Lodewijk Meyer

Lodewijk Meyer (also Meijer) (1629–25 November 1681) was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, and playwright. He was an Enlightenment radical who was one of the more prominent members of the circle around the philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza.

He published an anonymous work, the Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres. It was initially attributed to Spinoza, and caused a furore among preachers and theologians, with its claims that the Bible was in many places opaque and ambiguous; and that philosophy was the only criterion for interpretation of cruxes in such passages. Just after the death of Meyer his friends revealed that he was the author of the work, which had been banned.

References

• Wiep van Bunge et al. (editors), The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers (2003), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Meyer, Lodewijk, p. 694–9.

Works

• The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy and Metaphysical Thoughts by Baruch Spinoza contains Meyer's Preface and also his Inaugural Dissertation on Matter (1660). It is translated by Samuel Shirley and published by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1998, ISBN 0-87220-400-6.