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GEULINCX, ARNOLD (1624-1669)

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Originally appearing in Volume V11, Page 913 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GEULINCX, See also:ARNOLD (1624-1669) , Belgian philosopher, was See also:born at See also:Antwerp on the 31st of See also:January 1624. He studied See also:philosophy and See also:medicine at the university of See also:Louvain, where he remained as a lecturer for several years. Having given offence by his unorthodox views, he See also:left Louvain, and took See also:refuge in See also:Leiden, where he appears to have been in the utmost See also:distress. He entered the See also:Protestant See also:Church, and in 1663, through the See also:influence of his friend See also:Abraham Heidanus, who had assisted him in his greatest need, he obtained a poorly paid lectureship at the university. He died at Leiden in See also:November 1669. His most important See also:works were published posthumously. The Metaphysica See also:vera (1691), and the Ps&,O o- avrov, sive Ethica (under the See also:pseudonym Philaretus," 1675), are the works by which he is chiefly known. Mention may also be made of Physica vera (1688), Logica restituta (1662) and Annotata in Principia philosophiae R. Cartesii (1691). Geulincx principally deals with the question, left in an obscure and unsatisfactory See also:state by See also:Descartes, of the relation between soul and See also:body. Whereas Descartes made the See also:union between them a violent collocation, Geulincx practically called it a See also:miracle. See also:Extension and thought, the essences of corporeal and spiritual natures, are absolutely distinct, and cannot See also:act upon one another.

See also:

External facts are not the causes of See also:mental states, nor are mental states the causes of See also:physical facts. So far as the physical universe is concerned, we are merely spectators; the only See also:action that remains for us is contemplation. The influence we seem to exercise over bodies by will is only apparent; volition and action only accompany one another. Since true activity consists in knowing what one does and how one does it, I cannot be the author of any state of which I am unconscious; I am not conscious of the mechanism by which bodily See also:motion is produced, hence I am not the author of bodily motion (" Quod nescis quomodo fiat, id non facis "). Body and mind are like two clocks which act together, because both have been set together by See also:God. A physical occurrence is but the occasion (opportunity, occasional cause) on which God excites in me a corresponding mental state; the exercise of my will is the occasion on which God moves my body. Every operation in which mind and See also:matter are both concerned is an effect of neither, but the See also:direct act of God. Geulincx was thus the first definitely to systematize the theory called See also:Occasionalism, which had already been propounded by Gerauld de Cordemoy (d. 1684), a Parisian lawyer, and See also:Louis de la Forge, a physician of See also:Saumur. But the principles on which the theory was founded compelled a further advance. God, who is the cause of the concomitance of bodily and mental facts, is in truth the See also:sole cause in the universe. No fact contains in itself the ground of any other; the existence of the facts is due to God, their sequence and coexistence are also due to him.

He is the ground of all that is. My desires, volitions and thoughts are thus the desires, volitions and thoughts of God. Apart from God, the finite being has no reality, and we only have the See also:

idea of it from God. Descartes had left untouched, or nearly so, the difficult problem of the relation between the universal See also:element or thought and the particular desires or inclinations. All these are regarded by Geulincx as modes of the divine thought and action, and accordingly the end of human endeavour is the end of the divine will or the realization of See also:reason. The love of right reason is the supreme virtue, whence flow the See also:cardinal virtues, See also:diligence, obedience, See also:justice and humility. Since it is impossible for us to make any alteration in the See also:world of matter, all we can do is to submit. See also:Chief of the cardinal virtues is humility, a See also:confession of our own helplessness and sub-See also:mission to God. Geulincx's idea of See also:life is " a resigned optimism." Geulincx carried out to their extreme consequences the irreconcilable elements in the Cartesian See also:metaphysics, and his works have the See also:peculiar value attaching to the vigorous development of a one-sided principle. The abrupt contradictions to which such development leads of See also:necessity compels revision of the principle itself. He was thus important as the precursor of See also:Malebranche and See also:Spinoza. Edition of his philosophical works by J.

P. N. See also:

Land (1891-1893, for which a recently discovered MS. was consulted) ; see also thesame editor's Arnold Geulincx and See also:seine Philosophic (1895), and See also:article (translated) in Mind, xvi. 223 seq.; V. See also:van der Haeghen, Geulincx. Etude See also:sun sa See also:vie, sa philosophie, et ses ouvrages (See also:Ghent, 1886) ; E. See also:Grimm, A. Geulincx' Erkenntnisstheorie and Occasionalismus (1875); E. See also:Pfleiderer, A. G. als Hauptvertreter der okkasionalistischen Metaphysik and Ethik (1882) ; G. Samtleben, Geulincx, ein Vorganger Spinozas (1885) ; also Falckenberg, Hist of Mod. Philos. (Eng. trans., 1895), ch. iii.; G.

Monchamp, Hist. du Cartesianisme en Belgique (See also:

Brussels, 1886) ; H. See also:Hoffding, Hist. of Mod. Philos. (Eng. trans., 1900), 1. 245.

End of Article: GEULINCX, ARNOLD (1624-1669)

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