Rodrigo de Arriaga was a Spanishphilosopher, theologian and Jesuit. He is known as one of the foremost Spanish Jesuits of his day and as a leading representative of post-Suárezian baroque Jesuit nominalism.
Life
Born in 1592, at Logroño in Castile, he joined the Society of Jesus on September 17, 1606, when he was 14 years old. He studied philosophy and theology under Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza. He taught philosophy and theology in Valladolid and theology in Salamanca. Having learned from the letters of the general of the order that it would be for the greater glory of God if some Spanish Jesuits went to Bohemia to teach the most advanced subjects, he volunteered for this employment. He arrived in Prague in 1625. Arriaga taught theology in Prague from 1626 to 1637. Subsequently, he served as dean of the theology faculty in 1637–1642, and again in 1654–1667. He solemnly received the degree of Doctor of Theology, and he gained a wide reputation. The province of Bohemia three times made him a deputy to Rome to attend the general congregations of the order there. He was highly esteemed by Urban VIII, Innocent X, and the Emperor Ferdinand III. He died in Prague on June 17, 1667. Arriaga published two works:
Cursus Philosophicus, Antwerp, 1632; Paris, 1637, 1639; Lyon, 1644, 1647, 1653, 1659, 1669,, all in folio;
Disputationes Theologicae in Summam Divi Thomae, a work of which the author published eight folio volumes, and was composing a ninth at the time of his death. This ponderous series of dissertations on Thomas Aquinas was published in successive volumes as follows: vols. I and II Disputationes in Primam Partem, Antwerp, 1643; Lyon, 1644, 1669; vols. III and IV Disputationes in Primam Secundae, Antwerp, 1644; Lyon, 1669; vol. V Disputationes in Secundam Secundae, Antwerp, 1649; Lyon 1651; vols. VI, VII and VIII Disputationes in Tertiam Partem, Antwerp, 1650-55; Lyon, 1654-1669
De Oratore Libri Quatuor, Cologne, 8vo. In all likelihood this is an edition of the Rhetor Christianus of Pablo José Arriaga;
Brevis Expositio Literae Magistri Sententiarum, published, besides previous editions, at Lyon, 1636, 8vo. This work likewise is supposed to be wrongly assigned to Rodrigo de Arriaga.
During Arriaga's own lifetime his reputation was very high, not only in Spain, but in the country where he spent the long period of his self-imposed exile. So great was his intellectual authority and his fame as a teacher that he was the subject of a popular quip: "Pragam videre, Arriagam audire"—"To see Prague, to hear Arriaga". His name has now become very obscure; but it still maintains a place in the history of philosophy. Among the abortive attempts which were made in the course of the seventeenth century, principally by the religious orders in Spain, to resuscitate the philosophy of the schoolmen, the Cursus Philosophicus of Arriaga, scholastic alike in contents, in arrangement, and in form, was one of the most skilful. Even a cursory inspection of the work shows its author to have been a man of great acuteness and subtlety, and of praiseworthy candour. The position which he occupies in the annals of speculative philosophy has been indicated by Morhof and Bayle, whose view is adopted by Brucker, and is fully supported by the tenor of Arriaga's writings. He had studied with attention the recent writings of the anti-Aristotelians; and, giving effect to many of the opinions advanced by them, he endeavoured by modifications and concessions to adapt to modern use the logic and metaphysics, but still more the physical hypotheses, of his scholastic masters. It seems to be admitted, that in this attempt at compromise he went farther than any of the scholastic philosophers of his time. His modern critics lament the misapplication of the fine qualities which his mind evidently possessed. In his own day, as a Jesuit teaching the doctrines then approved by his order, he was indeed safe from any serious charge of heterodoxy; but his position as a partial innovator laid him open to many attacks from the uncompromising adherents of the old philosophical systems. The Platonist, Jan Marek Marci in his Philosophia Vetus Restituta, seized upon Arriaga's concessions as proving the unsoundness of the foundations upon which the Aristotelian philosophy rests. In other quarters he was openly denounced as a sceptic, and accused of wilfully suppressing or weakening the answers to plausible objections against the system which he professed to teach. This charge, unwarranted by any real design on the part of Arriaga, was founded upon his usual method of exposition; for, after laying down his proposition, he discusses successively all the powerful objections to it, to many of which he makes answers which are far from being satisfactory.
Influence
Very innovative in metaphysics and natural philosophy, Arriaga rejected the ontological argument, denying the possibility of demonstrating a priori the existence of God. Regarding the structure of the universe, he accepted the fluid nature of planetary space, though he rejected the arguments from astronomical observations. While the Revisers General attempted to enforce uniformity within the Society, Arriaga called for greater liberty in philosophy. In the preface of the first edition of his Cursus Philosophicus Arriaga argued explicitly in favour of new opinions. Was there not just as much genius in Thomas, Cajetan, Molina, and Suàrez as in the ancients? Since we have studied much since the ancients, he wondered, "why then is it not proper for us to deduce new conclusions?" Antiquity was no guarantee of the truth of any opinion, for in his view it was truly amazing how many ancient opinions had virtually no foundation but were based simply on the badly understood authority of Aristotle or some other philosopher. Arriaga therefore, gave up most of the received opinions of the Schools in points of natural philosophy, such as the composition of the continuum, rarefaction, etc. and undertook to defend the innovators in philosophy. In his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, Pierre Bayle praises him as one of the greatest academics of his time. Arriaga exerted a strong influence on the Czech physician Jan Marek Marci, on the Italian scholarValeriano Magni and on the Spanish philosopher and scientist Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz. The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used his works extensively. It can also be assumed that Descartes's treatment of the problems of rarefaction and condensation is influenced by Arriaga. His work was, however, sometimes controversial. Arriaga was accused of supporting the Zenonist doctrine of quantity. This doctrine, which asserted that quantity consisted of points, had been repeatedly and strenuously rejected by the revisers general as incompatible with the orthodox account of Eucharist. In a letter from General Vincenzo Carafa, Arriaga was named as the source of the diffusion of this doctrine in Germany. The text in question was doubtless his philosophy textbook, Cursus philosophicus, which enjoyed wide circulation throughout the German Province of the Society of Jesus.
