16/02/2026: Colin Chamberlain: After the Fall: Malebranche on the Law of the Body

About

Colin Chamberlain is Associate Professor of philosophy at University College London. He was previously an Associate Professor at Temple University. He is currently working on a book about Nicolas Malebranche’s account of the embodied mind, as well as working on Margaret Cavendish’s views about colour and perception.

Abstract

Malebranche holds that the Fall changes the mind’s relationship to the body from union to dependence. This change transforms the significance the senses have for the mind. Before the Fall, the senses respectfully advised the mind of the body’s needs. After, the senses command and tyrannize it. That is, the senses come to speak with the force of law when they urge the mind to care for the body’s needs. In general, Malebranche holds that a perception—a mental representation that things are thus and so—becomes a command for the mind, obliging it to consent, when the perception is enforced by inner sanctions. A perception has the force of law when the mind feels pain in withholding consent, pleasure when giving it. I argue that, after the Fall, the senses command in just this way. Sensory perceptions are accompanied by inner sanctions—pleasure and pain, reward and punishment—that imbue them with obligatory force.