The Legitimacy Of Self-love Under The Holy Light

In Malebranche's view, the man, with the union of understanding and feeling and will, has been in the triple tensions stretched by God, soul and body.The man has natural Reason and he can communicate with God directly, because Universal Reason is God; he has his body ,therefore ,he often inclines toward the wordily happy; he is between God and object and his body aspires to the self-love. It seems that his body is usually dominated by Desire, and his soul aspires to the "Holy-Love". Apparently, our soul is dominated by understanding and inclines to be united to God. It seems that we should have a choice between the Holy-love and self-love. Generally speaking, traditional metaphysics and theology often praise the soul, but despise the body, because they believe that our blessedness has nothing with the body but closely links with the soul. The body in which the soul- reason-faith is embodied is darkened by the light of God. But this conflicts with the real life in which physical health is in harmony with spiritual joy. Facing with this conflict, Malebranche feels bewilderment. Although he adheres to the tradition in which soul is nobler than body, he changes in some sense his position and give the body a right place. In the rationalist era initiated by Descartes, science deprived the God of the power to interpret the nature. But there is the dimension of flesh- self love by which we can render a new interpretation to this era. This paper is mainly from this dimension and its relation to that of reason-enlightment to interpret Malebranche's ethics.