Life and Works

Arnold Geulincx was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1624. In 1641 he matriculated at University of Louvain, where he became a professor of philosophy in 1646. For reasons that never became clear but were probably of a religious nature (at Louvain there was much sensitivity over Jansenism), he was suspended from his duties and consequently dismissed in 1657/1658. He moved to Leiden, The Netherlands, and converted to Calvinism. After taking a degree in medicine he obtained permission to lecture on philosophy, but his position was regularized only in 1662, when he was appointed reader in logic. He became professor extra ordinem in 1665. In 1667 he died from the plague. Most of his works, dealing with logic, moral philosophy, physics, and metaphysics, were published posthumously.

Logic

Although the main merits of Geulincx's works on logic seem to be their elegance and precision, Karl Dürr (1939–1940, 1965) and Gabriël...