Título breve del escenario de exposición: (Ref.: 5) Uso en agentes limpiadores, Uso industrial

extension? Isn't the obscurity thus introduced going to be extended to other ideas and even affect the idea of the body? Can we accommodate obscurity?

Since pain, color and other such things are known obscurely and confus- edly only when we erroneously consider them as existing outside our soul, it follows that ideas about these sensible qualities are obscure and confused only when we relate them to bodies, as if they were modifications of bodies. And therefore we cannot reasonably conclude anything from their obscurity contrasted with the clarity of the idea of the soul, and this would cause us, rather, to doubt the clarity of the idea of extension.16

Besides, Arnauld is wrong in seeing nothing but a complete inconsis- tency in this theory; Malebranche actually tried to make the theory of a con- sciousness of self obscure but legitimate. I can construct a "pseudo-idea" of the soul based on the idea of extension: (a) a contrario, by exclusion, by separating from the soul anything relating to space; (b) by analogy, because I can extend certain properties of extension to every created being—and therefore to the soul, the soul having been created by God just as bodies were. However, it is not a question of true knowledge. Ultimately the soul will remain undetermined, and the idea we have of it will remain a half- thought. This situation brings to our attention the difficulties of language in general, especially the difficulties of the natural language of emotions, of these "natural signs" which assure their "contagious communication." Male- branche uses—mutatis mutandis—a. similar procedure to construct his theory of the soul:

It should be noted that these comparisons between mind and matter are not entirely appropriate, and that I compare them only to make the mind more attentive, and, as it were, to illustrate my meaning to others.17

There is, in Malebranche, the deliberate intention to introduce the

unreflected into philosophy. The very fact that Descartes's Cogito was dis-

covered on a certain date, that it was late in coming, that it needs to be taught, proves that the reflecting self cannot be considered as myself. Moreover, I consider my body as a part of myself: if I had an idea of the soul, this would not be so, and I would not have to offer this body as a victim to God. "If you were to see clearly what you are," says the Word, "you could no longer be linked so closely with your body. You would no longer look upon it as a part of yourself."18 This is tantamount to saying that our bodies are

taken legitimately for us.

Malebranche deals with our natural attitude. I am naturally oriented toward the world, ignorant of myself. I know only by experience that I can think about the past; my memory is not known to me through the direct grasp of an operation. My reference to the past is not my doing. I receive it:

Consciousness of Self in Malebranche 41

certain memories are given to me. I am not then a mind which dominates and unfolds time, but a mind possessing certain powers, the nature of which it does not understand. I never know what I am worth, if I am just or unjust. Hence, there is an aspect by which I am truly given to myself, and not a principle of myself. There is no clarity for me which does not imply obscurity, and this obscurity is myself. If my soul were known by the idea of it, I would need to have a second soul to have the idea of the first. It is essential for a consciousness to be obscure to itself if it is to be faced with an illuminating idea.

Malebranche confronted the problem of passivity. We inherit powers which are not immediately ours. I record the results of an activity of which I am not a part. In Malebranche, there is not a philosophy of the mind, but a symbolic and material thought of the soul. Knowledge loses its unity in this thought. The soul is "touched" by intelligible extension. No internal rela- tionship unites it to a space which it has not constituted. There is an inevitable split in a philosophy in which there must be a detour to go from self to self and an obscure contact of the soul with itself.

Ultimately, Malebranche would come to a philosophy which would not at all be his own, to a philosophy in which it would be impossible to distin- guish the soul from the body, to a sort of simple open thought. In order to extricate himself from it, he must find the means to reestablish the rationality that does not appear in the soul, he must find a perspective from which what is obscure for us will be clear in itself. The feeling of self will be displaced in order to be situated in God.

This is what his concept of human freedom shows. In it he gives the consciousness of self greater value. The inner feeling I have of myself is suf- ficient to affirm my freedom, but insufficient to know it. Why do we not have an inner notion of freedom? This latter is nothing more than the power we have to follow or not to follow the movement which brings us to God. Now, we do not have an affective intuition of this movement. Freedom united us with God before the Fall and not since: the sinner replaces the movement toward the infinite by the uncertain possession of thousands of individual goods. To describe the human condition before the Fall, Male- branche will therefore use an artifice: starting with the establishment of an existence—in the strict sense, that is to say something opaque—he refuses to remain in irrationalism and resorts to a theological superstructure without a direct relation to our actual situation, which is fallen. However, he does not introduce sin in the way in which Kant will later introduce "rad- ical evil": human nature in itself is entirely rational. Malebranche recognizes the existence of the irrational, but projects in God the conditions of ratio- nality, the clear relationships by virtue of which nature and the human person become analyzable.

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