Clauberg, Johannes (1622–1665)

Summary

Clauberg was born at Solingen (Germany) in 1622. Under the influence of Gérard de Neufville (1590–1648), his philosophy teacher at Bremen, he became interested in the works of Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670). In 1644 that led him to continue his studies at Groningen with Tobias Andreae (1604–76), professor of history and Greek, and to become deeply involved with the Comenian movement. After two years at Groningen and an extended journey to France and England, Clauberg returned to the United Provinces in 1648. Meanwhile his first book was published at Groningen – a text displaying strong Comenian influences (Clauberg 1647). Clauberg went to Leiden to attend the lessons of Johannes de Raey (1622–1702), already a prominent Cartesian. In November 1648, Clauberg was sounded on a professorship in theology at Herborn (Germany), but he reacted saying that he preferred a professorship in philosophy. Eventually he had to teach both philosophy and theology. At Herborn, Clauberg and his friend Christoph Wittich (1625–87), assistant professor of mathematics and, like himself, an outspoken Cartesian, became the object of attacks on behalf of the orthodox, which in 1651 led to the official adoption of Aristotelian rule. As a result, Clauberg and Wittich accepted a call to Duisburg (Germany), where Clauberg would remain until the end of his years. Apart from defending Descartes against orthodox attacks (Clauberg 1652, 1655), Clauberg's main efforts were directed at normalizing Cartesian philosophy, that is, at reintegrating an essentially nonacademic philosophy into the professional academic tradition. This meant not only that he reduced Cartesian texts to a didactic format but also that he supplied what had been left uncompleted by Descartes himself. Apart from explaining and defending Descartes’ metaphysics and physics, he notably produced an Old and New Logic (1654). In this book, Clauberg attempts to rewrite logic in Cartesian terms, presenting it as a “medicine of the mind” and integrating into one corpus all disciplines that are somehow concerned with method, including traditional logic, the logic of invention, and the method of interpretation. Until the Logic of Port-Royal (1662), this book would remain the standard textbook of modern logic.