When we speak of a Wolffian school, it
is not just Christian Wolff himself we are thinking of, but a whole
parade of more minor figures who in some sense continued the work of
their masters. The 1720s appear to be the earliest point at which we
can speak of Wolffians as a recognizable philosophical movement. I have already discussed a dissertation of
one Wolffian, Bilfinger, that appeared 1722, and the topic of the
current post, Meletemata varii et rarioris argumenti in unum
volumen collecta, contains
dissertations and essays published during 1720s.
Although the name
does not reveal it, the continuous references to the works of the
illustrious Wolff suggest that the writers are hard core Wolffians.
Most of the contributors are quite minor names in the school and apparently did
not even publish anything after their dissertation, so I'll skip
introducing them. The only exception is the editor of the collection,
Ludvig Philip Thümmig, a faithful follower of Wolff.
What I
am mostly interested in this collection is the range of different
topics discussed, which reflects well the multifarious nature of
Wolff's philosophy. A considerable number of the essays concern
natural or mathematical sciences, which was the original research
field of Wolff and which he still continued to study even when he had
already started his famous series on reasonable thoughts on nearly
everything – even at this time Wolff published a series called
Allerhand nützliche Versuche
(All sorts of useful studies), which dealt with such important
problems as how we can weigh objects or use a thermometer. The pupils
of Wolff appear to have been interested at least of biology (there's
an essay on how to study leaves), but especially of astronomy and
”things happening up in the sky”, like propagation of light.
It is
not just physics that interested pupils of Wolff, but there are also
more philosophical essays that concern all the four Rational
thoughts we have encountered
thus far. There's a logical discourse on the necessary and contingent
concepts, which also has ontological consequences – the writer
argues how Wolffian distinction between absolute and conditional
necessity discredits Spinoza's idea that the world is necessary,
because the existence of the world is not impossible, but depends on
the free choice of God. This writing is the first sign thus far of
the looming threat of Spinozan pantheism – we have more to say on
the matter in a couple of decades.
Furthermore, the
collection contains a metaphysical study of the immortality of soul –
or more likely, it is an advertisement of the Wolffian proof, which
is based on the simplicity of the soul and the supposed impossibility
of a material basis of thinking. The only novelty in the essay
appears to be the author's idea that the life of soul consists of a
clarification of its ideas: the newborn child has only confused
ideas, but the soul of a dead person sees everything distinctly.
Despite its unoriginality, the essay shows well the appreciation of
Wolff's rational psychology in contemporary Germany. Indeed, I think
that Kant's theory of paralogisms is primarily targeted towards
Wolffian ideas.
Morality is also
topic of an essay, which analyses the notion of sincerity. A
considerable portion of the essay is dedicated to defending Wolff's
ideas of China as an atheist and still a moral nation – an issue
that will surface often in the writings of 1720s.
Wolffian politics
is not forgotten, although this essasy covers also architectural
ideas. The author follows Wolff's suggestion that the needs of a
comunnity determine what is good art. The outcome of the argument is
that the Wolffian writings on architecture fulfill this criterion of
good art perfectly.
It is
this final tendency of subjugating art to the moral upbringing of
people that will be the topic of my next post, where I'll discuss my
first piece of fiction.
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