Arnold Geulincx - Philosophy

Philosophy

Geulincx summarized his philosophy in the phrase, "ita est, ergo ita sit" ("it exists, therefore it is so"). He believed in a "pre-established harmony" as a solution to the mind-body problem, dying 25 years before Leibniz's better–remembered formulation of the idea. In Leibniz's philosophy, the doctrine of pre-established harmony was linked with optimism, the notion of this world as the "best of all possible worlds". But Geulincx made no such linkage.

The occasionalism of Geulincx is ethical rather than cosmological in its inception. The first tract of his Ethics is a study of what in his terms are the cardinal virtues. Virtue according to Geulincx is the love of God and of Reason (III, 16-17; 29). The cardinal virtues are the properties of virtue which immediately flow from its very essence and have nothing to do with externals: diligence, obedience, justice, humility (III, 17). Humility divides his view of the world into two parts: one, the understanding of our relation to the world; and the other, the concept of our relation to God. Humility consists in the knowledge of self and the forsaking of self. I find in myself nothing that is my own but to know and to will. I therefore must be conscious of all that I do, and that of which I am not conscious is not the product of my own causality. Hence the universal principle of causality--quod nescis quo modo fiat, non facis--if you do not know how a thing is done then you do not do it. He also states a form of this principle in his Metaphysica vera. Since then, the movements of my body take place without my knowing how the nervous impulse passes to the muscles and there-causes them to contract I do not cause my own bodily actions. "I am therefore a mere spectator of this machine. In it I form naught and renew naught, I neither make anything here nor destroy it. Everything is the work of someone else" (III, 33). This one is the Deity who sees and knows all things. The second part of Geulincx's philosophy is connected with Occasionalism as the effect with the cause. Its guiding principle is: Where you can do nothing there also you should desire nothing (III, 222). This leads to a mysticism and asceticism which however must not be taken too seriously for it is tempered by the obligation of caring for the body and propagating the species.