## 1. Life and main works



Juan Luis Vives was born in Valencia, Spain on March 6, 1493 (not
1492, as is often found in the literature on him). His parents were
Jewish cloth merchants who had converted to Catholicism and who strove
to live with the insecurities of their precarious situation. His
father, Luis Vives Valeriola (1453-1524), had been prosecuted in
1477 for secretly practicing Judaism. A second trial took place in
1522 and ended two years later when he was burned at the stake. His
mother, Blanquina March (1473-1508), became a Christian in 1491,
one year before the decree expelling Jews from Spain. She died in 1508
of the plague. Twenty years after her death, she was charged with
having visited a clandestine synagogue. Her remains were exhumed and
publicly burned.



In his youth, Vives attended the Estudio General of his hometown. In
1509, he moved to Paris and enrolled as a freshman in the faculty of
arts. He was never to return to Spain. Vives began his studies at the
College de Lisieux, where Juan Dolz had just started a
triennial course, but soon moved to the College de Beauvais,
where he attended the lectures of Jan Dullaert (d.1513). From the fall
of 1512, Vives started to attend the course of the Aragonese Gaspar
Lax (1487-1560) at the College de Montaigu. Through
Nicolas Berault (c.1470-c.1545), who was an associate of
Guillaume Bude (1467-1540) and taught at various colleges
in Paris, Vives also came into contact with the Parisian humanist
circle.



In 1514, Vives left Paris without having taken any formal academic
degree and moved to the Low Countries. He settled in Bruges, where he
would spend most of his life. About this time, he was introduced to
Erasmus and appointed as tutor to the Flemish nobleman William of
Croy. From 1517 until Croy's premature death in 1521, Vives
lived in Louvain and taught at the Collegium Trilingue, a humanist
foundation based on Erasmian educational principles. In this period he
wrote '*Fabula de homine*' ('A Fable about
Man,' 1518), an early version of his views on the nature and
purpose of mankind; *De initiis, sectis et laudibus
philosophiae* (*On the Origins, Schools and Merits of
Philosophy*, 1518), a short essay on the history of philosophy;
*In pseudodialecticos* (*Against the
Pseudo-Dialecticians*, 1519), a lively and trenchant attack on
scholastic logic; as well as a critical edition, with an extensive
commentary, of Augustine's *De civitate Dei* (*City of
God*, 1522), which was commissioned by Erasmus.



From 1523 to 1528, Vives divided his time between England, which he
visited on six occasions, and Bruges, where he married Margarita
Valldaura in 1524. In England he attended the court of Henry VIII and
Catherine of Aragon, and was tutor to their daughter, Mary. He also
held a lectureship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and associated
with English humanists such as Thomas More and Thomas Linacre. During
these years he published *De institutione feminae Christianae*
(*The Education of a Christian Woman*, 1524), in which he set
out pedagogical principles for the instruction of women; the extremely
popular *Introductio ad sapientiam* (*Introduction to
Wisdom*, 1524), a short handbook of ethics, blending Stoicism and
Christianity; and *De subventione pauperum* (*On Assistance
to the Poor*, 1526), a program for the organization of public
relief, which he dedicated to the magistrates of Bruges. In 1528 he
lost the favor of Henry VIII by siding with his fellow countrywoman
Catherine of Aragon in the matter of the divorce. He was placed under
house arrest for a time, before being allowed to return to Bruges.



The last twelve years of Vives' life were his most productive,
and it was in this period that he published several of the works for
which he is best known today. These include *De concordia et
discordia in humano genere* (*On Concord and Discord in
Humankind*, 1529), a piece of social criticism emphasizing the
value of peace and the absurdity of war; *De disciplinis*
(*On the Disciplines*, 1531), an encyclopedic treatise
providing an extensive critique of the foundations of contemporary
education, as well as a program for its renewal; and *De anima et
vita* (*On the Soul and Life*, 1538), a study of the soul
and its interaction with the body, which also contains a penetrating
analysis of the emotions. *De veritate fidei Christianae*
(*On the Truth of the Christian Faith*), the most thorough
discussion of his religious views, was published posthumously in 1543.
He died in Bruges on May 6, 1540.


## 2. Dialectic and language



Vives' career as a leading northern European humanist starts
with the publication in 1519 of *In pseudodialecticos*, a
satirical diatribe in which he voices his opposition to scholastic
logic on several counts. He follows in the footsteps of earlier
humanists such as Lorenzo Valla (1406-57) and Rudolph Agricola
(1443-85), who set about to replace the scholastic curriculum,
based on syllogistic and disputation, with a treatment of logic
oriented toward the use of the topics, a technique of verbal
association aiming at the invention and organization of material for
arguments, and persuasion. Vives' severe censure of scholastic
logic derived from his own unhappy experience with the scholastic
curriculum at Paris. Therefore, as he himself emphasized, no one could
accuse him of "condemning it because he did not understand
it" (*Opera omnia*, 1964, III, 38; all quotations below
are from this edition). Erasmus wrote to More that no one was better
suited for the battle against the dialecticians, in whose ranks he had
served for many years.



The main targets of Vives' criticism are Peter of Spain's
*Summule logicales*, a work dating from the thirteenth century
but which still held an important place in the university curriculum,
and the theory of the property of terms, a semantic theory dealing
with properties of linguistic expressions such as signification, i.e.,
the meaning of a word regardless of context, and supposition, i.e.,
the meaning of a word within the context of its use in a proposition.
He repudiates the use of technical jargon, accessible only to a narrow
group of professionals, and maintains that if scholastic logicians
made an effort to speak plainly and according to common usage, many of
their conundrums would disappear. Instead, they choose to fritter away
their ingenuity on logically ambiguous propositions known as
*sophismata*. Vives provides many examples of such
propositions, which in his view make no sense whatever and are
certainly of no use. Many of these, such as "Some animal is not
man, therefore some man is not animal" (III, 54), were standard
scholastic examples. Others, such as "Only any non-donkey
*c* of any man except Socrates and another *c* belonging
to this same man begins contingently to be black" (III, 40), are
intended as a mockery of the futile quibbling he associated with
scholastic method. Since dialectic, like rhetoric and grammar, deals
with language, its rules should be adapted to the rules of ordinary
language; but with what language, he asks, have these propositions to
do? Moreover, dialectic should not be learned for its own sake, but as
a support for the other arts; therefore, no more effort should be
spent on it than is absolutely necessary. Vives' criticism is
also informed by ethical concerns and the demand for a method that
would be of use in everyday life rather than in academic disputations.
In contrast to the standard interpretation, it has been argued that
*In pseudodialecticos* is not a serious refutation of
scholasticism, but rather a sophistical exercise replete with
fallacious arguments, whose purpose is to teach a valuable lesson in
scholastic dialectic challenging the reader to detect the many logical
fallacies that it contains. According to this interpretation, *In
pseudodialecticos* offers no serious arguments against scholastic
logical theory or principles (see Perreiah, 2014, ch.4). 



A more detailed criticism can be found in *De disciplinis* of
1531. This encyclopedic treatise is divided into three parts: *De
causis corruptarum artium* (*On the Causes of the Corruption of
the Arts*), seven books devoted to a thoroughgoing critique of the
foundations of contemporary education; *De tradendis
disciplinis* (*On Handing Down the Disciplines*), five
books in which Vives outlines his program for educational reform; and
five shorter treatises *De artibus* (*On the Arts*),
dealing mainly with logic and metaphysics. These five treatises
include *De prima philosophia* (*On First Philosophy*),
a compendium of Aristotelian physics and metaphysics from a Christian
point of view; *De censura veri* (*On the Assessment of
Truth*), a discussion of the proposition and the forms of
argumentation; *De explanatione cuiusque essentiae* (*On the
Explanation of Each Essence*); *De instrumento
probabilitatis* (*On the Instrument of Probability*), which
contains a theory of knowledge, as well as a detailed account of
dialectical invention; and *De disputatione* (*On
Disputation*), in which he discusses non-formal proofs. In these
treatises, Vives not only continues the trends in humanist dialectic
initiated by Valla and Agricola, but also displays a familiarity with
philosophical technicalities that was unusual among humanists and that
reveals the more traditionally Aristotelian aspects of his thought.
His appraisal of the Aristotelian corpus is summarised in *Censura
de Aristotelis operibus* (*Assessment of Aristotle's
Works*, 1538). A posthumously published treatise entitled
*Dialectices libri quatuor* (*Four Books of Dialectic*,
1550) appears to be a youthful work that Vives evidently did not
consider suitable for publication.



Vives' criticism of scholastic logic hinges on a profound
analysis of the arts of discourse. For him, the supremacy of the
*sermo communis* (ordinary discourse) over the abstract
language of metaphysics is indisputable. Philosophy ought not to
invent the language and subject of its own specific investigation (VI,
140). In *De causis corruptarum artium*, he writes:
"enraged against nature, about which they know nothing, the
dialecticians have constructed another one for themselves--that
is to say, the nature of formalities, individual natures
(*ecceitates*), realities, relations, Platonic ideas and other
monstrosities which cannot be understood even by those who have
invented them" (VI, 190-1). Instead of the formal language
of the dialecticians, which he found completely unsuited to interpret
reality, he proposes the less rigorous but more concrete universe of
everyday communication, which answers all our practical needs and aims
to provide a knowledge that is useful.


## 3. Epistemology and history



Vives was pessimistic about the possibility of attaining knowledge as
understood in Aristotelian terms; and his thought anticipates the
moderate skepticism of early modern philosophers such as Francisco
Sanches (1551-1623) and Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Vives
belongs, like Francis Bacon (1561-1626), to the so-called
"maker's knowledge" tradition, which regards
knowledge as a kind of making or as a capacity to make (see A.
Perez-Ramos, *Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the
Maker's Knowledge Tradition*, Oxford and New York: Clarendon
Press and Oxford University Press, 1988). He often insists on the
practical nature of knowledge; for instance, in *De causis
corruptarum artium*, he maintains that peasants and artisans know
nature far better than many philosophers (VI, 190). In *Satellitium
animi* (*The Soul's Escort*, 1524), a collection of
aphorisms dedicated to Princess Mary, he points out that "man
knows as far as he can make" (IV, 63). A central tenet of the
maker's knowledge tradition is that man cannot gain access to
nature's intimate works, since these, as *opera divina*
(divine works), are only known to God, their maker.



According to Vives, things have two different layers: one external,
consisting in the sensible accidents of the thing, and another,
internal, and therefore hidden, which is the essence of the thing
(III, 197). "The true and genuine essences of all things",
he writes, "are not known by us in themselves. They hide
concealed in the innermost part of each thing where our mind, enclosed
by the bulk of the body and the darkness of life, cannot
penetrate" (III, 406-7). Vives subscribes to the
Aristotelian principle that all of our knowledge has its origin in
perception. We cannot learn anything, he maintains, except through the
senses (III, 193 and 378). But he also maintains that the human mind
"must realize that, since it is locked up in a dark prison and
surrounded by obscurity, it is prevented from understanding many
things and cannot clearly observe or know what it wants: neither the
concealed essence of material things, nor the quality and character of
immaterial things; nor can it, on account of the gloom of the body,
use its acuity and swiftness" (III, 329). In other words, since
the senses cannot grasp what is incorporeal or hidden, sense
perception does not yield any knowledge of the essence of things but
only of their accidents. Vives' view, however, is that sensory
knowledge must nonetheless be transcended by means of reasoning. Yet,
according to him, the best that human reason can accomplish in this
process is to provide a judgment grounded in all the available
evidence, thereby increasing the probability of the conclusion. In his
view, our knowledge of the essence of a thing is only an approximate
guess based on the sensible operations of the thing in question (III,
122).



The most reliable guide for human inquiry, he argues, is
mankind's natural propensity toward what is good and true. This
light of our mind, as he also calls it, is always, directly or
indirectly, inclined toward what is good and true, and can be regarded
as the beginning and origin of prudence and of all sciences and arts.
This natural propensity can be perfected if it is subjected to
teaching and exercise, just as the seeds of plants grow better if they
are cultivated by the industrious hands of a farmer. He found
philosophical grounds for this idea in Cicero's report (see,
e.g., *De natura deorum* (*On the Nature of the Gods*),
I.43-5) of the Hellenistic theory of *anticipationes*
(anticipations) and of *naturales informationes* (natural
notions), which we have not learned from teachers or custom, but are
instead derived and received from nature (III, 356-7). The
topics, which Vives conceives as a reflection of the ontological
order, represent another valuable instrument for human inquiry. In his
view, the topics are a set of universal aspects of things that help to
bring order to the great variety of nature. As such, they play an
important role as organizing principles of knowledge. They are like a
grid through which knowledge can be acquired and arguments formulated
(see Nauta, 2015). Nevertheless, human knowledge can be nothing other
than a finite participation in creation. Because of the limitations
that characterize man's fallen state, investigations into the
realm of nature can only lead to conjectures, and not to firm and
indubitable knowledge, which we neither deserve nor need. In *De
prima philosophia*, Vives writes: "human inquiry comes to
conjectural conclusions, for we do not deserve certain knowledge
(*scientia*), stained by sin as we are and hence burdened with
the great weight of the body; nor do we need it, for we see that man
is ordained lord and master of everything in the sublunary
world" (III, 188). In his opinion, certainty is not a
prerequisite for advances in science and philosophy; and as a
criterion for scientific progress and for the rational conduct of
life, he advocates a method consisting in sound judgment based on
experience.



History, seen as the sum of all human experience, is therefore of
great importance for all branches of learning. In *De tradendis
disciplinis*, Vives maintains that "history appears to
surpass all disciplines, since it either gives birth to or nourishes,
develops [and] cultivates all arts" (VI, 291). In this sense,
history is not primarily regarded as the memory of great deeds or the
source of useful examples, but as a process of development. In
principle, every new generation is better equipped than the preceding
one, since it can derive advantage from all earlier experience:
"It is therefore clear - he maintains - that if only
we apply our minds sufficiently, we can formulate better opinions
about matters of life and nature than could Aristotle, Plato, or any
of the ancients" (VI, 6-7). According to Vives, the saying
"we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants" is plainly
false. We are not dwarfs, nor were they giants. All humans are
composed of the same structure (VI, 39). The idea of progress plays an
essential role in Vives' conception of intellectual history, and
several of the cultural problems he deals with, such as the causes of
the corruption of the arts, are approached from an historical
perspective.


## 4. Moral and social philosophy



Vives' moral philosophy stems mainly from his Christian humanism
and is aimed at the reform of both individuals and society. He often
proclaims the superiority of Christian ethics over pagan wisdom (I,
23; VI, 209-10). In *De causis corruptarum artium*, he
argues at length that Aristotle's ethics, on account of its
worldly conception of happiness and virtue, is completely incompatible
with the Christianity: "we cannot serve both Christ and
Aristotle, whose teaching are diametrically opposed to each
other" (VI, 218). He has more sympathy for Platonism and
Stoicism, which he believes are broadly in line with Christian
morality. In *De initiis, sectis et laudibus philosophiae*, he
even asserts: "I do not think, in fact, that there is any truer
Christian than the Stoic sage" (III, 17).



In *Introductio ad sapientiam*, inspired by the teaching of the
Stoics, he recommends self-knowledge as the first step toward virtue,
which he regards as the culmination of human perfection. We should
not, in his judgment, call anything our own except our soul, in which
learning and virtue, or their opposites, are to be found. The body is
"a bondslave of the soul" (*mancipium animi*),
while such things as riches, power, nobility, honor, dignity, and
their contraries, are completely external to man (I, 2; VI, 401). Vice
follows from a wrong judgment about the value of things:
"Nothing - he writes - is more destructive in human
life than a corrupt judgment which gives no object its proper
value" (I, 1). To be wise, however, is not only to have true
opinions about things, but also to translate this knowledge into
action by desiring honorable things and avoiding evil (I, 2). Wisdom
therefore requires the subordination of the passions to the control of
the intellect.



Vives holds that the best means to secure the reform of society is
through the moral and practical training of the individual. In his
view, there are two related paths which are necessary to develop our
humanity: education and action. Education is fundamental in order for
us to rise above our animal instincts and realize our full potential
as human beings. However, learning needs to be applied in every day
life, especially for the public good (see Verbeke, 2014). Man, by his
own nature, is a social being: "Experience proves every day that
man was created by God for society, both in this and in the eternal
life. For this reason God inspired in man an admirable disposition of
benevolence and good will toward other men" (VI, 222-3).
In the first book of *De subventione pauperum*, which consists
of a theoretical discussion of the human condition, he stresses not
only our need for and dependency on others, but also our natural
inclination to love and help one another. He regards the development
of society as a distinctly human achievement, based on the ability to
profit from experience and turn knowledge to useful ends. Social
problems, such as poverty and war, are the result of emotional
disorders. During Vives' lifetime, Europe experienced dissension
and war between princes and within the church, as well as the
increased threat posed by Muslim expansion into Western Europe. He
addressed the problem of political and religious disturbances in
several works, which also deal with the psychological origins of
discord, the proper conduct of all the offices of the commonweal, and
the theme of Christian harmony. His mayor political text on European
war and peace is *De concordia et discordia in humano genere*
where he sets out the case for the origins of discord in society and
he aims to show how peace and concord can be fostered through
knowledge of human nature, especially the emotions. According to him,
the virtue of the people can only be maintained and promoted in peace.
"In war, as in a sick body, no member exercises its office
properly" (V, 180-1). Vives deplored the Italian war
between France and Spain (1521-6), which, he felt, completely
ignored the rights of the suffering population, and accused Francis I
and Charles V of irresponsibility and criminal ambition (VI, 480). In
these circumstances, he often referred to the notion of natural law,
which, as he explains in his preface to Cicero's *De
legibus* (*On the Laws*), has the same validity everywhere
because it was impressed on the heart of every human being before
birth (V, 494).


## 5. Psychology



Vives' philosophical reflections on the human soul are mainly
concentrated in *De anima et vita*, published in 1538, which
provides the psychological underpinning for many of his educational
ideas and can be characterized as a prolegomenon to moral philosophy.
He attempts to reconcile the Aristotelian view of the soul as an
organizing and animating principle with the Platonic conception of the
soul as an immaterial and immortal substance. He also pays close
attention to physiology and, following the Galenic tradition,
maintains that our mental capacities depend on the temperament of our
body.



The structure of the treatise is indebted to the traditional approach
of faculty psychology, in which the soul is said to be composed of a
number of different faculties or powers, each directed toward a
different object and responsible for a distinct operation. The first
book covers the functions of the vegetative soul (nutrition, growth
and reproduction), of the sensitive soul (the five external senses),
and of the cogitative soul (the internal senses, i.e., a variety of
cognitive faculties, including imagination, fantasy and the estimative
power, which are located in the three ventricles of the brain, and
whose acts follows from the acts of the external senses). The second
book deals with the functions of the rational soul and its three
faculties (mind, will, and memory), as well as with topics stemming
from Aristotle's *Parva naturalia*, such as sleep,
dreams, and longevity. The third and final book explores the emotions,
which Vives, rejecting the Stoic view, regards as natural responses to
the way things appear to us and as essential constituents of human
life.



He defines the soul as "the principal agent inhabiting a body
adapted to life (*agens praecipuum, habitans in corpore apto ad
vitam*)." The soul is called an agent in the sense that it
acts through instruments--e.g., heat, humors and spirits--by
means of its own power. That it is the principal agent means that,
even though its instruments act on the body, they do not operate by
means of their own power but only through the power that they receive
from the soul (III, 335-6). The organs governing our rational
functions consist of fine and bright spirits exhaled from the
pericardial blood. Although the heart is the source and origin of all
the rational soul's operations, the head is their workshop. In
fact, the mind does not apprehend, nor is it affected, unless the
spirits reach the brain (III, 365-6).



The enormous importance Vives attaches to the exploration of the
emotions is reflected in the fact that he describes the branch of
philosophy that provides a remedy for the severe diseases of the soul
not only as "the foundation of all morality, private as well as
public" (III, 299-300), but also as "the supreme
form of learning and knowledge" (I, 17). Emotions (*affectus
sive affectiones*) are defined as "the acts of those
faculties which nature gave to our souls for the pursuit of good and
the avoidance of evil, by means of which we are led toward the good
and we move away from or against evil". He stresses that the
terms "good" and "evil" in this definition
mean, not what is in reality good or evil, but rather what each person
judges to be good or evil (III, 422). Therefore, the more pure and
elevated the judgment, the more it takes account of what is genuinely
good and true, admitting fewer and less intense emotions and becoming
disturbed more rarely. Immoderate and confused movements, on the other
hand, are the result of ignorance, thoughtlessness, and false
judgments, since we judge the good or evil to be greater than it
really is (III, 425).



One of the most distinctive features of Vives' study of the
human soul is the fundamental role that psychological inquiry came to
play in his reform program. His use of psychological principles in his
writings often surpasses that of previous authors in both scope and
detail. He applies these principles, for instance, not only to
individual conduct and education, but also to professional practice,
social reform, and practical affairs in general. According to Vives,
psychology is relevant to all disciplines. "The study of
man's soul", he writes in *De tradendis
disciplinis*, "exercises a most helpful influence on all
kinds of knowledge, because our knowledge is determined by the
intelligence and comprehension of our minds, not by the things
themselves" (VI, 375).


## 6. Influence



Vives' works, which went through hundreds of editions and were
translated into several vernacular languages, continued to be widely
read and extremely influential during the century after their
publication. His critical attitude toward the Aristotelian orthodoxy
of his day left a mark on several authors. Mario Nizolio
(1488-1567) cites Vives numerous times in *De veris
principiis et vera ratione philosophandi contra pseudophilosophos*
(*On the True Principles and True Method of Philosophizing against
the Pseudo-Philosophers*, 1553), an attack on Aristotelian
dialectic and metaphysics, which G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716)
considered to be worth editing more than a hundred years later. In
*Quod nihil scitur* (*That Nothing is Known*, 1581), one
of the best systematic expositions of philosophical skepticism
produced during the sixteenth century, the Portuguese philosopher and
medical writer Francisco Sanches displays a familiarity with *De
disciplinis*, and there are indications that he might also have
been acquainted with *In pseudodialecticos*. In
*Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos*
(*Paradoxical Exercises against the Aristotelians*, 1624), a
skeptical attack on Aristotelianism, Pierre Gassendi says that reading
Vives gave him courage and helped him to free himself from the
dogmatism of Peripatetic philosophy.



Psychology was another area in which Vives enjoyed considerable
success. Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) recommended *De anima
et vita* in the prefatory letter to his *Commentarius de
anima* (*Commentary on the Soul*, 1540). Vives'
influence on the naturalistic pedagogy of the Spaniard Juan Huarte de
San Juan (c.1529-1588), in his celebrated *El examen de
ingenios para las ciencias* (*The Examination of Men's
Wits*, 1575), is undeniable. In his discussion of the passions of
the soul, the Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) counted
Vives among his authorities, pointing out that the study of the
emotions belongs to natural philosophy and medicine as well as to
moral philosophy. Vives' treatise was also an important source
of inspiration for Robert Burton (1577-1640), who, in *The
Anatomy of Melancholy* (1621), repeatedly quotes from *De anima
et vita*. The reference to Vives by Rene Descartes
(1596-1650) in *Les Passions de l'ame* (1649)
suggests that he had read the book.



Although Vives is rarely mentioned in the scholarly literature on the
Scottish philosophy of "Common Sense," the impact of his
thought on leading exponents of the school was significant. William
Hamilton (1788-1856) praised Vives' insights on memory and
the laws of association. In his "Contributions Towards a History
of the Doctrine of Mental Suggestion or Association", he quotes
extensive portions of Vives' account of memory and maintains
that the observations of "the Spanish Aristotelian"
comprise "nearly all of principal moment that has been said upon
this subject, either before or since". Moreover, Vives'
*Dialectices libri quatuor* (1550) was one of the primary
sources of Thomas Reid (1710-1796) in his "A Brief Account
of Aristotle's Logic" (1774).



During the second half of the nineteenth century and the fist decades
of the twentieth, Vives was read and studied by philosophers such as
Ernest Renan (1823-1892), Friedrich Albert Lange
(1828-1875), Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Pierre Duhem
(1861-1916), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), and Jose
Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). Lange regards him as one of the
most important reformers of philosophy of his time and a precursor of
both Bacon and Descartes. According to Ortega y Gasset, Vives'
method, firmly based on experience, and his emphasis on the need to
found a new culture grounded, not in barren speculation, but in the
usefulness of knowledge, anticipate some elements of the modern
*Zeitgeist*.