Méditation et pratique de soi chez Malebranche

Abstract

One of the major Malebranche’s assertion, that we see truth in God, is not a mere theoretical thesis. I study first the Méditations pour se disposer à l’Humilité et à la pénitence and compare them with François de Sales’ spiritual exercitations, and show that prayer, meditation and contemplation constitute the practical frameworks of this period. The text of the Méditations is an apparatus which is fit to cause an effect in its target – the self of the reader : the vision in God. The practical a priori of the meditation provides the text with prescriptive power to transform the self. Then I study the Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiquesi-iv : we see that Malebranche set his textual apparatus so that it prescribes its receiver a form of « work-on-one’s-self ». The self is here produced by the organisation of relationship between attentive vision and lighting action, and this structure is built in the self by a movement, induced by the text, which leads the self from the initial position of an « I » to the divine position of the « you ».

Keywords

• practical a priori
• relation to oneself
• text
• vision in god
• Malebranche
• Descartes