Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 204

JUAN LUIS VIVES (1492-1540) De anima et vita libri tres. In officina Roberti Winter 1538] [8] 264 [48] pp. 20.9 cm.

Vives was a native of Valencia who studied at Paris and was appointed professor of humanities at Louvain. In 1522 he dedicated his commentary on St. Augustine's De civitate Dei to Henry VIII. The following year Henry invited him to England where he was appointed preceptor to Mary, Princess of Wales. He also lectured in rhetoric, history, and philosophy at Oxford and was closely associated with Thomas More, another noted humanist of the time. Vives opposed Henry's royal divorce from Catherine of Aragon and was imprisoned for six weeks; in 1528 he returned to Bruges, the center of Renaissance humanism, and Louvain where he ended his career in teaching and writing. He had a great interest in education and wrote a number of books on this subject. Vives recommended a major reorganization of teaching methods, wanted the vernacular used in the classroom, advocated the education of women, and favored the establishment of public schools to prepare students for the academy. He also believed that knowledge was only of value when utilized to bring about the summum bonum ("greatest good"). The present work is among his most important treatises and one of the early books devoted to psychology. It is here that he works to formulate his principles of human psychology and emphasizes induction as a method of psychological and philosophical discovery. He was concerned with and discussed the dynamic role of the emotions, problems related to the nature of memory, and the association of ideas. Vives was a traditional Renaissance humanist in many aspects but he also presented much new thought that was far ahead of his time.

Cited references: Cushing V161 (Zurich, 1563); Krivatsky 271 (Zurich, 1563)

Gift of John Martin, M.D.