Occasionalism

Occasionalism (Latin occasio) is the metaphysical
theory which maintains that finite things have no
efficient causality of their own, but that whatever
happens in the world is caused by God, creatures being
merely the occasions of the Divine activity. The
occasion is that which by its presence brings about the
action of the efficient cause. This it can do as final
cause by alluring the efficiency, cause to act, or as
secondary efficient cause by impelling the primary
cause to do what would otherwise be left undone.
Occasionalism was foreshadowed in Greek philosophy in
the doctrine of the Stoics who regarded God as
pervading nature and determining the actions of all
beings through the fundamental instinct of self-
preservation. It appeared openly in the Arabian thought
of the Middle Ages (cf. Stein, II, 193-245 infra); but
its full development is found only in modern
philosophy, as an outgrowth of the Cartesian doctrine
of the relation between body and mind. According to
Descartes the essence of the soul is thought, and the
essence of the body extension. Body and soul therefore
have nothing in common. How then do they interact?
Descartes himself tried to solve this problem by
attributing to the soul the power of directing the
movements of the body. But this idea conflicted with
the doctrine involved in his denial of any immediate
interaction between body and mind. The first step
toward a solution was taken by Johannes Clauberg (1625-
65). According to him all the phenomena of the outside
world are modes of motion and are caused by God. When
therefore the mind seems to have acted upon the outside
world, it is a pure delusion. The soul, however, can
cause its own mental processes, which have nothing in
common with matter and its modes of action. Matter, on
the other hand, cannot act upon mind. The presence of
certain changes in the bodily organism is the occasion
whereupon the soul produces the corresponding ideas at
this particular time rather than any other. To the soul
Clauberg also attributes the power of influencing by
means of the will the movements of the body. The
Occasionalism of Clauberg is different from that of
later members of the school; with him the soul is the
cause which is occasioned to act-with the others it is
God.

Louis de la Forge (Tractatus de mente humana, 1666) is
regarded by some as the real father of Occasionalism.
His starting point was the problem of the relation
between energy and matter. Following the Cartesian
method, he argued that what cannot be clearly and
distinctly conceived cannot be held as true. We can
form no clear idea of the attraction exerted by one
body on another at a distance nor of the energy that
moves a body from one place to another. Such an energy
must be something totally different from matter, which
is absolutely inert; the union between matter and
energy is inconceivable. Matter then, cannot be the
cause of the physical phenomena; these must be produced
by God, the first, universal, and total cause of all
motion. In his theory of the union between body and
soul, de la Forge approached the later Leibnizian
doctrine of a pre-established harmony. God must have
willed and brought about the union between body and
soul, therefore He willed to do all that is necessary
to perfect this union. The union between body and mind
involves the appearance of thoughts in consciousness at
the presence of bodily activities and the sequence of
bodily movements to carry out the ideas of the mind.
God willing the union between body and mind willed also
to produce as first and universal cause, the thoughts
that should correspond to the organic movements of
sensation, and the movements which follow upon the
presence of some conscious processes. But there are
other movements for which the soul itself is
responsible as efficient cause, and these are the
effects of the spontaneous activity of our free will.

The Occasionalism of Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) is
ethical rather than cosmological in its inception. The
first tract of his "Ethics" (Land's ed. of the Opera,
The Hague, 1891-93) is a study of what he termed the
cardinal virtues. These are not prudence temperance,
justice, and fortitude. Virtue according to Geulincx is
the love of God and of Reason (III, 16-17; 29). The
cardinal virtues are the properties of virtue which
immediately flow from its very essence and have nothing
to do with anything external. These properties are
diligence, obedience, justice, humility (III, 17). The
division which Geulincx makes of humility is one of
fundamental importance in his philosophy. It divides
his view of the world into two parts-one, the
understanding of our relation to the world and the
other, the concept of our relation to God. Humility
consists in the knowledge of self and the forsaking of
self. I find in myself nothing that is my own but to
know and to will. I therefore must be conscious of all
that I do, and that of which I am not conscious is not
the product of my own causality. Hence the universal
principle of causality--quod nescis quo modo fiat, non
facis--if you do not know how a thing is done then you
do not do it. Since then, the movements of my body take
place without my knowing how the nervous impulse passes
to the muscles and there-causes them to contract I do
not cause my own bodily actions. "I am therefore a mere
spectator of this machine. In it I form naught and
renew naught, I neither make anything here nor destroy
it. Everything is the work of someone else" (III, 33) .
This one is the Deity who sees and knows all things.
The second part of Geulincx's philosophy is connected
with Occasionalism as the effect with the cause. Its
guiding principle is: Where you can do nothing there
also you should desire nothing (III, 222). This leads
to a mysticism and asceticism which however must not be
taken too seriously for it is tempered by the
obligation of caring for the body and propagating the
species.

Nicolas Malebranche (q.v.) developed Occasionalism to
its uttermost limit, approaching so near to Pantheism
that he himself remarked that the difference between
himself and Spinoza was that he taught that the
universe was in God and that Spinoza said that God was
in the universe. Starting out with the Cartesian
doctrine, that the essence of the soul is thought and
that of matter is extension, he sought to prove that
creatures have no causality of their own. Experience
seems to tell us that one body acts upon another, but
all that we know is that the movement of one body
follows upon that of another. We have no experience of
one body causing the movement of another. Therefore,
says Malebranche, one body cannot act upon another. By
a similar argument he attempts to prove that body
cannot act upon mind. Since experience can tell us only
that a sensation follows upon the stimulus, therefore
the stimulus is not the cause of the sensation.. He
uses the argument of Geulincx to prove that mind cannot
act upon body. Not only is there no interaction between
body and mind, and between one body and another, but
there is no causality within the mind itself. Our
sensations, for example, are not caused by bodies, and
are independent of ourselves. Therefore they must be
produced by some higher being. Our ideas cannot be
created by the mind. Neither can they be copied from a
present object, for one would have first to perceive
the object in order to copy it, after which the
production of an idea would be superfluous. Our ideas
cannot be all possessed as complete products from the
beginning, because it is a fact that the mind goes
through a process of gradual development. Nor can the
mind possess a faculty that produces by a sufficient
causality its own ideas because it would have to
produce also the ideas of extended bodies and extension
is excluded from the essence of the mind and therefore
from the scope of its causal efficiency. If then there
is no way of accounting for ideas and sensations either
by the efficiency of the mind itself or by that of the
outside world they must be produced by God, the
infinite. omnipresent, universal Cause. God knows all
things because He produced all things. Therefore the
ideas of all things are in God, and on account of His
most intimate union with our souls the spirit can see
what is in God.

Among the Occasionalists is also mentioned R.H. Lotze
(1817-81). His Occasionalism is really only a statement
that we are ignorant of any interaction between body
and mind, or between one material thing and another. He
is not an Occasionalist in the metaphysical sense of
the word. In estimating the value of the
Occasionalistic position we must realize that it sprang
from a twofold problem, the interaction of body and
mind and the relation of body, mind, and world to God
the first cause of all. The success of the
Occasionailist answer to the first difficulty was
dependent upon the fate of the Cartesian philosophy. If
man is composed of two absolutely distinct substances
that have nothing in common, then the conclusion of the
Occasionalists is logically necessary and there is no
interaction between body and mind. What appears to be
such must be due to the efficient causality of some
external being. This difficulty was not felt so keenly
in Scholastic philosophy because of the doctrine of
matter and form, which explains the relation of body
and soul as that of two incomplete but complementary
substances. Very soon, too, it began to lose its hold
upon modern thought. For Cartesianism led, on the one
hand, to a Monistic Spiritualism and, on the other, to
Materialism. In either case the very foundations of
Occasionalism were undermined. In its attempt to solve
the second difficulty, Occasionalism did not meet with
any particular success. From its doctrine of the
relation between body and soul it argued to what must
be the relation between God and the creature in
general. The superstructure could not stand without the
foundation.

THOMAS V. MOORE
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright �
1996 by New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver,
Colorado, USA, 80228. ([email protected])

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(www.knight.org/advent).

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