Force de loi. The Debate on the Laws of Nature and Malebranche’s Occasionalism

In line with the spirit of the new science, Malebranche stated that God acts through general laws, which are the instruments of His general will. Nevertheless, the meaning and nature of this kind of action is far from clear, as attested by the disagreement among scholars: does God’s general will contain particular volitions or not? The essay addresses this question and, more generally, Malebranche’s conception of law, through a historical reconstruction of the Scholastic, and late Scholastic, debate on the definition of the law of nature. From this survey, Malebranche’s occasionalism will appear as the key to recovering a univocal definition of law, which can also be applied to the universe.