Malebranche, Locke, Vico: momenti della riflessione sulla ragione universale

First of all, this article examines the conception of Malebranche according to which man is the “animal Rationis particeps” and his arguments to demonstrate the necessity of a universal Reason: it looks at the objectivity of mathematical truths and basic principles of ethics (it considers, in particular, the 10th Elucidation on The Search after Truth, 1678). Secondly, this article analyses Locke’s text An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things in God (1695, published posthumously, 1706), in particular the paragraphs in which the English philosopher calls into question the Malebranchean theory of universal Reason by affirming the necessity to distinguish our understanding from God’s understanding and stating that man does not apprehend anything through God’s understanding, neither can he share His Knowledge. But the article also examines the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), in which Locke affirms that reason is a natural revelation by means of which God communicates to man that portion of truth which is appropriate to his faculties. Finally, it concentrates on Giambattista Vico’s On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language (1710), in which the Italian philosopher thematizes the conception according to which man is a being that participates in reason but is not the master thereof; moreover it also considers the Vichian criticism of, and debt towards, Malebranche and the role of universal Reason in the Universal Right (1720-1722) and New Science (third edition, 1744). In this way, this article would like to stress three different perspectives – which are not in total contrast with each other – on the old question of the existence of a universal Reason constituting the rational skeleton or texture of the world, a principle of a universal order.