ABSTRACT

Letters Concerning the Love of God Mary Astell provides a philosophically substantial reason for resisting John Norris's Malebranche-inspired view that God is the sole efficient cause of our sensations. In Letters Norris reiterates his view, for which he had earlier argued in "A Discourse Concerning the Measure of Divine Love", that God deserves to be the sole object of our love, and that God is the only efficient cause of all our sensations, and thus of all our pleasures. In the absence of an occasionalist account of the purpose of bodies, Astell suggests that we may wish to consider an alternative theory of the causal role of bodies in the production of sensation to that given by occasionalism, namely, the theory of sensible congruity. Astell rejects Norris's strong occasionalist position that bodies have no powers or dispositions that could qualify them to be even partial causes of sensations. The author examines Astell's positive account of sensation.