- First name
- Johannes
- Last name
- Raey, de
- Date of Birth
- 1622
- Date of Death
- 1702
- Born in
- Wageningen
- Died in
- Amsterdam
Johannes de Raey studied medicine in Utrecht and philosophy under Adriaan Heereboord in Leiden. He took out a doctoral degree (1647) in Medicine (1597–1663), and became Leiden professor of philosophy (extraordinarius, 1653–61, ordinarius, 1661). He started to teach Cartesian philosophy in 1647 or 1648 in privatissima. Later he became philosophy professor at the Athenaeum illustre in Amsterdam. De Raey knew René Descartes personally and saw in him the perfection of Aristotelianism. He agreed with him that sense perception and intellectual thought are mental operations and stripped the Cartesian method of its metaphysical theory. Later, De Raey took part in polemical debates centering round radical interpretations of Descartes. In lectures and disputations he argued that it was impossible that Cartesianism was capable of damaging or undermining Calvinist theologian doctrines. His most important work was: Clavis philosophiae naturalis seu Introductio ad naturae contemplationem Aristotelico-Cartesiana, Leiden, 1654; rev. repr, Amsterdam, 1677. See: Verbeek, 1992, passim; Verbeek, 1993; DDP, vol. 2, pp. 813–6.