An Utterly Dark Spot by Bozovic Miran; Zizek Slavoj;

Author:Bozovic, Miran; Zizek, Slavoj;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

FIVE

OCCASIONALISM

AND MADNESS

L'ANGOISSE MÉTAPHYSIQUE

According to Malebranche, ideas and sensations are not caused in our minds by bodies or sensible objects themselves, but rather by God, who in the presence of bodies affects our minds with the ideas of these bodies.1 When we look at a body, God affects our minds by means of the idea of this body and modifies them with a sensation of color. In looking at a material body, what we immediately see is an “intelligible body” or an “ideal body,” whereas the material body itself is incapable of acting upon the mind and is therefore invisible and insensible. That which is immediately accessible to the mind, that is, what we immediately see and sense, is simply the idea of the body that is in God, and not its ideatum in the external world. There is “an infinite difference”2 separating the bodies that we immediately see, that is, the ideas of the bodies or intelligible bodies, from the bodies we look at, that is material bodies.

The same applies to our own bodies, that is, to the material bodies we animate. Malebranche states that “le corps materiel que nous animons n'est pas celui que nous voyons, lorsque nous le regardons, je veux dire lorsque nous tournons les yeux du corps vers lui. Le corps que nous voyons est un corps intelligible” [the material body we animate is not the one we see when we look at it, that is, when we turn the body's eyes toward it. The body we see is an intelligible body].3 Since not even the body that the mind animates can act upon this mind, when we look at or sense a part of our body, for example a hand, it is once again God, who by means of the idea of the hand, affects our mind and modifies it with a sensation of color or pain. In other words, what we immediately see and sense is not the material hand, but rather la main idéale, the ideal hand; that which constitutes the immediate object of our mind is itself, strictly speaking, not part of “the material body we animate,” but rather l'idée de la main, the idea of the hand that is in God. Thus, it is through the action of God's ideas upon our minds that not only do we see external bodies but also that we sense our own bodies.4

Since neither our own body nor those surrounding it in the external world can be the immediate objects of our mind; in seeing bodies we can merely judge that we see them and that these intelligible or ideal bodies, actually exist. The bodies that we see are always something that exists; they cannot be nothing, for otherwise we would see nothing which, according to Malebranche, is clearly impossible. “Voir rien & ne point voir, c'est la même chose” [ to see nothing and not to see is one and the same] ;5 'appercevoir le néant, c'est ne rien appercevoir” [to perceive nothing is not to perceive at all].

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