Arnold Geulincx

Arnold Geulincx (January 31, 1624 – November 1669; used the pseudonym Philaretus) was a Flemish philosopher and logician. He served as professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium for 12 years, and later professor at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. Geulincx wrote all his works in Latin, and died before his principal books, namely Ethica and Metaphysica could be published. He summarized his philosophy as "Ita est, ergo ita sit", ("it exists, therefore it is so,").

Life

Arnold Geulincx was born at baptized at Antwerp in 1624, the son of a moderately well-off messenger. It is likely that his early education was a traditional one conducted by Augustine friars. In 1641, the same year of the first publication of Descartes' landmark Meditations on First Philosophy, Geulincx began studies at the University of Louvain. His two years of study there were formally centered on traditional Aristotlean logic, metaphysics and physics. Nevertheless, the university was not entirely strict on excluding other schools of thought, so Geulincx was exposed to Epicureanism, Stoicism and, most importantly, Cartesianism.

After obtaining the degree of Licentiate in Arts in 1643, Geulincx studied theology, but began teaching philosophy in 1646. He did well at the university, but was deprived of his office in 1658 for reasons likely relating to a proposed position at the cathedral at Aix and his marriage to his cousin Susanna Strickers. Moving to Leiden, he acquired the degree of Doctor of Medicine (although he appeared to have little intention of practicing medicine). The university at Leiden allowed him to teach in a limited capacity, but formally discouraged anything other than orthodox scholasticism, for Geulincx's reputation as an advocate of the new philosophy was well-known. Despite the restrictions on his teaching, it is significant that the university allowed a non-traditional thinker to have an offical position at all. In 1665, he was promoted to the position of professor extra ordinem. Throughout this time, Geulincx was at work on his treatises on logic, metaphysics and ethics, but his death by the plague in 1669 meant that most of these were published posthumously.

Philosophy

He believed in a "pre-established harmony" as a solution to the mind-body problem, dying 25 years before Leibniz's better remembered formulation of such an idea.

In Leibniz' philosophy, the pre-established harmony was linked with optimism, the notion of this world as the "best of all possible worlds." But Geulincx made no such linkage.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Geulincx, Arnold. (2006) Arnold Geulincx' Ethics: With Samuel Beckett's Notes, Brill Academic Publishers.
• Geulincx, A. (1891–3) Opera philosophica, ed. J.P.N. Land, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols. Reprinted with some additions, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. H.J. De Vleeschauwer, Stuttgart Bad Canstatt: Frommann, 1965–8, 3 vols.
• Land, J.P.N. (1891) "Arnold Geulincx and his works," Mind 16, 223-242.
• von Ruler, Han. Biography of Geulincx at Guelincx.org

External Links

• Geulincx.org.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Dualism (See 'History' section)

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