Rodrigo de Arriaga

Rodrigo de Arriaga (1592 to 1667) was a Spanish philosopher, Jesuit priest and theologian, known as a leading representative of post-Suarezian baroque Jesuit nominalism and called by Richard Popkin the last of the great Spanish Scholastics. Born at Logroño in Castile, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1606, taught in Valladolid and Salamanca, and from 1625 worked at the University of Prague for the rest of his life, serving as professor of theology, prefect of studies and chancellor of the Clementinum. His Cursus Philosophicus of 1632 was a widely used Jesuit textbook that adapted scholastic logic, metaphysics and physics to modern use, rejected the ontological argument and held immortality to be only probable. He defended heliocentrism despite the ecclesiastical prohibitions, called for greater liberty in philosophy, and influenced Jan Marek Marci, Juan Caramuel and Leibniz.