Chamberlain, Colin;
(2025)
How To Eat a Peach: Malebranche on the Function of the Passions.
Mind
10.1093/mind/fzaf011.
(In press).
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Abstract
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) holds that the senses, imagination, and passions serve the body’s needs. In this paper, I explain how the passions keep us alive by situating them in Malebranche’s account of ordinary bodily action. Malebranche holds a consent-based view of action. An agent translates her inclinations or motives into action only when she consents to them. The passions contribute to the preservation of life by helping the agent close the gap between inclination and action. The passions, according to Malebranche, are complex psychophysiological phenomena whose various elements—perceptions, shifts of attention, evaluations, bodily preparation, feelings, and so on—work together to elicit the agent’s consent.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | How To Eat a Peach: Malebranche on the Function of the Passions |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/mind/fzaf011 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzaf011 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10212004 |
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