GEULINCX, ARNOLD. – Philosopher, born in Antwerp on 31 January 1624, died of plague in Leiden in November 1669. He studied and was a professor at Leuven; then, having converted to Calvinism, at the University of Leiden. His most important work is Γνῶθι αἰσυντὸν sive Ethica; published in part at Leiden in 1665 (De virtute... Tractatus ethicus primus), it appeared complete, under this title, posthumously (Leiden 1675). The occasionalist doctrine, which, joined to rigorous rationalism and lively my-
Like Descartes, G. seeks the essential attribute of corporeal substance in extension. Space is not a sum, but a unity; it grounds the possibility of division and motion, but is itself neither divided nor moved. As the point stands to the line, the line to the surface, and the surface to the solid, so the body stands to space; that is, space and the individual body are placed in the relation of a logical prius and posterius. The concept of body is contained in the concept of space; physics is deducible from geometry. The corporeal world, the passive object of motion propagated through impact and pressure, cannot in itself be a cause; it requires God as its cause. But its motion too, which makes space one and bodies plural, is not, in its reality, deducible from the essence of the corporeal world; it therefore leads back to a cause outside it, to God.
Sensory perception gives only a confused image; ultimately, it is a modification of our consciousness, conditioned by the external world. The task of knowledge is to replace sensory perceptions with a clear and distinct concept of the intellect; hence the notable idea in G. that even intellectual knowledge of an object contains subjective factors and additions, which science must eliminate in order to know the object as it is in itself. The approach to Kant becomes still closer when he declares it impossible for us to free ourselves from the forms of the intellect: «solere homines illos modos suarum cogitationum in res obiectas transfundere» (Opera, II, p. 204).
The soul does not act upon the body, nor the body upon the soul, and the apparent causal connection derives from the fact that God has placed the manifestations of the soul and the body in such agreement that, on the occasion of the one, the others necessarily appear (cf. Ethica, I, sect. 2, § 2). Reciprocal action between soul and body is not possible, because body and soul are two entirely different substances, nor do we know that we produce such activity («Quod nescis quomodo fiat, id non facis»).
The attribution of every efficacy and causality to God logically implies pantheism. Hints of it are not infrequent in G. and recall Malebranche and Spinoza: at times the relation of God to the human spirit is compared with that of space to individual bodies («Sumus modi mentis, non mentes, ut corpora particularia sunt modi corporis. Si auferes modum, remanet ipse Deus»); at other times mathematical concepts are explained as something in the divine spirit, which we intuit in God («duo et tria sunt quinque» sunt in mente divina, non in nostra, cum itaque nos consideramus ideas istas, consideramus eas in Deo et sic ipsum Deum»).
Connected with occasionalism is the idea that, since it is not in our power to act upon the external world, we ought not to set ourselves ends of this kind: «ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis», and hence resignation: «ita est, ergo ita sit». The inner disposition is «despectio sui», founded on «inspectio sui». We must surrender ourselves to divine reason, without any egoism.
Among G.’s remaining works should be mentioned: Quac-siones quodlibeticae (Antwerp 1653); Logica... (Leiden 1662); Annotata praecurrentia ad R. Cartesii principia (Dordrecht 1690); Annotata maiora ad principia philosophiae R. Cartesii (there 1691).