Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Treatise on Morality
Malebranche's 1684 rationalist-Augustinian ethical treatise
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Treatise on Morality (Mid) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Treatise on Morality
1684 publication; mid-mature Malebranche; ten years after Recherche de la vérité; thirty years before Malebranche's death.
Space
Treatise on Morality
Composed in Paris at the Oratory; published Rotterdam (because of the censorship climate around Malebranche's Augustinian-grace doctrines); subsequent transnational reception.
Matter
Treatise on Morality
The objective Order of Perfections eternally constituted in God, the rationally-ascertainable structure of right action, the particular duties toward God, neighbour, family, political community, and self.
Observer
Treatise on Morality
Mid-mature Malebranche as Oratorian-priest-philosopher synthesising Cartesian-rationalist epistemology, Augustinian-grace theology, and rationalist-Catholic ethics.
Energy
Treatise on Morality
Rationalist-systematic, theologically-Augustinian, ethically-prescriptive energies.
Information
Treatise on Morality
Systematic French treatise in two books; combines metaphysical-foundation argument, ethical-prescriptive content, and theological-Augustinian framing; aimed at educated French Catholic philosophical-readership.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Treatise on Morality is the principal Malebranchean contribution to moral philosophy and decisively shaped subsequent French Catholic and Cartesian moral thought. Malebranche's ethical-rationalism stood at the centre of seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century debates between Augustinian, Jesuit, and Reformed accounts of grace and ethics, and influenced the broader Enlightenment moral-philosophy programmes that followed.