Bartholomew Des Bosses (29 August 1668, Chaineux; 17 April 1738,

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

) was a Jesuit theologian and philosopher, known mainly for his voluminous correspondence with

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many ...

Biography

Des Bosses joined the

Society of Jesus The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...

in 1686. In 1700, he taught at the Jesuit college in Emmerich, later moving to

Hildesheim Hildesheim (; or ; ) is a city in Lower Saxony, in north-central Germany with 101,693 inhabitants. It is in the district of Hildesheim (district), Hildesheim, about southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste River, a small tributary of t ...

. He remained there until moving in 1710 to Cologne, taking up an appointment as professor of mathematics (and later moral philosophy) at the Jesuit college there. Apart from a stay in Paderborn in 1712 and 1713, he remained in Cologne for the rest of his life. Des Bosses met Leibniz sometime in 1705 and agreed to translate his Theodicee into Latin. Their correspondence continued until Leibniz's death in 1716. The letters contained a tentative elaboration of a new feature of Leibniz's philosophy known as the vinculum subtantiale (substantial bond).Look B., ''Leibniz and the "vinculum substantiale"'', Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999.

References

1668 births 1738 deaths Jesuits from the Spanish Netherlands Christian philosophers 17th-century German philosophers 18th-century German philosophers 17th-century German Catholic theologians 17th-century German male writers German male non-fiction writers 18th-century German Catholic theologians Jesuit theologians 18th-century German writers 18th-century German male writers {{RC-philosopher-stub