In his "Entretien d'un philosophe chrétien et d'un philosophe chinois" (1708), Malebranche does not put on the scene a dialogue between different cultures. He rather focuses his attention on the metaphysical and theological issues which split the world of European culture. He especially attacks the new forms of materialism, identified not in "spinozism", but in the philosophy of English authors like Hobbes and Locke. In the intellectual context of the age, however, the heated debate with some Jesuit theologians following the publication of the dialogue shows the strong tensions which contributed to nourish the contrast between different ways of preaching the Christian doctrines, which shaped the activity of Catholic missionaries at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
