Arnold Geulincx’ Ethics: With Samuel Beckett’s Notes

Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) is a key figure in the history of ideas, whose concepts have been seen as precursors to those developed by Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz and Kant.
His Ethics presents a treatment of virtue from the standpoint of occasionalist metaphysics. The great Irish writer Samuel Beckett stated that Geulincx, with his emphasis on the powerlessness and ignorance of the human condition, was a key influence on his works. This is the first complete version of the text to appear in a modern language. It includes the full text of the Ethics and Beckett’s notes to his reading of Geulincx.
Shedding new light on important moments of intellectual history, it is a major event for students of philosophy and literature.

Brill’s Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, vol. 1

Han (J.A.) van Ruler, Ph.D. (1995) in Philosophy, University of Groningen, is Head of the NWO-project From Erasmus to Spinoza at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His publications include The Crisis of Causality: Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature and Change (Brill, 1995).

Anthony Uhlmann is Associate Professor in Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney. He has published extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett. He is the author of Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image (Cambridge UP, 2006) a work which considers Beckett’s debt to Geulincx in detail.

Martin Wilson is a writer and publisher. His most recent work was an English translation of the Metaphysics of Arnold Geulincx (1999).