Geulincx Arnold (1624–69), Dutch philosopher. Born in Antwerp, he was educated at Louvain and there became professor of philosophy (1646) and dean (1654). In 1657 he was forced out of Louvain, perhaps for his Jansenist or Cartesian tendencies, and in 1658 he moved to Leyden and became a Protestant. Though he taught there until his death, he never attained a regular professorship at the university. His main philosophical work is his Ethica (1675), only Part I of which appeared during his lifetime as De virtute et primis ejus proprietatibus (1665). Also published during his lifetime were the Questiones quodlibeticae (1652; later editions published as Saturnalia), a Logica (1661), and a Methodus inveniendi argumenta (1665). His most important works, though, were published posthumously; in addition to the Ethica, there is the Physica vera (1688), the Physica peripatetica (1690), the Metaphysica vera (1691), and the Metaphysica ad mentem peripateticam (1691). There are also two posthumous commentaries on Descartes’s Principia Philosophiae (1690 and 1691). Geulincx was deeply influenced by Descartes, and had many ideas that closely resemble those of the later Cartesians as well as those of more independent thinkers like Spinoza and Leibniz. Though his grounds were original, like many later Cartesians, Geulincx upheld a version of occasionalism; he argued that someone or something can only do what it knows how to do, inferring from that that we cannot be the genuine causes of our own bodily movements. In discussing the mind–body relation, Geulincx used a clock analogy similar to one Leibniz used in connection with his preestablished harmony. Geulincx also held a view of mental and material substance reminiscent of that of Spinoza. Finally, he proposed a system of ethics grounded in the idea of a virtuous will. Despite the evident similarities between Geulincx’s views and the views of his more renowned contemporaries, it is very difficult to determine exactly what influence Geulincx may have had on them, and they may have had on him.
See also DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ, OCCASION – ALIS. D.Garb.
