he does not say that a world
regulated by simpler laws is a more perfect world. Rather he maintains
that creating such a world is a simpler act of creation in God
Himself. But it is not at all clear how simplicity of laws according
to which the world is created would make God's way of creating
simpler, especially if God's creative activity includes the will
to create every particular part of the creative world.
Malebranche's real position, according to Arnauld, emerges in
those passages in which he identifies the "ways" in which
the word is created with the actions whereby God creates. An example
is the passage, "An excellent workman ought to proportion his
action to his work; he does not accomplish by highly complex ways
(*voyes*) what He can execute by simpler ones" (*TNG,
OM*, 5:28). To this Arnauld objects that the volitions by which
God creates are particular.



Arnauld next points out that Malebranche does not say, without
qualification, that God creates by general volitions. Rather,
Malebranche says that God's creative will is



> 
> the cause of a particular effect; but he calls it general, because he
> holds that God has this will only when He is determined to have it by
> an occasional cause, which must be a creature. (*OA*, 39:176).
> 



In other words, according to Malebranche, God causes particular
effects in creation, but the contribution of God's volition, as
opposed to the contribution of created occasional causes, is general.
Later on, Arnauld says that, on Malebranche's view, it is really
only the free volitions of creatures that can be said to determine
God, in view of His general volitions, to produce a particular effect.
For, according to Malebranche, God is the cause of every bodily event,
including those which, together with the general laws, are supposed to
determine any given consequent event. (*OA*, 39:230). But
Malebranche is committed, so Arnauld argues, to the position that the
free volitions of creatures are not caused by God (*OA*,
 39:248-57).[27]



Arnauld goes farther and says that Malebranche's position on
God's creative will is, in fact, self-contradictory. For
Malebranche



> 
> was not of the opinion of those philosophers who believe that God
> originally created all things, gave them the qualities necessary for
> their conservation and the powers they needed in order to act, and
> then left them to act without further involving Himself.
> 



On the contrary, Malebranche insists that "God is the sole cause
of everything in the world, up to the smallest movement of the
smallest atom." But he also holds that God "acts in the
world only as a universal cause, whose general volitions are
determined by the ... changes ... in creatures, as by so
many occasional causes." Arnauld tries to show that these two
positions are inconsistent with one another (*OA*,
39:231-37).



Near the end of Book II of *Reflexions*, Arnauld takes
up Malebranche's arguments for the claim, "God does not
act, in the order of grace, by particular volitions," as
summarized by Malebranche in the *Premier Eclaircissement* to
*TNG* (*OA*, 39:621). Malebranche says that the
proposition in question can be proved by reason "in two ways;
*a priori & a posteriori;* that is, by our
idea of God, and by the effects of grace." The chief "a
priori" argument involves the claim that "to choose
occasional causes, and to establish general laws for carrying out some
work, indicates an infinitely more extensive knowledge than to act by
particular volitions." Arnauld retorts, "Is it something
to be put up with, that human beings ... should have the temerity
to make themselves judges of what is a sign in God of greater
intelligence and wisdom?" (*OA*, 39:624).



Arnauld quotes Malebranche's statement, "The *a
priori* proofs are too abstract to convince most people of the
truth I am proposing. It is more *a propos* to prove it
*a posteriori*," and goes on to consider the a
posteriori arguments (*OA*, 39:625-43). He is less
sarcastic in dealing with these arguments than with the a priori ones.
He says that there are "three or four of them, but they all
amount to the same thing: There are graces that are inefficacious, and
this would not occur if God gave His graces by particular
volitions." He mentions three such arguments, based on the
premise that graces are given to sinners who are not entirely
converted; on the premise that grace often falls upon hearts disposed
in such a way that the grace does not bear fruit; and, finally, on the
premise that graces given to sinners sometimes end up making them even
more guilty.



Arnauld assumes that these arguments have to do with "the true
grace of Jesus Christ, as defined by St. Augustine: *Inspiratio
dilectionis, ut cognita sancto amore faciamus*, an inspiration of
love given to us so that we should do the good with holy
affection." Such grace is efficacious if it infallibly has its
effect. But the effect in question may be either proximate
(*prochain*) or remote (*eloigne*). As in
the famous example of Augustine, a grace may be efficacious in that it
produces the desire to be chaste, and yet not efficacious in that it
fails to produces chastity itself. Similarly, Malebranche's
arguments assume that "Every grace has the effect for which God
gives it." But once again, this phrase may refer to the effect
for which God gives the grace by His absolute will, or to the effect
that grace tends to produce by its nature and for which God gives the
grace by His antecedent will. Arnauld grants that if God gives
efficacious graces by particular volitions, then there are none that
fail to have the proximate effect, which God intends they have by His
absolute will. But they may well fail to have remote effects to which
they tend by their nature and which God wills only by His antecedent
will. For example, if an efficacious grace has the effect that a
sinner repents, only to lapse back into sin, then the grace had the
proximate effect God intended it to have by His absolute will, even
though it failed to have all the effect to which it tended by its
nature and which God willed by His antecedent will. In this way, he
disposes of Malebranche's three a posteriori arguments.



Arnauld ends Book II with a consideration of what he takes to be
Malebranche's master argument. It is a fourth a posteriori
argument. He quotes from the *Troisieme
Eclaircissement*:



> 
> There is no other way than [by saying that God does not act by
> particular volitions] to reconcile the proposition in Holy Scripture,
> 'God wants to save all men,' with this proposition,
> 'Not all men are saved'. (*OA*, 39:637)
> 



Arnauld rejects this argument mainly because, like the other three a
posteriori ones, it assumes that "God wills, by a true volition,
the salvation of all men, and the conversion of sinners"
(*OA*, 39:641).



Arnauld agreed with Malebranche that God could have brought it about
that all men are saved and did not do so. But he favored an
Augustinian view that "all men" in this context means
"all sorts of men," that is, men of all races,
occupations, etc. He did not entirely reject the Thomistic view that
God's will for the salvation of all men is God's
"antecedent will" rather than His "consequent
will," that is, God's will other things being equal rather
than God's will all things considered. Arnauld points out that
Malebranche's position might be thought to be a version of the
Thomistic one, but adds that according to St. Thomas God's
antecedent will is a wish rather than an absolute volition (*une
velleite plutot qu'une volonte absolue*)
(*Reflexions*, *OA*, 39:198, cf.
 39:576).[28]
 Arnauld firmly rejects any notion that God wills the sanctification
and salvation of each and every person in a strong sense of
"will" such that His will would be carried out unless
there were something to prevent it, or, in Malebranche's words,
to hold it in
 check.[29]


### 4.4 Arnauld's criticism of Malebranche's occasionalism



Arnauld opened a different line of attack in his *Dissertation sur
les miracles le l'ancien loi*. This new attack is directed
against the occasionalism which is assumed in Malebranche's
account of the wisdom of God's ways of creating. In a foreword
to the *Dissertation*, Arnauld says that he had completed his
treatment of the first two books of the *Reflexions*,
and was beginning work on the third, when he received the fourth
edition of the
 *Treatise*:[30]



> 
> I had finished two books examining the new system of nature and grace,
> and there remained only one further book to complete the task, when I
> received from Rotterdam a new edition of the *Treatise*,
> published that year, 1684, with several additions. The main one was a
> third E*claircissement*, with the title: *The
> frequent miracles of the Old Law do not at all indicate that God often
> acts by particular volitions*. And the only reason which the
> author of the system gives is that the miracles were done by the
> ministry of the angels, who were their occasional causes.
> 



Arnauld interrupted his work on the *Reflexions* to
write the *Dissertation*, which was published in 1685 together
with the first chapter of Book Three of the *Reflexions*, a
chapter dealing with Malebranche's position that Jesus Christ,
in his human nature, is the occasional cause of the distribution of
grace. Arnauld raises theological objections to both positions, but
also attacks the underlying occasionalism. The *Dissertation*
touched off a rapid series of replies and ounter-replies in 1685. The
first volume of *Reflexions* was published later in 1685, and
the second and third volumes in 1686.



Arnauld begins his attack by citing the opening sentence of the
*Dernier Eclaircissement*, in which Malebranche says
that he expects his readers to agree with the principle that
"God causes (*fait*) everything, and hence He
communicates His power to creatures only by establishing them as
occasional causes..." (OM, 5, 197). Arnauld adds that
Malebranche



> 
> does not understand 'God causes everything' as ordinary
> philosophers do, who say that the creature does not act at all unless
> God acts with it, which they call 'concurrence' ...
> But what he means when he says that God causes everything is that He
> causes everything that one imagines the creature causes, and that the
> creature causes nothing at all.
> 



It is not difficult, Arnauld says, to show that the first conjunct, so
understood, is false. For "it destroys the nature of intelligent
beings, who would not be free if they did not, as real causes, form in
themselves *the determination of their will toward particular
goods*". (As Arnauld points out, the italicized words are
Malebranche's.) The second conjunct of the principle is
dispatched in a similar way:



> 
> For intelligent beings receive from God their power to form the
> determination of their will toward particular goods. But it is not
> only as occasional causes but as real causes that they form in
> themselves that determination of their will. (*OA*, 5, 198)
> 



Having established to his satisfaction that the principle "taken
generally" is false, Arnauld goes on to say that there is no
reason to deny that God has given angels power to move bodies and that
they are real, not mere occasional, causes of the miraculous events
attributed to them. Again, "it is not so easy to
demonstrate" that our soul does not have the real power to move
the parts of the body to which it is united.



In the exchange of publications that grew out of the
*Dissertation*, Arnauld objects in a similar way to
Malebranche's use of occasionalism to explain "how grace
acts in us without wounding [liberty]" (OM, 5, 8). In his
explanation, Malebranche distinguishes the effect of grace, which is
from God and is not free, from the recipient's free response,
which is from the recipient and not from God. Arnauld says that
Malebranche would have done well to heed Aquinas's advice that
one should not distinguish "between what is from grace and what
is from free will, as if the same thing could not be from both"
(*OA*, 39, 114).



Both Malebranche and Arnauld continued to write about divine causality
and human freedom in their later work. Arnauld's late work on
the topic is describe in Section 6 below. Malebranche's last
effort on the topic was his *Reflexions sur la Premotion
Physique*, published in 1715, the year of his death.


## 5. Arnauld and Leibniz



On February 11, 1686, while the controversy between Arnauld and
Malebranche was at a peak of intensity, Leibniz wrote to Landgrave
Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels, asking that the Landgrave send Arnauld a
summary of "a short discourse" on "questions of
grace, the concourse of God and creatures, the nature of miracles, the
cause of sin and the origin of evil, the immortality of the soul,
ideas, etc." (*The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence*,
*Die Philosophischen Schriften von Leibniz, herausgegeben von K. I.
Gerhardt*, Vol. 2, hereinafter *LA*, 11). The ensuing
correspondence occurred at a crucial point in the development of
Leibniz's philosophy. The *Discourse on Metaphysics*, the
final version of the short discourse, marks the beginning of
Leibniz's mature metaphysics, and it shows the influence of the
correspondence with Arnauld.



Leibniz had corresponded with Arnauld some fifteen years earlier, in
connection with Leibniz's efforts to reunite the Christian
churches. These efforts took a new turn in March, 1672, when Leibniz,
then just 25 years old, left Mainz for Paris on a secret political
mission for his patron, Baron Johann Christian von Boineburg, who was
in turn minister to Johann Philipp von Schonborn, the Elector of
Mainz. Both men were converts from Lutheranism to Catholicism.
Leibniz's diplomatic mission was a failure, but he had other
reasons for wanting to visit Paris. He was eager to enter into the
brilliant intellectual life of the French capital, and he stayed
there, with a brief sojourn in England, until 1676, making the
acquaintance of a number of leading intellectuals. During this time,
he undertook for the first time the serious study of mathematics. But
he also continued to work toward a philosophical position that he
hoped would help reunify the churches.



Before coming to Paris, he had discussed the project of reunifying the
churches with his patron Boineburg, and had corresponded with Arnauld,
in 1671, about the Eucharist, proposing an account of the real
presence that he thought would be acceptable to both Lutherans and
Catholics. But it was Leibniz's interest in theodicy and related
problems about justification that flourished in Paris. There, in 1673,
he composed *Confessio Philosophi*, a dialogue in Latin between
a theologian and a philosopher that is sometimes referred to as
"his first theodicy." Thirty-seven years later in the
*Theodicy*, Leibniz says,



> 
> While I was in France, I communicated to M. Arnauld a dialogue I had
> written in Latin on the cause of evil and the justice of God. This was
> not only before his disputes with R. P. Malebranche, but even before
> the book on *The Search after Truth* had appeared. The
> principle that I here maintain, that sin was permitted because it was
> involved in the best plan for the universe, was already employed
> there, and M. Arnauld did not seem hostile to it. (*Theodicy*,
> #211).
> 



Soon after Leibniz's arrival in Paris, both Boineborg and von
Schonborn died, and Leibniz turned for support to another
important German noble and convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism,
Johann Friedrich von Braunschweig-Luneberg (Hannover). On 26
March 1673, Leibniz wrote as follows to Johann Friedrich:



> 
> The famous Arnauld is a man of the most profound and wide-ranging
> thought that a true philosopher can have; his aim is not only to
> illuminate hearts with the clarity of religion, but, further, to
> revive the flame of reason, eclipsed by human passions; not only to
> convert heretics, but, further, those who are today in the greatest
> heresy--the atheists and libertines; not only to vanquish his
> opponents, but, further, to improve those of his persuasion. His
> thoughts, then, come to seeking how, so far as it is possible, a
> reform of abuses, frankly wide-spread among dissidents, would overcome
> the cause of the division. In this design, on several points of
> importance, he has made the first step and, as a prudent man, he goes
> by degrees. I am distressed that we have lost von Boineburg just when
> I have struck up an acquaintance with Arnauld; for I had hoped to
> bring these two minds, so similar in their honest soundness, on the
> road to a closer agreement, The Church, as well as the Fatherland, has
> sustained a loss with this man (Quoted in Sleigh 1990, 15-16).
> 



There is no record of any response by Arnauld to the *Confessio
Philosophi*, but when Leibniz returned to the problems of
theodicy, in 1686, he once again sought Arnauld's cooperation by
sending Arnauld the outline of the *Discourse on Metaphysics*
that was mentioned above. The outline sent to Arnauld was no more than
a list of the propositions that were to appear as the titles of the
thirty-seven sections of the *Discourse*; the entire
correspondence was carried out through the intermediary of
Hessen-Rheinfels; and the copies of letters received by the two major
correspondents were sometimes defective. These facts, together with
the extreme subtlety of the philosophical contents of the letters,
have made interpretation of the correspondence very difficult.


### 5.1 Leibniz's notion of an individual substance



Proposition 8 in Leibniz's outline is: "In order to
distinguish the actions of God from those of creatures, it is
explained wherein consists the notion of an individual
substance" (*LA*,8). The notion of a substance is, for
Leibniz, the notion of a thing that acts. To explain the notion of a
created individual substance, therefore, he has to explain the notion
of a created agent, which requires that he distinguish correctly
between the actions of creatures and the actions of God. Part of
Leibniz's account of the notion of an individual substance is
given in Proposition 13: "The individual notion of each person
includes once and for all everything that will ever happen to
him," so that "one sees in [that notion] *a priori*
proofs of the truth of each event, that is, why one [event] has
occurred rather than another" (*LA*, 8). The debate
between Arnauld and Leibniz begins here. Proposition 13, Arnauld said
in his first letter to Leibniz, implies that "once God decided
to create Adam, everything that has happened since and will ever
happen to the human race was and is obliged to happen with a more than
fatal necessity" (*LA*, 27). For example, given
proposition 13, if Adam exists, then necessarily Adam is father of
Cain and Abel as sons, grandfather of their children,
great-grandfather of their children, etc., and everything that will
ever happen to all of them is already determined.



After a complicated three-way exchange of letters, Arnauld withdrew
his complaint in a letter dated September 28, 1686. At the outset,
Arnauld assumed that according to Leibniz whatever is contained in the
individual notion of a person is contained there as a necessary
property of the person. But in response to Arnauld, Leibniz says that
he does not "ask for more of a connection here" than that
which obtains between an individual substance and its "external
denominations" (*LA*, p. 56). Given this understanding of
the way that individual notion of a person contains everything that
will ever happen to him, Arnauld was prepared to concede that
Leibniz's position did not involve fatalism (*LA*,
63-64).



Arnauld adds that he continues to have difficulty with Leibniz's
account of "the possibility of things" and his conception
of God as choosing the actual world out of an infinity of possible
worlds, a point on which Leibniz agreed with Malebranche, and he asks
Leibniz to clarify his "hypothesis of concomitance or agreement
between substances," and his statement that if a material thing
is not merely an appearance, like a rainbow, or an accidental
aggregation of parts, like a pile of stones, it must have a
"substantial form." Leibniz had mentioned both of these
points in his immediately preceding letter (*LA*, 64-66,
58). According to the hypothesis of concomitance no created substance
ever acts upon any other created substance. But every later state of
any given created substance is caused by an earlier state of the same
substance, and the histories of the individuals are coordinated by God
so that they fit together into the history of the actual world.
Leibniz also says that one substance, *x*, may
"express" another substance, *y*, more distinctly
than *y* expresses *x*, and in that case, one may say
that *x* causes changes to occur in *y*. He uses this
position to explain the relation of mind and body. Arnauld asked him
to explain his view further by applying it to the example of a man who
feels pain when his arm is wounded, and the example of a man wants to
take off his hat and raises his arm. Arnauld also raises seven
objections to Leibniz's claims about substantial forms
(*LA*, 66-67) and defends the Cartesian view that
extension is the real nature of matter, which he takes to imply that
bodies have only varying degrees of "improper unity"
(*LA*, 88).



Leibniz provided the further clarification Arnauld requested in
several long letters, which drew two replies from Arnauld. Arnauld
continued to find Leibniz's position unclear. "I have no
clear notion," says Arnauld,



> 
> of what you mean by the word 'expression', when you say
> that our soul expresses more distinctly (all other things being equal)
> what pertains to its body, since it is an expression even of the whole
> universe in a certain sense. (*LA*, 105)
> 



He takes Leibniz's views about substantial forms to be a strange
and unsuccessful attempt "to ascribe true unity to bodies [in
particular the bodies of animals] which would not otherwise have
it" (*LA*, 107).



Arnauld's last letter to Leibniz is dated August 28, 1687.
Leibniz tried to get Arnauld to continue the discussion, but Arnauld
was fully occupied with other projects. On August 31, 1687, Arnauld
wrote to Hessen-Rheinfels, saying,



> 
> It would be preferable if [Leibniz] gave up, at least for a time, this
> sort of speculation, and applied himself to the greatest business he
> can have, the choice of the true religion... a decision that is
> of such importance for his salvation. (*LA*, 110)
> 


### 5.2 Arnauld's criticism of Leibniz's Modal Metaphysics; Arnauld's alternative



Eric Stencil has provided a general discussion of the disagreement
between Leibniz and Arnauld about Modal Metaphysics. "Modal
metaphysics," Stencil says, "is the theory of possibility,
necessity, essence and God's relation to each" (Stencil.
2016, p. 2). Arnauld attacks Leibniz's thesis that the
individual concept of each person contains once for all everything
that will ever happen to him, Leibniz's claim that there are
"purely possible" substances, and his associated view that
God creates by choosing one from a multitude of possible worlds.
Stencil argues that Arnauld's criticisms are based on a positive
view which Stencil describes as "a sophisticated essence-based
modal actualism," containing three theses: (1) Everything that
exists is actual (ontological actualism). (2) The actual world is
irreducibly modal; there is no reductive analysis of modality (modal
actualism). (3) All true *de re* counterfactuals are grounded
in the irreducibly modal essences of actually existing things
(essence-based modal actualism) (Stencil, 2016, p. 2-3). Stencil
says that Arnauld's view "could be developed into a
plausible view in its own right" and that,



> 
> when divorced from its theological motivations and with several
> important augmentations, could serve as a foundation for a plausible
> view that deserves to be considered in contemporary debates concerning
> modal metaphysics. (p. 21)
> 


## 6. Arnauld's Compatibilism



Throughout his enormously active life as a philosopher and theologian,
Arnauld was above all concerned to defend the doctrine that human
beings, after the fall of Adam, can perform meritorious actions, but
only if the actions are the result of a supernatural *grace
efficace par elle-meme*. Arnauld claimed to find this
doctrine in the writings of both Augustine and Aquinas and he defended
Jansen's version of it against the charge of heresy, even though
Jansen's version was significantly different from that espoused
by Arnauld himself. But Arnauld, like Augustine, Aquinas, and Jansen,
also held that actions are meritorious only if they are *free.*
For this reason, Arnauld is sometimes said to be a
"compatibilist." For example, Robert Sleigh says,
"It is worth noting that Leibniz and Arnauld both ascribed
compatibilism to St. Thomas and that both accepted compatibilism as
well" (Sleigh 1990, 29).



The position Arnauld defended and attributed to Augustine and Aquinas
is, however, quite different from what is nowadays referred to as
"compatibilism." The position is connected with
Arnauld's treatment of free will during the last decade of his
life, at the time when he was wrestling with Malebranche's
theory of nature and grace. At that time, Arnauld developd the
position that the human will is free when and only when it is a
"*potestas* ou *facultas ad opposita*." But
first, it is necessary to provide some background for the notion of
*grace efficace par elle-meme*.


### 6.1 The *Congregationes de Auxiliis* and seventeenth-century controversy about grace



The point of departure for the disputes about grace and free will in
seventeenth-century Europe was the inconclusive ending of the
*Congregationes de Auxiliis* *Divinae
 Gratiae*.[31]
 These were *ad hoc* committees of Cardinals convoked to
resolve a dispute between the Jesuits and Dominicans about grace,
predestination, and free will. The dispute was concerned with a work
by the Jesuit Luis de Molina, whose lengthy title indicates the scope
and complexity of the dispute: *Concordia* *Liberi Arbitrii
cum Gratia Donis, Divina Praescientia, Providentia, Praedestinatione
et Reprobatione ad Nonnullos Primae Partis Divi Thomae Articulos*
(*The Agreement of Free will with the Gift of Grace, Divine
Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination and Reprobation, according
to several articles in the First Part of St. Thomas*). The work
was published in 1588 and was immediately attacked by the Dominican
school of Salamanca, led by Domingo Banez. The
*Congregationes* were convoked by Pope Clement VIII with the
aim of resolving what had become a widespread struggle between the two
orders. His hope was frustrated; the meetings began on January 2, 1598
and were terminated on August 28, 1607 (the feast day of St.
Augustine!) by Pope Paul V, who declared that neither side was
heretical and that both sides had merit.



A central question at the meetings of the *Congregationes* had
to do with the relation of supernatural grace to free, meritorious
acts of will. It was assumed on both sides that a human being cannot
perform a meritorious act of will without supernatural assistance from
God, that God sometimes gives such assistance, and that it is
sometimes part of God's providential plan that the recipient
freely cooperate and thus perform the act in question. Meritorious
acts of will include, among others, the decision to pray, to seek
forgiveness for past sins, and to perform a good action for the love
of God. It was assumed by both Jesuits and Dominicans that God's
providential plan is infallibly realized. Hence both sides agreed that
supernatural grace is, in at least some cases, infallibly
*efficacious* (Vansteenberghe 1928, #2140). The issue was
whether the supernatural grace in question is efficacious *by
itself*, in other words, *intrinsically* efficacious, or
whether it is efficacious only by virtue of the independent, divinely
foreknown cooperation of the one who receives the grace
(Vansteenberghe 1928, #2154-65). Several sorts of supernatural
grace were distinguished. For our purposes, the most important
distinctions are (a) between habitual grace (especially the
theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity) and actual grace; (b)
between external actual grace (e.g., hearing a good sermon) and
internal actual grace (grace consisting in internal, mental acts); and
(c) between internal actual grace of the intellect and internal actual
grace of the will. The question was whether the actual grace of the
will that infallibly produces a meritorious act of will is efficacious
by itself, or whether instead its efficaciousness is explained in part
by God's knowledge that the recipient would cooperate with the
grace.


### 6.2 Banez, Jansen, and Arnauld on the nature of efficacious actual grace of the will



Jansen and Arnauld, like Banez, defended the position that
actual grace of the will is sometimes intrinsically
 efficacious.[32]
 But they disagreed about the nature of such grace. According to
Banez, efficacious grace is the supernatural counterpart of
"physical premotion." The elusive notion of physical
premotion is part of a general account of God's causation of the
actions of creatures. According to this account, God is a cause of a
creature's action by bringing about in the creature a
"premotion" that results in the creature's carrying
out the action in question. For Banez, then, the actual grace
in question is a sort of supernatural beginning of volition that is
produced in the human being by God and that infallibly results in a
meritorious act of will. Jansen rejected this notion, arguing that it
is an obscure hypothesis that explains nothing. He held that
efficacious grace is, instead, a feeling of love, which he called a
"*delectatio victrix* (victorious pleasure)" and
which infallibly leads to a meritorious act.



Arnauld accepted neither of those views. In a work published in 1656,
he considers two positions on the nature of efficacious grace, in so
far as it is the principle of good will: "Some say that such
grace consists in the mercy of God and in an inherent form [in the
creature]," while others say that it consists "only in the
mercy of God, which brings about (*operatur*) the interior
movement of the mind." Arnauld says "I am not far"
from the second position, which he attributes to "Bradwardine,
Estius, Tiphanius, and many other [Thomists]" (*Dissertatio
theologica quadripartita*, *OA*, 20:237).



When Arnauld returned to questions about efficacious grace and free
will toward the end of his life, he was more categorical:



> 
> The true opinion of St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and St. Thomas
> concerning actual grace, is that of Estius, who posits nothing created
> by God in the will in between the will of God, which he calls
> uncreated grace, and the free movement of the human will which the
> uncreated grace produces in the human will.
> 



Jansen was "surely mistaken," Arnauld adds, when he
defined actual grace as a non-deliberate "victorious
pleasure" (Letter to du Vaucel, 8 May 1693, *OA*,
 3:636).[33]
 In a short treatise on human freedom written almost a decade earlier,
Arnauld illustrates his criticism of Jansen (without mentioning him by
name) with an example: "Suppose that a man who is not very
generous is approached by a beggar who asks him for alms. He
deliberates, proposes to himself the commandment of Christ, and gives
alms for the sake of God" (*De la liberte de
l'homme*, *OA*, 10:620, hereinafter
*Liberte*). Jansen assumes that there is a
non-deliberate act of victorious pleasure in between the man's
deliberation and his decision to give alms for the sake of God, and
that this non-deliberate pleasure is the actual grace that enables him
to act in a meritorious way. Arnauld rejects this position and instead
identifies the efficacious grace with God's merciful will that
the man arrive at the deliberate decision to give alms for the sake of
God.



Yet Arnauld also assumed that the man's decision, like any
meritorious act of will, was free. Arnauld's basic position on
the compatibility of the intrinsic efficacy of grace with the freedom
of the volitions produced by the grace, is that we know from Scripture
and Tradition, supported by philosophical reflection on God's
omnipotence (a) that the grace of Christ is intrinsically efficacious;
and we know "from our own experience" (b) that our
volitions of the relevant kind are free. Hence we know that (a) and
(b) are consistent, even though we have "great difficulty"
in seeing how they fit together (*OA*, 10:436).


### 6.3 The limits of Arnauld's compatibilism



Arnauld was, then, a compatibilist of sorts. The compatibilism he
espoused and attributed to Aquinas, however, was limited, and differs
in a number ways from the sort of position philosophers now label
"compatibilism."



1. Arnauld was not a determinist, nor did he attribute determinism to
St. Thomas. Arnauld cites Aquinas (*Summa Theologicae* I, 19,
3) as an authority in favor of his own view that God's will with
regard to creatures is not necessary (*OA*, 39:598).



2. Arnauld held that freedom of human volitions is
*incompatible* with the determination of the choices by laws of
nature together with temporally antecedent events. Thus he responds to
Malebranche's statement that the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans some seventy years after the death of Jesus was "a
necessary outcome of the laws of nature," by saying, "It
is clear ... that a long series of diverse events, that depended
on an infinity of free movements of the wills of men, could have been,
and indeed were, regulated by the providence of Him who has an
almighty power to move the hearts of men, and to direct them as He
pleases ... But it cannot be said that *it was a necessary
consequence of the laws of nature* without degrading human beings,
making them act like lower animals, and depriving them of their
liberty, a position that has been declared *anathema* by the
Council of Trent" (*OA*, 39:301). He repeats the
criticism a few pages later:



> 
> As I have shown above, to hold that events that depended on an
> infinity of free volitions of human beings *were a necessary
> consequence of laws of nature* is to deprive human beings of their
> freedom, after the example of Wycliffe. (*OA*,
>  39:316).[34]
> 



3. According to the position Arnauld attributes to Aquinas, the
*sinful* choices of human beings are not determined by any
cause exterior to the sinner. Arnauld agreed with Aquinas that God is
the sole exterior cause of the volitions of a human being, that is,
the only efficient cause of volitions outside the human being himself
or herself, but God never causes a person to sin. Arnauld cites
*Summa Theologiae*, I-IIae, 9, 6, ad 3, in which Aquinas
answers the objection that God cannot be the sole exterior cause of
sinful choices. Aquinas says,



> 
> God, as the universal mover, moves the will of man to the universal
> object of the will, which is the good. And without this universal
> movement man cannot will anything; but man through reason determines
> himself to will this or that, whether it be a true or only an apparent
> good. Nevertheless God sometimes moves some men especially to will
> something determinate that is good (*interdum movet Deus
> specialiter aliquos ad aliquid determinate volendum quod est
> bonum)*, as in those He moves by grace. (*Vera S. Thomae de
> gratia sufficiente et efficaci doctrina dilucide explanata*,
> *OA*,
>  20:63).[35]
> 



Arnauld's purpose in citing this text is to show that, according
to Aquinas, when one sins, one is not moved by
 grace.[36]
 But the text, together with the premise that there is no exterior
cause of human volition other than God, implies that sinful choices
are not determined by any cause outside the sinner.


### 6.4 Arnauld's late position on the nature of free will



In several letters toward the end of his life, Arnauld recommends a
"little Latin text" on human freedom that he wrote at the
time he was wrestling with Malebranche's theory of nature and
grace, saying that it is particularly helpful in connection with the
problem of reconciling intrinsically efficacious grace with freedom of
 will.[37]
 The core of Arnauld's new theory is that the human soul has
freedom of will with respect to a true or apparent good when it has
the power to will that good and the power not to will it. In such
cases, the soul "determines itself" to will or not will
the good in question. The human soul is said to have this power with
respect to any particular good it apprehends, as long as the
particular good does not encompass all the good toward which the will
tends. Arnauld cites I-IIae, 13, 6 as part of the Thomistic origin of
his theory:



> 
> Man does not choose of necessity. And this is because that which is
> possible not to be, is not of necessity.... For man can will and
> not will, act and not act; again, he can will this or that, and do
> this or that. The reason of this is seated in the very power of the
> reason. For the will can tend to whatever the reason can apprehend as
> good. Now the reason can apprehend as good, not only this, viz.
> "to will" or "to act," but also this, viz.
> "not to will" or "not to act." Again, in all
> particular goods, the reason can consider an aspect of some good, and
> the lack of some good, which has the aspect of evil: and in this
> respect, it can apprehend any single one of such goods as to be chosen
> or to be avoided. The perfect good alone, which is happiness, cannot
> be apprehended by the reason as an evil, or as lacking in any way.
> Consequently man wills happiness of necessity, nor can he will not to
> be happy, or to be unhappy... Therefore man chooses not of
> necessity, but freely. (cited at *OA*, 10:630-31)
> 



Arnauld follows Aquinas in saying that the will is not free with
regard to two objects, first, happiness, apprehended as the ultimate
object of volition, and, second, God, seen face to face by the blessed
in heaven. In these two cases, one wills (or loves) the object with
"necessity of nature," and hence not freely. In all other
cases, the will is free, and when one wills, one does so
 freely.[38]
 Arnauld provides a compact formula for this theory: "The best
and shortest notion one can have of free will is to say with St.
Thomas that it is a *potestas ou facultas ad opposita*"
(Letter to Bossuet, juillet 1693, *OA*,
 3:662).[39]


### 6.5 The advantages Arnauld claims for his new theory over Jansen's theory



Arnauld claims a number of advantages for his theory of free will over
that of Jansen. In particular, he claims that, when combined with the
account of the nature of grace that he found in Estius, it makes it
easier to reconcile the intrinsic efficacy of grace with freedom.



> 
> In following [Estius's opinion regarding efficacious grace], it
> is much easier to explain the efficacy of the grace, and to reconcile
> it with freedom, especially when we define free will, following St.
> Thomas, as a *facultas ad opposita*. (Letter to Bossuet,
> juillet 1694, *OA*, 3:664).
> 



Explaining the efficacy of grace is easier on Estius's theory
than on the competing theories, because it is simpler. On the
competing theories, which include Jansen's, the efficacy of
actual grace of the will depends on a connection of some sort, within
the mind of a creature, between a created grace, like Jansen's
"victorious pleasure," and a meritorious choice.
Estius's theory is simpler: The efficacy of actual grace is a
direct consequence of the general principle that God's absolute
will is infallibly realized.



But how does Estius's theory, combined with the account of free
will that Arnauld derived from St. Thomas, help to reconcile the
efficacy of grace with free will? According to Jansen, freedom of will
is the same as spontaneity, and so every act of will is essentially
free. Jansen qualifies that position by adding that during life here
on earth, human beings have another kind of freedom:



> 
> The freedom of man the pilgrim is not only exempt from constraint, but
> even from immutable voluntary necessity (*necessitatis
> immutabilis* voluntariae), that it, this freedom is indifferent
> between doing good and doing evil, between acting and not acting.
> (Quoted by Arnauld in *Seconde Apologie*, *OA*, 17:242).
> 



When he says that the will is indifferent as between doing good and
doing evil, and between acting or not acting, during this life here
below, Jansen means that during life on Earth, the will remains
mutable or "flexible" between doing good and doing evil,
and again, willing or not willing any particular action or end. In
other words, the will is not confirmed in good or evil during this
life in such a way that it could not fall away from willing the good
or be converted from willing what is evil, and again in such a way
that it could not cease willing what it does will or begin willing
what it does not will.



Now on theories like those of Jansen and Banez, the intrinsic
efficacy of grace involves the determination of a person's
volition by an antecedent state of his or her mind, and this seems to
conflict with the proposition that the volition is free. On
Estius's view, on the other hand, a person's meritorious
volition is determined not by an antecedent state of his or her mind,
but rather by the will of God. Is this an improvement, with respect to
explaining the compatibility of efficacious grace with free will?
Arnauld says it is, "especially when we define free will,
following St. Thomas, as a *facultas ad opposita*."



Here Arnauld appeals to the Thomistic principle that when God causes a
creature to act, He always causes the creature to act in accordance
with its nature. Paraphrasing Aquinas (*Summa Theologiae*, I,
82, 1, ad 3), Arnauld says,



> 
> When God works our volition in us, He brings it about that we will in
> conformity with our nature, that is by determining ourselves to what
> we are not determined by nature. Thus no matter with what efficacy the
> mind is moved by God, it acts as master of its very own action, and it
> wills because it wills, determining itself to all other things by its
> volition to be happy, and hence it acts freely
> (*Liberte*, *OA*,
>  10:616).[40]
> 



Arnauld's line of thought seems to be as follows: Human beings
are attracted to limited goods only as means to the unlimited good of
happiness. Therefore, whenever a human being is attracted to a limited
good, he or she can attend to its goodness and will it, or attend to
some way in which it falls short of the unlimited good and refrain
from willing it. Which of these options is realized is determined by
the human being, or more precisely, the human being's mind;
thus, in willing or not willing any limited good, the human mind is
self-determining and free. All this is part of the nature of the human
mind. So if God moves the human mind to will a limited good, He moves
it to will in a self-determining and free way.



If pressed for more details about how God by His merciful will
(uncreated grace) moves a human being to will a particular good, while
yet leaving it up to the human being whether he or she wills that
good, Arnauld would surely say that we human beings cannot understand
God's causality well enough to supply such details. Our
inability to understand God's causality with regard to the
created world is a common theme in Arnauld. It is expressed forcefully
in his first contribution to the Leibniz-Arnauld exchange, written in
1686, not long after *Liberte*. Arnauld says that
although we are certain that God, "by a single and very simple
act, which is His essence," knows all things, including things
that might not have been, and wills things that He might not have
willed by His will, which is also His essence, nevertheless we cannot
understand *how* God does these things, because "as far
as we are concerned (*a notre egard*) God dwells
in inaccessible light" (*LA*, p.
 31-32).[41]



Before presenting the above theory of free will in
*Liberte*, Arnauld prepares the ground by presenting two
examples in which a person's volition occurs
"infallibly" and yet freely, in the sense of freedom
"that is necessary and sufficient for merit or demerit"
(*Liberte*, *OA*, 10:620). The examples are
preceded by the statement,



> 
> However infallible be the determination by which the will is
> determined with the attention of reason, to objects to which it is not
> naturally determined, freedom suffers no damage
> (*prejudice*); because the infallible determination does
> not prevent the soul from willing because it wills; and hence it is
> master of its action (*Liberte*, *OA*,
> 10:615-16).
> 



The first example is that of a prince who is in love with a woman and
has "a vehement passion for the pleasures of the flesh."
If the woman offers herself to the prince, "he will infallibly
satisfy his passion." The second example is that of a cruel and
revengeful king, who has been offended by one of his subjects and has
the subject in his power: "Infallibly he will destroy
 him."[42]
 Everyone who is not "entirely barbarian," says Arnauld,
will agree that the prince and the king have acted demeritoriously and
deserve punishment. Thus all such people agree that the king and the
prince acted in a relevantly free way.



One might take these passages to suggest that the freedom necessary
and sufficient for merit and demerit is compatible with determination
of the will by psychological causes. But this misses Arnauld's
point, and is an unlikely interpretation. To begin with, Arnauld
surely realized that it was not impossible for the lascivious prince
or the cruel king act otherwise than in the way described; people do
sometimes act out of character. Furthermore, Arnauld seems to think of
infallibility, like its cousin, certainty, as a matter of degree. This
is indicated by the phrase, "However infallible be the
determination by which the will is determined with the attention of
reason ..." The certainty that the cruel king and the
lascivious prince would act in the ways indicated could have been very
high and yet they could have acted otherwise.



Arnauld's point is not that the actions of the prince and the
king are causally determined by psychological states antecedent to
their volitions. In both cases he says that the action is free because
the person could have willed not to perform the action, or again,
because the person's will was a *potestas ad opposita*.
Arnauld's point is that our certainty that the prince and the
king will act in the ways described does not lessen our certainty that
they will act freely. The same, he says, is true of our certainty that
a meritorious act will be carried out as a result of efficacious
grace, that is, as a result of God's merciful will moving a
person to that act. Arnauld claims that our certainty about the
freedom of the act produced by efficacious grace, like our certainty
about the freedom of the actions of the prince and the king, is well
grounded because in all of these cases, the person had the power to
refrain from the act in question; in all of these cases, the
person's will is a *facultas ad
 opposita*.[43]



There is, of course, an important difference between examples like
those of the prince and the king, and example of an action to which
one is moved by efficacious grace. In examples of the former sort, the
action occurs only with very great, but not absolute, certainty,
whereas in the case of efficacious grace, the action follows with
absolute certainty upon God's intention that it take place. This
difference may seem to damage Arnauld's case: One can plausibly
say that it was within the power of the prince, for example, not to
will to satisfy his lust, precisely because it was not absolutely
certain that, in the given circumstances, he would do so. But no
similar claim can be made about the person whom God moves, by
efficacious grace, to elicit a meritorious volition. Yet Arnauld
insists that in the latter case also, it is within the power of the
person not to elicit the volition. It is at this point that
Arnauld's views about the mysteriousness of divine causality
come into play. Our inability to understand how God moves a person to
a meritorious volition, while leaving it within the person's
power not to elicit the volition, thus moving the person to will in a
self-determining way, is not, in Arnauld's view, surprising, for
we are unable, in general, to understand how God produces effects
outside of Himself.



Arnauld's work between 1682 and 1694 is a testament to his
intellectual vitality. It is remarkable that he was hard at work,
until his death at the age of 82, on a set of connected controversies
and issues, both philosophical and theological, having to do with
creation, grace, and free will. Though he did not construct a
philosophical system, he stands out in a century of geniuses for the
vigorous and penetrating way in which he dealt with many of the
important philosophers and philosophical problems of the time.