Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) holds that the senses, imagination, and passions serve the body’s needs. In this paper, I explain how the passions keep us alive by situating them in Malebranche’s account of ordinary bodily action. Malebranche holds a consent-based view of action. An agent translates her inclinations or motives into action only when she consents to them. The passions contribute to the preservation of life by helping the agent close the gap between inclination and action. The passions, according to Malebranche, are complex psychophysiological phenomena whose various elements—perceptions, shifts of attention, evaluations, bodily preparation, feelings, and so on—work together to elicit the agent’s consent.

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如何吃桃子：Malebranche 论激情的功能

尼古拉斯·马勒布兰奇 （1638-1715） 认为感官、想象力和激情服务于身体的需要。在本文中，我通过将激情置于 Malebranche 对普通身体行为的描述中，解释了激情如何让我们保持活力。Malebranche 持有基于同意的行动观。代理人只有在她同意的情况下才会将她的倾向或动机转化为行动。激情通过帮助代理人缩小倾向和行动之间的差距，为保护生命做出贡献。根据 Malebranche 的说法，激情是复杂的心理生理现象，其各种元素——感知、注意力转移、评估、身体准备、感受等——共同作用以引起主体的同意。