Background
He was the son of Tobias Wittich and nephew of Christophorus Wittichius, and was born in Aachen.
mathematician philosopher university professor
He was the son of Tobias Wittich and nephew of Christophorus Wittichius, and was born in Aachen.
He studied under Herman Alexander Roëll, at the University of Franeker.
In 1717 he was a candidate for a chair at the University of Groningen, and was opposed by the theologian Antonius Driessen. Once he was given the chair, Wittichius found that Driessen continued to campaign against him, using an unauthorized Dutch translation of his Duisburg dissertation (anonymous but from the circle of Ruardus Andala). And his links to de Volder.
Leiden city and university now resisted outside pressure from Rotterdam in particular.
Johann Franz Buddeus intervened, getting the Jena theology faculty to assert that the views of Wittichius were close to those of Spinoza and Abraham Joannes Cuffeler. Wittichius was comprehensively attacked in a pamphlet by Jacobus Leydekker in 1719.
Wittichius went on in combative fashion in his inaugural oration, with praise for Francis Bacon and Galileo, blame for the approach in philosophy of Gisbertus Voetius, employing Cartesian terminology, and making an allusion to Spinoza"s Ethics. He continued to attack the views of Driessen and the Roëll family.
Taco Hajo van den Honert of the University of Leiden moved in to defend Wittichius, and in the end he accepted a chair at Leiden instead. His position became a matter of wide discussion in the United Provinces. He defended himself by analogy with Johannes Bredenburg, and arguing that Cartesianism was effective against Spinozism.