Geulincx, Arnold (1624–1669)

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GEULINCX, ARNOLD
(1624–1669)

Arnold (or Aernout) Geulincx, the Flemish metaphysician and moralist, was born in Antwerp. He studied philosophy and theology at Louvain and in 1646 was made professor of philosophy, a position he held for twelve years. Although information about his life at Louvain is limited and his important works date from a later period, it appears that as a student he was influenced by the Cartesian Guillaume Philippi, that in his teaching, as later, he attacked scholastic physics from a Cartesian point of view, and that he was also attracted by the doctrines of Cornelis Jansen.

In 1658, on charges that were not made public but that may have been prompted by his criticisms of scholasticism and accepted religious practices, he was deprived of his professorship and left Louvain for Leiden. At the same time, he renounced Roman Catholicism and became a Calvinist. Arriving in Leiden in distressed circumstances, he was assisted by the Cartesian Abraham van der Heyden (Heidanus) and set to work on a study of fevers, which he presented for the doctorate in medicine. Despite his precarious situation at first, Geulincx succeeded in publishing treatises on logic and method (Logica Fundamentis Suis … Restituta, Leiden, 1662, and Methodus Inveniendi Argumenta, Leiden, 1663) and the first part of his most accomplished work, the "Ethics" (De Virtute et Primis Ejus Proprietatibus, Leiden, 1665). He was appointed professor extraordinary of philosophy at the university in 1665 and remained in Leiden until his untimely death, in 1669. Six years later the complete "Ethics" was published, under the title Γνωθι σεαυτον, Sive … Ethica (Leiden, 1675). His "Physics," taken from manuscripts used in his classes, appeared in 1688 (Physica Vera, Leiden); commentaries on René Descartes's Principles of Philosophy in 1690 and 1691 (Annotata Praecurrentia, Annotata Majora, Dordrecht); and the very important "Metaphysics," published apparently from a student's copy, in 1691 (Metaphysica Vera et ad Mentem Peripateticam, Amsterdam).

Occasionalism

Geulincx is best known for his occasionalist theory of causation and his denial of the substantiality of particular created things. Following Descartes's order of procedure in his "Metaphysics," he considered at the outset the possibility and the limits of doubt and found that our first knowledge is of the self as a thinking thing. Consideration of the various states of the self or mind led him to formulate a principle, which he took to be self-evident though obscured by prejudices, that expresses a necessary condition implicit in our conception of an action: that something cannot be done unless there is knowledge of how it is done, or, as specifically related to activities of the self, that a person does not do what he does not know how to do (impossibile est, ut is faciat, qui nescit quomodo fiat; quod nescis quomodo fiat, id non facis ).

The principle had far-reaching consequences in Geulincx's moral philosophy as well as in his metaphysics. Concerning the self, he contended that actions involving movements of the body cannot in truth be attributed to the self and that the mind or soul is not, as it is often supposed to be, the true cause of movements of the body. Not only are we unaware of changes in the brain, nerves, and muscles requisite for, say, moving the arm, but even if we know of these changes from a study of physiology, our knowledge is based on ex post facto observation of sequences of volitions and physiological happenings, not on awareness of a supposed mental activity producing these movements. Though we have, Geulincx maintained, immediate knowledge and understanding of internal actions—that is, of acts not involving bodily movements and consisting solely of changes in a state of mind—we are not in like manner cognizant of how movements are initiated in the body or how external actions come about. Accordingly the influence of the human mind is limited to its own states, and the mind is not the master of—that is, the true cause of movements in—the body.

The principle was also invoked against the assumption that bodies, or corporeal things, are capable of acting, either on minds or on other corporeal things. It is assumed, for instance, that a fire acts on a man's body and, affecting sense organs, nerves, and brain, produces sensations of light and heat in his mind. It is also assumed that in cases of impact one body striking another sets the second body in motion. But how, Geulincx asked, can a body produce these effects? To bring them about, according to his principle, it would have to know how. Yet admittedly a body is inanimate and, lacking consciousness, lacks the knowledge that on reflection we see is a necessary condition of acting. Bodies are res brutae. To suppose that they have the distinctively spiritual characteristic of acting is a signal instance of confusion involving the self-contradictory notion of corporeal action or causation. Arguing against the possibility of genuine corporeal causation as such, Geulincx, like the occasionalists Géraud de Cordemoy and Nicolas Malebranche, took it to be true a fortiori that bodies cannot act on minds. (There is no evidence that Geulincx was influenced by, or that he in turn influenced, the other occasionalists.)

Though the human mind does not act on the body and bodies do not act on the mind or on other bodies, changes obviously do take place, and in these changes we discern patterns or constant conjunctions of events. According to Geulincx, the agent responsible for these changes is God, and the patterns we observe are due to laws that God enacts and in accordance with which he operates. Explicating his theory of supernatural causation in the case of volitions and bodily movements, Geulincx iterated two analogies, the second of which was the subject of an important controversy among German historians in the nineteenth century. (1) When a child wants his cradle to move, it often happens that the cradle moves, not as a result of his willing it, but because the mother or nurse in attendance wills that it move. (2) Two clocks that are synchronized sound the hour in unison, not because one influences the other, but because they are fashioned in such a way that they keep the same time. The second illustration has been cited to show that Geulincx, like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, conceived of a preestablished harmony between mind and body and that he was the unacknowledged source of Leibniz's famous analogy of concurrent clocks and, by implication, of Leibniz's view of the relation between mind and body.

Against this interpretation it can be argued convincingly (as was done by Eduard Zeller) that in Geulincx's view, God's actions, though in accordance with rules, are immediate or direct in the sense that there is nothing in mind or body comparable to the internal natures which, according to Leibniz, account for their successive states and mediate the will of God and the course of events. It is not the case, however, that the actions of Geulincx's God are ad hoc or, as Leibniz accused the occasionalists, that Geulincx's God is a deus ex machina. The rules of his action are fixed, and he simply applies them, with no special volitions required, in particular circumstances.

Substance

Geulincx's views about substance were roughly midway between Descartes's and Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza's. In the Synopsis of the Meditations, Descartes, drawing a distinction between body taken generally (in genere sumptum ) and the human body, suggested that the former, like a person's mind, is a substance or pure substance (puram … substantiam ), whereas the latter, insofar as it is a particular body differing from other bodies, is not. Following Descartes's lead, Geulincx contrasted body in itself (corpus ipsum, corpus simpliciter dictum ), which he identified with extension, and particular bodies, which he claimed are modes of body (aliquid ipsius corporis simpliciter dicti, modi corporis ). Body in itself is simple, unique, individual, infinite, and indivisible. Particular bodies are limitations of, or abstractions from, body in itself. They are not, he explained, constituent parts, nor are they figments of the mind (entia rationis ); rather, they are related to body in itself as the superficies, or surface, of a particular body is related to that particular body. In another analogy, as the country is not a collection of fields, orchards, and meadows but the land on which these divisions are imposed, so corporeal nature is not an aggregate of particular bodies but the matter or extension common to them all and specified in various ways. The analogy also explains Geulincx's conception of mind. Like Spinoza (though independently), he held that individual minds are themselves not substances but modes of mind (modi mentis ) or of infinite thinking substance, which he identified with God. We are, he said, both from God and in God (ex Deo et in Deo ). To the extent to which we can transcend the distorting forms of our limited understandings and see the eternal truths in ourselves as they are in the mind of God, we lose our status as limited beings and are one with God. Geulincx's reflections on problems about substance paralleled Spinoza's. However, he preserved the Cartesian distinction between thinking substance and extended substance, or matter.

Ethics

In the letter prefaced to the first part of his "Ethics," Geulincx implied that his moral philosophy rounds out the system conceived by Descartes, who, though he proposed a provisional code of morality in the Discourse, did not bring this branch of the tree of knowledge to fruition. In Geulincx's view the subject matter of ethics is virtue, and virtue is located not in deeds but in a determination of the will—that is, in love of right reason or, since reason as prescriptive comprises laws imposed by God, in devotion to divine law. Though virtue is one and simple, there are four aspects, and these cardinal virtues are distinguished from and contrasted with the traditional cardinal virtues, which refer to actions or accomplishments, not to the locus of morality—namely, the condition of the will. (1) Diligence is attention to the voice of reason. Its issue is wisdom and prudence in conduct. (2) Obedience involves compliance with the dictates of reason. Though we are free to will in conformity to divine law or not, in the end we cannot but do what God wills. By obeying his prescriptions we attain freedom in the highest degree: We will what we can do and do not will what we cannot do, and our volitions are effective. (3) Justice, also, is a determination of the will: to will no more and no less than reason dictates. (4) Humility consists in knowledge, and denial, of self (contemptio sui ) in the love of reason and of God. Contrasted with the virtuous man is the egoist, whose end in life is happiness. He is the slave of his passions and the creature of circumstance, whereas the virtuous man, not seeking happiness and resigned to what happens to him, is in a position to attain it.

Bibliography

works by geulincx

Arnoldi Geulincx Antverpiensis Opera Philosophica. Edited by Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land, 3 vols. The Hague: Martinum Nijhoff, 1891–1893. The standard edition.

works on geulincx

Grimm, Eduard. Arnold Geulinx' Erkenntnisstheorie und Occasionalismus. Jena, Germany, 1875.

Haeghen, Victor vander. Geulincx: Étude sur sa vie, sa philosophie et ses ouvrages. Ghent: A. Hoste, 1886. A bibliography of Geulincx' works is on pp. 197–224.

Hausmann, Paul. Das Freiheitsproblem in der Metaphysik und Ethik bei Arnold Geulincx. Würzburg: R. Mayr, 1934.

Hoffmann, Georg. Das Gottesproblem bei Geulincx und Malebranche. Düren: Danielewski, 1931.

Land, Jan Pieter Nicolaas. Arnold Geulincx und seine Philosophie. The Hague: M. Hijhoff, 1895.

Nagel, Karl. Das Substanzproblem bei Arnold Geulincx. Cologne, 1930.

Terraillon, Eugène. La morale de Geulincx. Paris: Alcan, 1912.

Vleeschauwer, Hermann Jean de. "Three Centuries of Geulincx Research." Mededelings van die Universiteit van Suid-Afrika 1 (1957): 1–72. Survey of writings on Geulincx.

On Geulincx and Leibniz

Eucken, Rudolf. "Leibniz und Geulinx." Philosophische Monatshefte 19 (1883): 525–542.

Pfleiderer, Edmund. Arnold Geulinx als Hauptvertreter der Okkasionalistischen Metaphysik und Ethik. Tübingen, 1882.

Pfleiderer, Edmund. Leibniz und Geulinx mit besonderer Beziehung auf ihr beiderseitiges Uhrengleichniss. Tübingen, 1884. See also the review of this book by Rudolf Eucken in Philosophische Monatshefte 20 (1884): 417–421.

Pfleiderer, Edmund. "Noch einmal Leibniz und Geulinx." Philosophische Monatshefte 21 (1885): 20–39.

Zeller, Eduard. "Über die erste Ausgabe von Geulincx' Ethik und Leibniz' Verhältniss zu Geulincx' Occasionalismus." Sitzungberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 29 (1884): 673–695.