Occasionalism

OCCASIONALISM. - A philosophical current that develops Cartesian philosophy, resolving its dualism (v.) by attributing efficient causality to God alone, and to finite beings a purely "occasional" causality.

To Descartes' successors there presented itself the grave problem of justifying and explaining the relation between two substances (the res cogitans and the res extensa) that are not merely distinct but wholly heterogeneous one to the other, since extension is subject to a rigorous mechanical causality and thought is such as to subsist of itself, independently of the corporeal world. Descartes had limited himself to accepting the correspondence between physical and psychic events empirically; his successors found themselves committed by the need to confer upon it a philosophical foundation. Hobbes (v.), Spinoza (v.) and Leibniz (v.) resolve the dualism respectively into a naturalistic mechanism, an absolute monism and a spiritualistic pluralism, thereby departing from the ambit of Cartesianism. The occasionalists, by contrast, strove to resolve the problem in a metaphysical-religious sense, holding firm to, indeed accentuating, the Cartesian distinction of substances. In the work Corporis et animae in homine coniunctio by J. Clauberg (v.) every direct connection between body and soul is denied; since, according to the Platonic tradition, ideas are more perfect than things and the cause cannot be inferior to the effect, the motions of the body are, according to the Stoic terminology used by Clauberg, causae procatarcticae, inasmuch as they give only an "occasion" for the manifestation of the ideas, which the spirit always has within itself virtually. L. de la Forge (v.) denies not only the possibility of a reciprocal influence between soul and body, but the action of one body upon another, noting how the clear and distinct idea of corporeality, that is, according to Cartesian doctrine, of extension, does not imply the property of motive force; the movements of a body and the volitions of an individual spirit are causae occasionales of other movements only because the principal motive cause, God, acts upon bodies according to the laws of motion and seconds the wills of spirits, within the limits of the freedom He has granted them. Analogously for G. de Cordemoy (v.) the relation of cause and effect does not necessarily belong to the nature of finite substances, while all of them depend on the free divine causality.

The first doctrinal formulation of occasionalism is owed to A. Geulincx (v.); like Descartes he begins from self-consciousness, noting how it does not imply knowledge of the manner in which the thinking I can determine the movements of its own body or act upon external bodies, nor of the manner in which representations independent of the human will are formed in the mind. On the basis of the principle that one cannot act unless one has clear consciousness of one's own action ("quod nescis quomodo fiat, id non facis"), he concludes that man is only a spectator, not an actor of those manifestations whose origin he does not clearly know. It is therefore necessary to attribute their cause to another spiritual substance (the influxus physicus being excluded) endowed with a conscious will; this can be none other than God: bodies thus become the instruments of divine causality. At first Geulincx admitted, with the majority of the occasionalists, that God intervened with a series of distinct acts to determine the individual relations between spiritual substance and corporeal substance. But, faced with the difficulties that arose from this position, in particular with regard to sin, which cannot be referred to a direct and specific intervention of God, Geulincx attributed the coincidence of physical facts with psychic ones to the preordaining wisdom of God, resorting to the well-known comparison of the two clocks, which function in perfect synchrony, without being in a reciprocal causal relation, but by an accord of their own, initially conferred by the craftsman. By removing every faculty of action from individual corporeal and spiritual beings, Geulincx tends to deny also their substantiality, considering bodies as modes of a single extended substance and spirits as modes of the divine Spirit. Occasionalism thus assumes a decidedly mystical character, and this appears especially evident in the ethics of A. Geulincx: the greatest virtue is considered to be humility, which is reached through knowledge of oneself ("inspectio et despectio sui"); the moral life is pure interiority, full dedication to God, since every relation with the external world is illusory and devoid of value ("ubi nil vales, ibi nil velis"). As regards knowledge, Geulincx criticizes the epistemology of Aristotelian-Scholastic realism, affirming that things as they are in themselves remain unknowable to men. The occasionalist epistemology is deepened by the greatest representative of occasionalism, N. Malebranche (v.), in his principal work De la recherche de la vérité (1675). Malebranche too accentuates the Cartesian dualism, denying the possibility of a reciprocal influence between spiritual and corporeal beings, indeed any form whatsoever of autonomous activity in finite beings; God acts directly upon them, without availing Himself of any instrument. On these bases the problem of knowledge is set forth. True knowledge consists in the clear perception of ideas by the intellect, independently of sensations and passions, which are the principal sources of error. The fundamental problem therefore concerns the origin of ideas; they cannot come from external objects, because of the incommunicability between spirit and matter, nor be produced by the soul, which is devoid of creativity, nor be innate, since the finite spirit could not contain their infinity. They can therefore be conceived only as present in God, and knowledge is rendered possible only by a direct relation of participation with the divine mind. As finite bodies are in space, so finite spirits are in God, who is "the place of spirits." There is therefore no inclination or aspiration of the human soul that is not, in the last analysis, love of God, even if through an error of the senses and an arbitrariness of the will it is misunderstood. Malebranche indeed admits freedom in man, but as a mystery. Even the knowledge of God and self-consciousness (in contrast with Cartesian rationalism) have a mystical character: of God one cannot have a clear and distinct idea, although God is the first object of thought; self-consciousness (v.) has an intuitive value and coincides with the consciousness of participation in the Divinity. Only knowledge of the physico-mathematical type is purely rational, referring to the clear and distinct idea of extension, but it is possible only because God acts in the physical world following the simplest ways, according to universal laws, which remain constant with the variation of natural (occasional) causes. Rational speculation therefore still coincides with the religious life.

Numerous Cartesians became followers of Malebranche's occasionalism; among these: F. Lamy, Benedictine monk; R. Fedè, mathematician and physicist; the Jesuit father P. André, a disciple of Malebranche and a strenuous defender of his doctrine; in Italy M. Fardella. Occasionalism aroused grave polemics in the philosophical and religious circles of the time. Above all the Cartesians of Port-Royal opposed the doctrines of Malebranche, who had to sustain a long dispute with Arnauld (v.) concerning the Traité de la nature et de la grâce.

M. Elena Reina