Treatise on Nature and Grace by Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), first published in 1680, is one of the most celebrated and controversial works of seventeenth-century philosophical theology. This major text, last translated into English in 1695, is here made available to a new generation of readers in an entirely new translation, with a substantial scholarly introduction. The central argument, that God governs the realms of nature and of grace by simple, constant, and uniform `general wills', not through `particular providence', had fundamental repercussions within the contemporary debates on the nature of divine grace and of salvation, contradicting the claims of the Calvinists and Jansenists that God wills the individual salvation of an elected few. Hailed as a work of genius by Bayle and Leibniz, the Treatise was to have a profound and far-reaching influence on the development of eighteenth-century thought through the theory of the just and justifiable `general will', which re-emerged in secular form in the work of Rousseau.
Readership: Scholars and students of seventeenth-century philosophy; historians of French and European thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; readers interested in theology or in moral and political philosophy.
"'The translation reads well ... Riley's edition is ... the first edition to be readily available in English for the best part of 300 years.' Stuart Brown, The Open University, BJHP 1993"
"'This translation, the first since 1695, has successfully retained the graceful lucidity and force of the original ... it is both close and accurate, and the decisions on the text to be used are justified ... important text ... This study must have been long pondered and carefully prepared.' Basil Hall, Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2, Oct '93"
"A most welcome piece of scholarship, and a timely reminder to the anglo-saxon world of the importance of this central, defining statement of malebranchisme in the history of modern philosphical and theological discourse ... the translation itself is engagingly limpid and precise, reflecting something of what Ginette Dreyfus called the "nudite" of the original." - British Journal for 18th Century Studies
Biographical Note A note on the text Biographical sketches 1: Introduction 2: Treatise on Nature and Grace: Excerpt of a letter 3: Notice 4: Discourse I 5: Discourse II 6: Discourse III 7: Illustration Select critical bibliography Index
