Vives resides at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he has been made doctor of laws and lectured on philosophy.

His most important pedagogic works are Introductio ad sapientiam (1524); De disciplinis, which stresses the urgent importance of more rational programs of studying; De prima philosophia; and the Exercitatio linguae latinae, a Latin textbook.

His philosophical works include De anima et vita (1538), De veritate fidei Christianae; and "De Subventione Pauperum Sive de Humanis Necessitatibus" (On Assistance To The Poor) (1526), the first tract of its kind in the Western world to treat the problem of urban poverty and propose concrete suggestions for a policy of social legislation.

Vives detects through philological analysis that the supposed author of the so-called Letter of Aristeas, purporting to describe the Biblical translation of the Septuagint, could not have been a Greek but must have been a Jew who lived after the events he described had transpired.

Having declared himself against the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Vives loses royal favor and is confined to his house for six weeks.

On his release, he withdraws to Bruges, where he will devote the rest of his life to the composition of numerous works, chiefly directed against the scholastic philosophy and the preponderant unquestioning authority of Aristotle.

The most important of his treatises is the De Causis Corruptarum Artium, which has been ranked with Bacon's Organon.