Ideia e percepção em Malebranche

análise da teoria da cognição em "A busca da verdade"

Abstract

The present paper contextualizes the epistemological problem of perception in Nicolas Malebranche, from The Search after Truth, 1674, specifically in the second part of the third book. There he resolutely takes a stand on the following question: how are our perceptions of material things possible? The aim of the paper is to clarify Malebranche’s position, which searches to expose the logical, ontological, and epistemological conditions for perception. We follow the route: I) we clarify the question for the possibility of perception, II) expose some fundamental definitions of Malebranche’s philosophy, III) situate the problem within the authors’ epistemology, IV) follow Malebranche’s analysis of the five hypotheses (exhaustive) that answer to the problem at hand, and the counterarguments against four of them, V) follow the argument in favor of the fifth hypothesis: that we can perceive all things by seeing their ideas in God. The fifth moment is also our research’s result, that is, Malebranche excludes four of the five hypotheses, and by accepting the one (and only) remaining, he resolves the perception problem with his theory of ideas, according to which, we have perceptions of all things in God.