Lange: Short demolition of those theories, which in Wolffian philosophy are adverse to natural and revealed religion, indeed even destroy them, and straight away, while in deception, sought by many, lead to atheism and Wolff: Detailed answer to D. Lange's short demolition next to its meager content (1737?)

I mentioned couple of posts ago the so-called Wertheim translation of Bible, which went quite far in pushing time-honoured revelation to a form more suitable to current advances in science – the translation was apparently even filled with remarks explaining e.g. what actually happened from a physical point of view in all six days of creation. I've already described the attempt of pietists to connect the publication of this translation with their pet peeve, the Wolffian philosophy. As a part of this attempt, Lange started to circulate a short work called Kurtzer Abriß derjenigen Lehr-Sätze, welche in der Wolffischen Philosophie der natürlichen und geoffenbahrten Religion nachtheilig sind, ja sie gar aufheben, und gerades Weges, ob wohl bey vieler gesuchter Verdeckung, zur Atheisterey verleiten, which is essentially just a summary of all the criticism Lange had targeted against Wolff throughout the years – no consideration of Wolff's new writings, no attempt at any dialogue, just condemnation and accusation.

Wolff answered Lange with his own text, Ausführliche Antwort auf D. Langens kurzen Abriß nebst einem kurzen Inhalt derselben. I have not found an accurate dating for Wolff's text, but since I have read the text from a collection of texts including also Lange's original and various defences of Wolff's doctrines, from 1737, we may assume that Wolff published it either this or the previous year. We need not go in great detail to this work, since most of it is rather familiar from Wolff's previous books: Wolff, for instance, notes that he does not think soul is deterministic, because it is completely outside the machinery of the world, and remarks that the doctrine of pre-established harmony merely denies immediate causal influence of soul to body, but accepts that soul can affect body indirectly through God.

The existence of the collection, the clear purpose of which was to defend Wolff against slanderous accusations, speaks of a turn in the tide of German philosophy. This turn would be concluded in 1740 by the assumption of the Prussian throne by Fredrick II, who would recall Wolff back to Halle from his involuntary exile to Marburg. Lange himself died in 1744, so this a fitting place to consider his overall importance to the development of German philosophy.

Johann Joachim Lange (1670-1744)

The main influence of Lange was one of criticism – starting from 1720s Lange wrote a number of critical treatises of Wolffian philosophy. Sometimes his criticism hit a crucial spot, especially when it came to the issues of necessity and human freedom, which Wolff had at first not explained adequately. Often Lange's attack was quite unjustified, like when he accused Wolff of teaching the eternity of the universe. Unfortunately, the discussion became quite heated, and Lange never bothered to change his convictions about Wolff's intentions, which is quite evident in his final treatises.

When it comes to Lange's own positive doctrines, there is very little to say, mostly because his main academic works belonged not to philosophy, but to theology, and even more, to Bible exegesis. There was a clear Cartesian streak in his early writings and especially in his endorsement of a true causal influence between soul and body. Lange, like all pietists, is also an important precursor of later anti-Enlightenment writers, like Jacobi and Hamann.

Next time it is time to say farewell to another opponent of Wolff, the much more talented Hoffmann.

Joachim Lange: Philosophical mockery of religion; Hoffman: Proofs of such basic truths of all religion and morality, which are denied by opposites found in Wolffian philosophy and which have been confounded (1736)

In 1735, a translation of the five books of Moses was published in the town of Wertheim by the bookbinder J. G. Nehr. In itself this might sound a harmless event, but the translation was quite controversial. Theologians of the time were quick to point out that the book was rather unorthodox. For instance, it appeared to avoid all references to Godhood containing more persons than one, thus being in complete opposition to the dogma of trinity.

Wolff's opponontes were quick to connect this translation with Wolffian philosophy, although the reason behind this connection seems quite murky – perhaps it was just a case of putting all your enemies into one group. Lange's Der Philosophische Religions-Spötter was more concerned with attacking the Wertheim translation through a heavy exegetical artillery, but it also contained a linking of this translation with Wolff. Lange is quick to point out that the infamous translation reeks of mechanistic philosophy, the supporters of which tend to raise their own understanding above Bible.

While Lange's attack has then little of philosophical value Hoffman's Beweisthümer dererjenigen Grund-Wahrheiten aller Religion und Moralität, welche durch die in der Wolffischen Philosophie befindlichen Gegensätze haben geleugnet, und über den Haufen geworfen werden wollen is once again more satisfying work. True, Hoffman does dedicate the last few pages to attacking the translation, but his main criticism is once again left for Wolff's philosophy.

Even the introduction, usually the least interesting part in the books of this period, has many lovely moments, for instance, when Hoffman declares that there is one thing he disagrees with Lange, who thought that he saw something good in Wolff's philosophy, while Hoffman discerned nothing of value in it. Within few pages Hoffman argues that Wolff's works lack originality and that they are utterly without any practical value – here Hoffman makes fun of Wolff's tips about eating and drinking regularly, as such things must have been told everyone by their parents, and ends up with hinting that Wolff might have fared better with a career in interior decoration, since he appears to be so interested of the topic in his ethics.

This is all, of course, a bit of tomfoolery, but Hoffman soon moves onto more serious issues, for he sees a more alarming weakness in Wolff's philosophy, namely, its incapacity of giving proper foundations to philosophy. True, Wolff does boast of a mathematical method, but by this he means mere syllogisms, which cannot reveal anything new. Hoffman accuses Wolffian logic of containing no logic of probability – and at this point I must wonder, whether he had read Wolff's Latin logic at all, because it does contain some rudimentary work on probabilities.

Problems of Hoffman's interpretation of Wolff increase in the main body of the text, where it comes increasingly clear that Hoffman reads Wolff through pietist specitacles – so full of passages, in which Wolff is seen as a mechanistic Spinozan and immoral atheist, is Hoffman's text. The most Hoffman acknowledges is the possibility that he and his companions just haven't understood Wolff' points, but this is then Wolff's fault, for surely competently learned men should have no difficulties in understanding – a rather naive view, I'd say.

But the most interesting part of the whole work comes when Hoffman drops criticism and tries to argue for the theses that Wolff's philosophy supposedly denies. Of an utmost importance if Hoffman's attack against the principle of sufficient reason. He is quick to point out that he is not speaking for complete randomness of all occurrences. Indeed, the Leibnizian principle works just fine in the realm of passive entities, which cannot determine themselves to anything new, such as material things. If a state of, say, a rock is nor completely explained by its previous state (e.g. if the rock has diverted from its trajectory), then the reason for this change must be found outside the rock.

Case is completely different, Hoffman insists, with entities that can actively make things happen, which are not completely determined by previous states of affairs. Hoffman assures us that this does not mean things coming out of thin air, or even worse, vacuum – there must be something, before something else can arise. What Hoffman wants to argue for is the possibility of events occurring without being completely determined by previous events. There was nothing to say that e.g. God should have created this, or indeed, any world, at this particular moment of time, because it was a completely spontaneous choice on his part.

The non-universality of the principle of sufficient reason is not meant to help only in theological questions, but especially when it comes to freedom of will. Human will is not completely free, Hoffman accepts, because it, for instance, habituates itself to various practices it just follows blindly. Yet, it does occasionally make choices that are completely unpredictable and even chooses things it apparently does not want to do and avoids things it wants.

Hoffman's notion is important as a precursor of Kant's later idea of free will and its spontaneity being somehow against the causality principle. Yet, we might doubt if it really worked as a criticism of Wolff's philosophy. We have seen reasons to suggest that Wolff did not think motives worked like causes do, but perhaps left some room for true choices. In any case, Wolff's principle of sufficient reason is far more complicated than Hoffman realised.

Considering that this post was about Wolff's opponents reading some theological notions to Wolff's works, it will be quite appropriate to begin next time with Wolff's own theological works.

Joachim Lange: Hundred and thirty questions of the new mechanical philosophy and Philosophical questions from the new mechanical morality; Hoffman: Thoughts of the current state of scholarship (1734)

The reader might well think that by dedicating one post to three different works I am insinuating that the works are not of particular importance or even bad. The suspicion is at least partially right, at least when it comes to two works by Joachim Lange. One might remember that Lange was almost a leading figure in the attacks of pietists against Wolffian philosophy, which finally led to the end of Wolff's career in Halle and his forced move to the University of Marburg. The two works of Lange, Hundert und dreyßig Fragen aus der neuen mechanischen Philosophie and Philosophische Fragen Aus der neuen Mechanischen Morale ,were occasioned by the attempt of king Friedrich Wilhem of Prussia to call Wolff back from his exile in 1733 – the king had come to regret his earlier decision, because Wolff's case had raised objections all over the Europe. Lange's attempt was to speak against Wolff's return by reminding everyone of the evil consequences of his philosophy – somewhat in vain, because Wolff simply rejected king's offer.

Lange's doubts concerning Wolff's philosophy were old, but so were his arguments against it. With similar strategy as before, Lange picks up Wolff's statements out of their context and draws some insinuating consequences out of them. His particular target in the first writing is the Leibnizian pre-established harmony between body and soul, which combines, according to Lange. Spinozan materialism with idealistic solipsism and makes both body and soul into mere deterministic clockworks. This is all quite familiar from Lange's earlier writings, and the only new feature appears to be his answer to Wolff's suggestion that pre-established harmony might be a mere reasonable hypothesis – science and philosophy should not consider mere hypothesis, but truths, Lange proclaims proudly.

While Lange's new works are then a bit of a disappointment. Hoffman's Gedancken von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Gelehrsamkeit is somewhat interesting, despite the rather simple nature of the text. Hoffman's work is a sort of advertisement for his own lectures – it was a common habit among scholars of the period that such ads were prefaced by short essays showing the expertise of the lecturer. Hoffman's essay is a work on the state of modern philosophy and especially describes what is wrong with it.

Hoffman begins with a short analogy: philosophers have been like people constructing everyone their own buildings with their own taste and fancy and without any general plan what the whole city should look like. The result is obviously a mismatch of different and even incompatible styles built side by side and even on top of one another – when one has constructed an edifice, another comes and tears it up to make room for his own plans.

Hoffman specifies three particular problems in modern philosophy, first two of which concern the relation of philosophical and scientific theories to practice. Firstly, philosophical and scientific theories have been utterly useless in actual practice. This is a sign, Hoffmann says, that these theories are considerably bad, since general theories should be of immense worth when deciding what to do in particular cases (Hoffman has especially medicine and jurisdiction in mind). One might think that actual practicioners might be able to make – if not complete theories, then at least – generalisations out of the particular cases they've witnessed. But this brings us to the second problem that practicioners are usually so bad that they muddle things more than they help them – doctors make people even sicker and jurists just raise legal quibbles.

The third problem that Hoffman points out is the most interesting: lack of controversy. True, he has just criticised the way that scholars tear down what the other has built, but even this tearing down has happened without any scholarly interaction. Instead of saying what is problematic what is wrong with other person's writing, they just officially praise the works of co-scholars and in actual practice ignore them, when making their own contribution. Actual criticism, Hoffman thinks, is in fact a sign that scholars care for what the others say and good criticism is meant to improve their work.

Due to these faults, it is no wonder that some people have renounced philosophy altogether. In Hoffman's eyes this is a wrong answer to a real problem – it is like closing your eyes instead of fixing things. Hoffman enumerates four types of such unphilosophical scholars. The bottom rang of this hierarchy is formed by critics, who learn much of externalities of scholarly book printing: when was this and that book published etc. Not so much better are stylists, who pay much more regard to the style than the content of books. The two higher type of unphilosophical scholars are interested of the content, but they study it unphilosophically and unsystematically. First of therse are memorisers, who learn sentences that are arbitrarily pulled out of books. The highest type of unphilosophical scholars are the experientialists, who learn only the essential, but unexplained data provided by experiences – these scholars are often practicing doctors or lawyers who fail to appreciate the usefulness of systematic theory.

Even scholars who do appreciate philosophy might apply it unsuccesfully, Hoffman continues. First sort of such philosophers are titularists, who fail in a manner opposite to experientialists: they merely repeat some general and even vulgar tautologies, which they cannot connect with actual practice.

By far the most interesting class of Hoffman's classification failed scholars is the last, paralogists, who, as the name belies, use faulty reasoning. It is this group in which Hoffman things Wolff and his 

followers belong. Hoffman even provides an example of Wolff's faulty reasoning. Wolff had suggested that bodies have forces and all features of complex bodies must be grounded on their simple constituents, then even these constituents or elements must have forces. Hoffman points out that the features of bodies are not actually determined just by their parts, but also by their manner of combining with one another – for instance, unextended elements are combined in such a manner that an extended body is generated out of them. Similarly to extension, force might be something that is only generated through combination of elements.

This is what Wolff's opponents had been up to. Next I am coming back to Gottsched's philosophy.

Speech about Chinese practical philosophy, recited in solemn panegyric (1726) and New anatomy or analytical idea of Wolffian metaphysical system (1726)

I have already mentioned the lecture ofChinese philosophy held by Christian Wolff and explained the rather drastic consequences of this lecture, namely, the accusations of atheism and the expulsion from hisposition. What is still left is to actually describe the lecture itself. While it was held in 1721, written versions of it appeared only few years afterwards. I am especially interested of a version that was published in 1726, called simply Oratio de sinarum philosophia practica, in solemni panegyri recitata, because in this version Wolff had annotated his original speech and thus explained his ideas further.

The lecture itself holds no surprises after reading Bilfinger's more detailed presentation of the topic. Wolff notes that while form of the Confucianism differs from modern moral philosophy – Confucius uses examples, where Europeans would have preferred deductions, and rituals form a large part of moral education – but essentially emphasizes the commonalities. For instance, Confucius divided human being into two parts – sensuousness and reason – and advised one to subjugate senses to guidance of reason, because this is what made human beings perfect and led to tranquility, just like states were happier if governed by wise men. Furthermore, Confucius suggested we should use external glory as an incentive for moral progression: one had more motive to be e.g. kind to other people, if kindness was something that the community thought worthwhile and commendable.

What especially the annotations show is Wolff's wish to downplay the possible atheist leanings in Chinese philosophy. As I have already mentioned in a previous post, it is rather difficult to say whether Confucianism endorsed the idea of a personal god or merely just the existence of an impersonal force. Wolff appears to speak for the more theist interpretation of Confucius or at least he attempts to argue for its plausibility.

A completely opposite view of Confucianism is suggested in Lange's Nova anatome, seu idea analytica systematis metaphysici Wolfiani. The work is actually a collection of Lange's texts, and a large part of it contains a more summarized version of Lange's earlier works attacking Wolffianism. Thus, we see Lange again criticizing Wolff for combining ridiculous idealism with at least equally ridiculous materialism through the Leibnizian notion of pre-established harmony. Lange has clearly just ignored Wolff's many explanations of these questions, so the result is a somewhat skewed view of them. Lange has still read at least Bilfinger's summary of Wolffian metaphysics: for instance, he dismisses Bilfinger's notion of hypothetical necessity, as far too deterministic to form any getaway road.

While these parts of the work feel hence fairly repetitive, Lange also takes some time to attack Wolff's lecture with its annotations. Some of the criticism is rather amusing, for instance, Lange attacks the legends meant to justify the longevity of Chinese wisdom by noting that some of the people involved apparently lived, when the world and China with it was covered by deluge according to the biblical story.

Lange's main complaint about Confucianism is rather predictable. He is convinced that Chinese have no divinity and at times appears to identify Confucianism even with the dreaded Spinozism. No wonder he is outraged when Wolff casually compares Confucius and Mohammed with Moses and even Jesus – a known atheist and a heretic put on the same level with a holy prophet, and even worse, with the son of God.

All in all, there's only one serious piece of criticism against the ethical theories of Confucius and Wolff, namely, that both use glory and ambition as an incentive for moral behaviour. Even here, Lange's argument misses the point. True, it is not truly ethical to do good deeds only because you desire the fame and reputation of a benevolent person – after all, this would leave the possibility that you acted mischievously in cases where no one could ever know. Still, glory and ambition might well be used as tools for educating moral behaviour, and indeed, this is what we do when we thank and praise children for their good behaviour.

So much for Confucius, next time we shall see how Wolff's metaphysics resembles the tale of Robinson Crusoe.

Johann Joachim Lange: Metaphysical-mechanical disputation, on necessity and contingency and freedom, inquiry for determining necessary errors of Spinozism and others (1724)

We have seen Lange criticizing Wolffian philosophy, but his own opinions have remained mostly hidden. Now, the veil of mystery is to be opened a bit, when I study Lange's Disputatio metaphysica mechanica, de necessario et contingenti ac libero, notiones ad dijudicationem Spinosismi aliorumque errorum necessarias.

The topic of Lange's treatise is apparently rather dry and academic: modalities, that is, concepts of possibility, necessity, impossibility and contingency. Yet, behind these abstractions lies the problem of determinism and freedom that the dispute between Wolff and Lange circled. Lange had criticized Wolff for not separating geometric and physical necessity – Wolff could say that the deterministic world was not necessary, because for him only God was a truly necessary entity, while the concrete world was necessary only if one already assumed the fact of creation.

We can at once note that Lange was perhaps a bit unfair in his condemnation of Wolffian notion of necessity as a mere geometric necessity of Spinoza. As I have argued, for Wolff, necessity of God is not just logical necessity or logical contradiction of the non-existence of God. Instead, God cannot fail to exist, because he has in himself sufficient power to exist – nothing can stop God from existing. In other words, God is absolutely necessary, because he does not require any external boost for becoming actual, while all the other things are at most just hypothetically necessary, because they do require such a boost.

For Lange, on the contrary, absolute necessity is twofold. God is absolutely necessary in the same manner as with Wolff: he requires nothing for becoming actual and exists therefore eternally. Absolute necessity of God is internal, but there is also external absolute necessity – namely, with things that depend only of God and not of any other free agents. External absolute necessity is then the immutability of certain deterministic things that lie beyond control of humans, such as the motions of planets.

Concept of hypothetical necessity in then restricted by Lange to things that lie in human control. This notion of hypothetical necessity clearly requires at least partial freedom of human beings – free choices are the only real source of contingency in the world. The existence of hypothetical necessity requires also that these free choices can have real effects on the world – otherwise, the contingency would be restricted to mental processes, which would be causally closed in relation to the physical world.

What Lange then does in comparison with Wolff is to emphasize the special role of finite free entities. God has, in a sense, just created the general features of the world, while the filling of the world with particular content has been left for the free choice of his creations – God has given the human being the tools, but it is human being himself who can choose how to use these tools.

Lange runs into some obvious problems, when he tries to reconcile his notion of human freedom with the idea of divine omniscience. In order that human freedom be real, God should not have decided what human beings should do, still, he must also know what they will do. There might be no problem, if God just knew on instinct what the future is like – if I know beforehand that Peter will go to work tomorrow, I am still not the cause of Peter's future actions, which could well be freely chosen by him. Problem is that God has also created human beings – if he chose to create Peter, he should have known what Peter would do in future – thus, he should be at least partially responsible for his actions: he could have chosen not to create Peter, if he knew Peter would become criminal. Problem is that Lange never faces the problem adequately, hence, the very same lack of moral responsibility of which he blames Wolff and other deterministic philosophies falls on his own theological notion of freedom.

Next time I'll take another look at Wolffian metaphysics.

Christian Wolff: A required addition to Remarks on Dr. Budde's Concern over Wolffian philosophy, given by instigation of Buddian answer (1724)

There are couple of early German philosophers I have decided to ignore, mainly because their main works were published long before even Wolff had become a household name of German philosophy. First of these, Christian Thomasius, I have mentioned earlier, because we have seen a number of his followers. The other is Johann Budde, whose main philosophical works appeared already at the beginning of the 18^th century. By the time I am currently discussing, Budde had begun to turn his attention mainly to theological issues.

Budde had apparent affinities with the Thomasian school and especially its more pietist proponents, like Lange, and indeed, like Lange, he had written an article meant against the supposedly atheist influence of Spinoza. Furthermore, Budde had wrote against Wolff a twenty-page-article, Bedenken von der Wolffischen Philosopie, which contains essentially the same line of criticism that Lange's book I have recently studied expounded in more detail – Wolff's philosophy resembled Spinozism. Wolff answered with his own writing, Anmerkungen über Herrn D. Buddens Bedenken von der Wolffischen Philosophie. At that moment appeared Lange's thorough work on Wolffian philosophy, which included also a review of Wolff's article against Budde – it wasn't a surprise that Lange sided with Budde and blamed Wolff for not answering Budde's points at all. Finally, Wolff published an even more thorough answer, Nöthige Zugabe zu den Anmerkungen über Herrn D. Buddens Bedenken von der Wolffischen Philosophie, auf Veranlassung der Buddischen Antwort heraus gegeben, which I shall look in more detail this time.

The apparent opponent of Wolff is once again Budde, but actually he is more interested of his defender Lange, whom he avoids calling by name – Lange is usually described as an advocate of Budde. Wolff is apparently quite irate by Lange's text and ironically comments how strange it is that someone could study texts so thoroughly and so long without comprehending at all what is said in them. Indeed, Wolff notes how Lange has misunderstood e.g. Wolff's remarks on the possible temporal beginning of the world – Wolff has just said that proving this beginning would be difficult and that no one has done it so far. Wolff even points out that Budde, who was defended by Lange, accepted even more, namely, the Thomistic doctrine that such a proof would be impossible for human reasoning – if Wolff's standpoint leads to atheism, certainly Budde's will do so even more.

Wolff is not satisfied with mere irony, but tries to make the reader comprehend what his philosophy is all about. To this effect, Wolff summarizes the essentials of his philosophy in easily understandable statements. The core of Wolff's philosophy is rather simple: 1) the events and things of the world are connected by influencing and interacting with one another and by being means and ends to one another, 2) the totality of these events and things and laws connecting them or the world is itself contingent, 3) soul has understanding and will, but these two capacities are based on one unitary force, 4) processes in sensory organs correspond to certain sensory experiences, while volitional experiences correspond to certain movements of body, 5) God exists and 6) we can know this with certainty, because the world is contingent and requires God's support.

Wolff's list is rather surprising. Especially unexpected is the complete lack of any ontological propositions: there is no mention, for instance, of Wolff's notion of modalities, of his attempt to base the principle of sufficient reason/ground on the principle of non-contradiction or of the idea of simple substances. In fact, compared to the common idea of Wolff as a speculative rationalist, the list seems rather mundane – even such empiricist as Locke might accept it.

Indeed, Wolff himself notes in the particular case of the pre-established harmony that his philosophy does not at all hinge on this point. What Wolff is committed to is the incontrovertible experience of the statement 4), and pre-established harmony is only a hypothesis explaining that experience – and one which seems most reliable, given the current state of knowledge, where physical laws appear to contradict causal influences between soul and body. If further research disproved the hypothesis, this would be of no concern to Wolff.

One might even suspect that the same reasoning could be applied to the rest of the Wolffian philosophy. Although Wolff presents his philosophy in the manner of a deductive system based on indubitable axioms, the true source of justification lies in experiential information, such as general laws based on findings of science and common sense observations – the ontological system is chosen, because these experiences can be deduced in it as theorems.

So much for Wolff's apology. Next time we shall see another bit of Lange's genius.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy - Law without a lawgiver

Just as Lange criticized Wolffian metaphysics for reducing the role of God in creation, similarly he criticizes Wolffian ethics for reducing the role of God in upholding morality. True, Wolff does admit that knowledge of God does make a moral person blessed – if we are convinced of God's existence, we can be serene in our belief that God will in course of time reward moral people with peaceful and happy life, while the opposite fate waits immoral people. Yet, just like Wolffian God tends to avoid miracles and has preferred to use natural mechanisms to further his goals, similarly the rewards and retributions are mostly just natural results of the very state of mind caused by belief and non-belief in God – God did not need to even exist, because only the belief in him is required for its beneficial results.

Furthermore, Lange refrains Wolff for accepting the possibility of truly moral atheists and even moral societies of atheists. In Lange's eyes, Wolff's worst mistake is to assume that moral laws could be natural in the sense that they required no reference to an obligation towards a lawgiver. In effect, Lange thinks that Wolff can manage this feat only by confusing self-interest with morality – what is good according to Wolff can be found out by reasoning what is the best outcome for me. Indeed, Lange has no difficulties in pointing out how Wolff considers becoming reasonably wealthy a moral responsibility – he might as well have mentioned the duties of eating well and wearing warm clothes that I ridiculed in my consideration of Wolffian ethics. We see here how Lange's criticism parallels the more general criticism of consequential ethics by Kant – moral worth of an action should not be based on how well it serves my wellbeing.

Lange is also not satisfied with Wolff's primary principle of morality: make yourself and others more perfect. In semblance this command might even feel Christian. But when Christianity commands humans to be perfect, it does this to emphasize their imperfect and sinful state. Wolff, on the other hand, appears to believe that humans can by themselves become truly perfect and self-sufficient: a true blasphemy to a pietist like Lange.

Lange also doubts that Wolffian morality could truly fulfill the second requirement of its primary principle. Indeed, I have also noted that Wolff does not properly justify how the command to perfect others follows from a need to perfect oneself – this might be justified through the harmony of all substances, that is, by stating that when I perfect another person, I am also perfecting myself, but Wolff leaves this completely implicit. Furthermore, as we also saw, Wolff mostly advocated leaving other people to fend for their perfection themselves, because every person should try to be a self-sufficient totality – a final proof of an egotist morality.

In addition, Lange also doubts whether Wolff's ethics is really in line with his metaphysics. He is especially skeptic of the possibility of reconciling independence of body and soul with Wolff's commands to take care of bodily matters. Of course, Wolff can explain these commands as simplified commands to take care of your soul and let body follow through the pre-established harmony, but this does make his ethics somewhat complex.

So much for Lange's criticism, next it is appropriate to see how Wolff answers some of Lange's points.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy - Infinite computer

We might state Lange's main criticism of Wolffian theology quite simply: God has very little to do in Wolff's system. True, Wolff does admit that God exists and even proves his existence, but Lange cannot even commend Wolff's proof, which he deems to be faulty. Indeed, Lange hits on a crucial defect. Wolff's principle of sufficient reason or ground states that all things should have some ground, that is, all physical things should derive from a previous cause and all conscious actions should be somehow motivated. From this principle Wolff suddenly moves to a stronger principle that all things should have a full ground, that is, they should be based on an ultimate ground that requires no further ground for its existence. Lange notes that Wolff's original principle of sufficient ground is consistent with an infinite causal series bringing about the current event, thus, making the leap to the stronger principle unjustified.

Even if Wolff does accept God, Lange continues, Wolff's deterministic world system leaves almost no room for divine push on events. Wolff does make a halfhearted attempt to explain the possibility of miracles: God can supernaturally affect world, if he then makes another miracle that corrects the world so that it will once again return to its deterministic course. In effect, miracles of Wolffian God can make nothing new happen, because their results are erased by the second miracle of restitution.

Lange is especially opposed to Wolff's notion of what God is like. Wolff defines God as an entity that can think of all infinitely multiple possible worlds. God is then meant to choose one of these possible worlds for actualization – thus, he does not truly create the world, Lange says, meaning perhaps that God does not design the world from scratch, but accepts the world from a ready-made brochure of possible worlds. Even this choice is less of an achievement than it seems, because God is essentially a passively cognizing entity without any spontaneous volitions. God is like a computer that has been programmed to choose the best possible world – God as perfectly good cannot really choose any other option. Hence, the supposed choice becomes a mere justification of the goodness of the actual world – creation is as deterministic as the world created.

An atheist would then have no difficulties in accepting Wolffian philosophy, Lange concludes, for the assumption of God is mere play of words. Indeed, Lange thinks, Wolff even defends atheists by saying that atheism is compatible with morality. We shall see next time in more detail what Lange has to say about Wolffian ethics.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy - Mind like a computer

Until now, Lange's criticism has touched Wolffian cosmology: Lange explicitly indicated that he would ignore ontology, because Daniel Strähler had earlier reviewed it thoroughly enough. Next in Lange's line of investigation is then psychology or the study of human soul. Lange's general line of attack is again to claim that Wolff tries to combine idealism and materialism with disastrous results. It takes no genius to guess that Lange is speaking of the topic of pre-established harmony between souls and bodies.

The idealistic feature of pre-established harmony lies in the complete independence of soul from body – bodies cannot affect soul in any manner. Lange points out some obvious incredulities in this notion: for instance, if nothing outside couldn't have affected me, I can't have learnt anything, but instead all my knowledge has mysteriously awakened within my soul.

The idealistic side of the pre-established harmony is only ridiculous in Lange's eyes, and it is the materialistic or deterministic side that Lange finds truly worrisome. Even though bodies cannot literally affect soul, the order of bodily events is mirrored in all details by the order of mental events. Now, because the bodily events occur in the deterministic material world, it appears that the changes in the soul must also be deterministic. True, soul would not be determined by external events, but it would still be internally determined by its own states.

Lange suggests that the determinism of soul is implicit already in Wolff's notion of the soul. Wolff thinks that the central element of soul is its force of representing external reality. Here Wolff clearly emphasizes the cognitive side of soul and especially mere passive cognition of the deterministic world outside human influence. What is then ignored is the volitional side of humans – there are no real choices, because human soul just follows automatically the course which has the weightiest motives. Human mind is just like a computer that has been programmed to strive for certain things, and given the situation, the mind will act in a way that will be beneficial for achieving those goals.

Similar faults Lange finds also in Wolff's notion of the infinite spirit or God, as we shall see next time.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy - Immaterial materialism

Wolff's deterministic view of the world is essentially a materialistic doctrine, Lange thinks: immaterial souls are free to act how they want and their existence should thus make the world indeterministic. Now, Wolff does admit the existence of souls without renouncing his determinism, and we shall see next time how Lange reacts to this strategy.

In addition to souls, Lange sees immaterialism playing a role already in Wolff's doctrine of world, particularly in latter's notion of simple substances, which Lange interprets as essentially identical with monads of Leibniz. This is yet another point where Wolff himself is truly ambiguous. On the one hand, Wolff does note the resemblance of his simple substances with Leibnizian monads and does say that the simple substances in a sense represent the world. On the other hand, Wolff prefers to speak of elements and explains that representing is here symbolizing the interconnectedness of all things, because elements are not literally conscious of anything.

Despite Wolff's skepticism of full monadology, his doctrine of elements does satisfy some of Lange's criteria for immaterialism or idealism. Material things, Lange says, should be spatial and thus should be e.g. infinitely divisible, while Wolffian elements are not spatial and definitely indivisible. Wolffian matter is thus based on immaterial things and is therefore a species of idealism, which Lange thinks is just as bad as materialism - Wolffian philosophy is then doubly bad, because it combines both idealism (in its doctrine of simple substances) and materialism (in its doctrine of deterministic world).

Lange is clearly advocating the Aristotelian idea of matter as a undifferentiated mass, which can be carved out into different shapes, but which does not consist of independently existing units. While Wolff does accept his own idea of matter without any proper justification, Lange is equally stubborn and just states the self-evidence of his views – matter just cannot consists of something that is not matter. Lange would probably have been horrified of the modern nuclear physics, which he would have had to condemn as even more immaterial – matter consists there mostly of void together with some small points without any determinate place.

Interestingly, Lange's criticism has thus far dealt with questions that were later made famous by Kantian antinomies. Lange believes that world had a specific beginning in time and thinks that Wolff supposed it to be eternal; he holds determinism to be broken by free actions of humans and God, while he assumes Wolff to deny true freedom; and he believes matter to be infinitely divisible, while Wolff supposed it to consist of indivisible substances. Strikingly, Lange's anachronistic answer to second antinomy was diametrically opposite to others, probably because the doctrine of indivisible substances was associated with notorious atomism.

So much for Lange's views on Wolffian cosmology, next time we'll see what he thinks of Wolffian psychology.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy - Stuck in a clockwork world

While Lange's interpretation of Wolff in the question of the eternity of the world was at best questionable, his view of Wolff and determinism is spot-on. Wolff does believe that world – that is, an entity containing all complex things – is governed by strict rules where the previous states of things determine the further states of the things, just like in a clock the current state of all the bits and pieces determines their next state.

Lange's fear is that the strict determinism of Wolffian world leaves no room for human freedom, or at least it deprives from soul the possibility to control its body – it is strictly speaking not I who lift my hand, but the movement of the material objects in the vicinity of the hand. And if my hand happens to strike body of a fellow soul – well, how could I be accused, because the movement of the hand was necessary and people cannot be punished for necessary actions. The judge could, of course, retort that it is just as necessary for his mouth to utter the condemning words, but still a lingering doubt is left – were truly all these actions necessary?

Wolff's strategy would probably be to deny the necessity of the world. After all, there are many different possible worlds that God could have chosen to actualize and it is in a sense contingent that he happened to pick out this world. Thus, it is not necessary that I hit my neighbour, because in another possible world I – or someone very similar to me – would not have stricken a man in similar circumstances.

Lange would be very unsatisfied with this answer, and it all comes to how to define modalities like necessity and contingency. Necessity Wolff speaks of Lange calls geometric necessity, probably thinking of Spinoza's geometric method – we might call it logical necessity. But it doesn't matter at all to us, whether something happens in another possible world or not. It is our own world we are interested of, and here everything happens deterministically, that is, all the future states are determined once the beginning has been given, without any possibility to actually change the course of nature. This is the sense in which Lange wants to speak of necessity – as the inevitability of events in the context of the actual world. The respective contingency would then not concern possibilities in another world, but indeterminacy of the actual world.

Lange can then conclude that Wolff is in this matter no better than Spinoza, who both rank as extreme materialists. Wolff is in a sense even worse, because he is also an extreme idealist. We shall see next time how this curious combination is possible.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy (1724)

C. D. Broad's Examination of McTaggart's philosophy is an example of how commentaries should be made. Broad goes painstakingly through all the details and intricacies of McTaggart's Nature of existence, notes all the different variations that e.g. a theory of time might have, considers fairly how McTaggart's own theory fairs and then suggests the alternative he favours. Broad attempts to read McTaggart's sometimes convoluted ideas in as clear and believable manner as possible, sometimes agreeing with him, other times not. Never is any statement of McTaggart discarded before an honest consideration of what he attempts to say.

Then there is the other type of commentary, where the opinions of the commented author are assumed beforehand, ambiguous phrases and passages are interpreted in the worst possible manner and generally the author is treated like a customer of Spanish inquisition. Lange's Bescheidene und ausführliche Entdeckung der falschen und schädlichen Philosophie in dem Wolffianischen Systemate Metaphysico von GOtt, der Welt, und dem Menschen; und insonderheit von der sogenannten harmonia praestabilita des commercii zwischen Seel und Leib: Wie auch in der auf solches Systema gegründeten Sitten-Lehre: Nebst einem historischen Vorbericht, von dem, was mit dem Herrn Auctore desselben in Halle vorgegangen: Unter Abhandelung vieler wichtigen Materien, und mit kurzer Abfertigung der Anmerckungen über ein gedoppeltes Bedencken von der Wolffianischen Philosophie: Nach den principiis der gesunden Vernunft falls into the latter category.

I cannot blame Lange for a lack of thoroughness. On the contrary, he has read through all of Wolff's major works published thus far and apparently even some not as significant publications, and has left only his logical work uncommented, because it doesn't significantly differ from other contemporary books of logic. Lange has even found time to read books of Wolff published in the same year as Lange's own title, such as the book on teleology, I've just dealt with. It is not even pretense of assuming axioms, which are far from evident that I find fault with. This is just Lange playing with Spinoza's geometric style, which is already familiar from an earlier work (Lange even makes fun of Wolff, because he fails to present his theories in such a format). What I found fault with was Lange's reading of Wolffian philosophy,

The very first ”theorem” of Lange suggests that Wolff held onto the eternity of the world. I found this rather surprising, because in reading Wolff I had received the diametrically opposed impression that Wolff thought world was not eternal. Problem lies with Wolff's ambiguity. On the one hand, Wolff makes some remarks that appear to suggest that all things are infinitely grounded on other things, that is, that there has been an infinite series of events leading to this particular moment of time. On the other hand, he also clearly states that world is contingent and contingency is equivalent with non-eternity of the world. We have then stumbled on a seeming contradiction in the Wolffian system.

Lange's strategy in avoiding the contradiction is to assume that Wolff is just trying to sneak in the assumption of the eternity of the world and only pay lip service to the idea of creation, thus making the hypothesis of a creator superfluous. I, on the contrary, try to take seriously Wolff's explicit commitment to the non-eternity of the world. True, the references to infinite grounding remain problematic, but I consider the meaning of these passages to be more uncertain. I can accept the idea that Wolff might have toyed with the idea of an eternal world, but left the question purposefully ambiguous. Furthermore, I might also assume that the infinite grounding means just the fact that any thing in Wolffian world is supposed to be in a necessary relation with all the other denizens of a spatially infinite world.

In addition to finding fault in Lange's interpretation of Wolff, I also question his assumption that the acceptance of an eternally existing world would necessarily lead to atheism. This conclusion holds only if the creation is supposed to happen with time, as the first event of the world. The assumption completely ignores the possibility that the creation happened outside time, which would still allow the eternity of the world. Lange's assumption makes God not just personal, but almost a worldly thing – God is like a lead programmer of an interactive netgaming world, who actively takes part in the events by using the powers of moderator. The supposedly Wolffian God, on the other hand, is like a programmer who knows he has done so good work that he never needs to do anything to improve it. This doesn't mean that this second type of God would be e.g. incapable of miracles – they would just be like preprogammed Easter eggs that bend the rules of the game when players stumbled onto right coordinates.

We'll continue with Lange's criticism on Wolffian cosmology with the notion of determinism.

Johann Joachim Lange: Reasons for God and natural religion against atheism, and, all those who produce, or promote, ancient or recent pseudophilosophy, especially Stoicism and Spinozism, and principles of genuine true philosophy entwined with demonstrative method (1723)

1723 was a turning point in Christian Wolff's career. Until then, he had spent relatively uneventful life as a professor in the university of Halle, writing immensely popular text books on nearly everything. In the conservative atmosphere of German philosophy, Wolff's philosophy was not universally appreciated, and accusations of atheist tendencies were made by his pietist competitors – rather unexpected of a philosopher who had dedicated a significant portion of his major work to God.

Slander is one thing, but the rumours were starting to worry Friedrich Wilhelm I, the king of Prussia. King was a collector, not of stamps or coins, but of big men, which were conscripted by king's officers, by hook or by crook. Story goes that king Friedrich Wilhem was rather worried about the supposed fatalism of Wolff's philosophy. If all events followed strict necessity, the men in king's collection would not be accountable for what they did – especially if they happened to desert the army. Fearing of the fate of his personal toys, if such terrible ideas would spread, king promptly decided to dismantle Wolff's professorship. Fortunately Wolff quickly landed on a new position at the university of Marburg.

The controversy around Wolff's philosophy continued for a while, and it is on this context that we have to evaluate Johann Joachim Lange's breathtakingly titled Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum, et, quae eum gignit, aut promovet, pseudophilosophiam veterum et recentiorum, praesertim Stoicam et Spinozianam, e genuinis verae philosophia principiis methodo demonstrativa adserta. We have already met Lange's pietistically oriented philosophy and his attitudes towards atheism should come as no surprise – atheism is wrong, contradictory and against morality.

The dislike of Spinoza and his geometrical method was a common theme for more religious thinkers. Indeed, Lange begins by explicitly noting that the use of mathematical method without any guidance might lead one to atheism – if one did not listen to the warnings of common sense, one could stubbornly follow a train of thought leading to absurd conclusions. One can detect a clear sarcasm in Lange's choice of presenting the book in the very same geometrical style of definitions, axioms and propositions to be proved – particularly as some of the axioms and postulates he chooses are later proven as propositions. This is not a foundationalist attempt of building the whole edifice on an unshakable basis, but a coherentist attempt to show how all the jigsaw pieces fit in to form a larger picture.

The structure of the book is thus twofold. First, Lange moves from certain common sense assumptions to the existence of God. Here the mediating link is provided by the notorious cosmological proof. But Lange is not satisfied to use it once, but repeats the same form over and over again with different topics. A soul of the human being cannot be material, thus, it must have been fashioned by God, but the same goes for human body and the whole human race, and indeed, the whole material universe, which just cannot be grounded in nothing.

The pivotal point in the deductions is human liberty. Lange's cosmological proofs that apply to material universe hinge on the results of empirical science and the supposed finite age of the Earth, but the proofs concerning human soul are based on the inshakeable conviction that human soul is free and able to control matter and therefore is irreducible to mere matter. Furthermore, the assumption of human liberty is also behind Lange's improved Cartesian proof. While Descartes used the presence of the idea of God in human mind as a justification of God's existence, Lange tries to deintellectualise this argument – human mind is primarily will and not cognition, but because in our will we have an impulse to know God, this impulse must come from a higher source.

Secondly, Lange then uses the supposedly established existence of God as a justification of further propositions, which include also the fact of human liberty – one of the supposed axioms of Lange. Lange's proof of human liberty hinges on God's role as a judge that will evaluate the worth of every human being. Lange points out that such evaluation would be meaningless, unless the evaluated persons have a liberty to choose their own actions – thus, God must have created human beings as free agents.

It is obvious that human liberty is then crucial to Lange. Without it most of the proofs for God's existence would fall down – or at least they wouldn't lead to a sort of God that Lange is looking for, but to a fatalistic world soul. Indeed, it appears that when Lange is attacking atheism, his true target is the deterministic and mechanistic worldview of new philosophy. Human liberty is the highest ground of human existence and those who dare to deny it are miserable people, because they contradict the natural certainty of their own freedom. The topic of human liberty is also where Lange's grudge against Wolffian philosophy becomes clear. Wolff's endorsement of Leibnizian pre-established harmony breaks the required connection between the soul and the body: soul only appears to control body, which is actually moving according to its own laws.

One could even say that the battle against atheism has always been a battle for human liberty. Nowadays hardcore atheists feel great pleasure in pointing out faults in creation science. Yet, the kernel of a religion is not constituted by any dogmas, but by rituals and cults. Denial of God appears to leave no room for an objective meaning of life and hence deprives world of all magic. Even pantheism is suspected, because it reeks of closet atheism.

So much for Lange, next time I'll take a look at a philosophical dispute for the first time in this blog.

Joachim Lange: Mental medicine - Curing your mind through Descartes

Last time I gave a preliminary account of what philosophy and its negation, philomoria, were for J. J. Lange and how the two were supposed to be related. This time I shall say something about the concrete methodology of philosophy as Lange conceived it.

As we should remember from the previous text, for Lange philosophy was essentially striving towards wisdom, which was defined as a connection with God. This connection or harmony is actually what humans are intended to live in. Yet, in the current state of things humans are naturally disharmonious. The natural human being is disturbed by sense impressions, and while education can help a person to correct her original state, it might lead her to even worse things – like Aristotelianism.

It is this state of disharmony that Lange strives to cure in Medicina mentis. Although Lange mentions many methods of cure, such as conversation with other persons and prayer, philosophically most interesting is the use of lumen naturale, natural light or human cognitivie capacities.

As one might remember, Descartes was in addition to Socrates the only philosopher that Lange viewed in a completely positive light. For instance, Lange views Cartesian method of doubt as a sober form of skepticism, because it strives to find a reliable and indubitable ground, while an unhealthy skepticism, like the ancient Pyrrhonism, leads merely to turbulence of mind and eventually to libertine denial of all values.

Interestingly, Lange sees the core of unhealthy skepticism not in doubt, but in refusal to accept some facts. Thus, Lange regards both infamous atheists of the time, Spinoza and Hobbes, as partial skeptics, because they did not accept the validity of the Christian notion of God. This peculiarity is connected with Lange's definition of skepticism as the opposite of what he calls formal truth.

What then is a formal truth for Lange? First of all, a material truth is simply a validity of some fact: this is so and so. Formal truth, on the other hand, is a material truth that is in harmony with a mind. Thus, a material truth might not be a formal truth for some person, if that person fails to assent this truth. Then again, a material truth might not be a formal truth, if it is only a part of the whole picture or fails to describe anything essential to the mind involved. In other words, formal truth is an assent by mind of an essential material truth.

The bad form of skepticism, then, is the opposite of formal truth, because it involves a failure to assent to an essential material truth. Thus, atheism as a rejection of God's existence is by Lange's definitions this sort of skepticism. On the other hand, Descartes is not a skeptic in this sense, because ultimately Descartes doesn't reject e.g. God's existence.

In light of Lange's appreciation of the great French philosopher, it is no wonder that Lange's ideas of using the natural light of human reason derive largely from Descartes. Indeed, Lange even calls the use of natural light meditation, borrowing the name obviously from Cartesian Meditations. The meditation, Lange says, should begin from an indubitable starting point. Like Descartes, Lange affirms that this starting point is not demonstrated syllogistically. In fact, Lange goes a step further and says that it is indemonstrable in all senses, that is, an incontrovertible fact.

Lange's rejection of the demonstrability of the first truth is connected with another modification of Cartesian meditations. While Descartes begins from an indubitable proposition, ”I think, therefore I am”, Lange begins from a non-propositional self-consciousness, which he further defines as perception of mind by itself.

Similarly, Lange does not demonstrate other truths concerning mind from the fact of its existence, but says that these truths are just contained within the original self-consciousness. Indeed, he explicitly criticises Descartes for limiting the foundational notion of mind to cognition. Still, what Lange actually tells of mind has a Cartesian air: mind is a non-material substance, but intrinsically connected to a material body, through which it receives impressions of material things and which it can control.

Langian meditations continue in a Cartesian manner, although not through demonstrations: thinking about oneself leads one to think of God, through whom one can even find some certainty in thinking sense objects. Yet, the most important point for Lange is to point out that through self-consciousness one can discern also the limits of natural light and the need for a supernatural light of divine revelation: reason itself shows the need for antirationalism.

Lange's Cartesian inspired antirationalism has an interesting relation to Jacobi's later antirationalism. The purpose of both writers is the same: to move the attention from the mundane science to God as the true meaning of human life, and both also begin from some immediate, indemonstrable starting point: Lange from self-consciousness and Jacobi from Glauben or faith. Yet, for Jacobi it is not Descartes, but Hume, who offers the starting point.

Considering that Descartes was a stout believer, but Hume leaned more towards agnosticism or even atheism, Jacobi's position might seem awkward. But the tides of philosophy had changed from the days of Lange. For Lange, the immediate starting point was human self-consciousness, which immediately led to God as the ground of that consciousness. Self-consciousness was thus a justification for the existence of God, while God was the only thing giving value and stability to the sense world.

At the time of Jacobi, on the other hand, self-consciousness as the first principle was almost exclusively used by philosophers of Kantian inspiration. Now, one thing that philosophers like Fichte appeared to do was to downgrade the role of God in the trinity of self-consciouness, God and material things. Indeed, they seemingly tried to account for the existence of the material things in terms of mere self-consciousness.

Jacobi thought this strategy was ultimately nihilistic, because it destroyed the true source of values. Furthermore, it made it more difficult for Jacobi to use Lange's strategy of justifying the existence of God through self-consciousness: who needs God to account for the existence of material objects, if they can be accounted by the self-consciousness itself?

In this light Jacobi's endorsement of Hume becomes more understandable. Hume had argued that we couldn't really demonstrate the substantiality of the objects of experience through our mere self-consciousness, but that we had to just believe in their stable existence. This stability inhered then somewhere beyond self-consciousness, and Jacobi could then just assume that it inhered in God as the source of all values.

So much for Lange, for the time being. Next time, we shall see what happened 17^th of March, 1716, around 7 PM, at Halle.

Joachim Lange: Mental medicine (1708)

No, I haven't been reading any books on psychiatry lately. Medicina mentis was apparently a popular name for a philosophy book near 1700 – for instance, such a book was published by von Tschirnhaus, the missing link between Spinoza and Wolff. The title refers not so much to any mental illnesses in the modern sense, but to the task of improving one's mind and its abilities. In effect, we are threading on the same ground as with Wolff's book on logic.

The writer of this particular book on mental medicine was Johann Joachim Lange. Yes, you probably have not heard of him, but he is famous as one of the most vehement opponents of Christian Wolff, and we shall undoubtedly meet the fellow also in the future. Lange was a follower of pietism, a radical Christian movement that emphasised personal experience over institutionalised church – a protest against the stagnation of protestantism. Indeed, Lange's main occupation was theology and many of his works concern interpretation of Biblical texts, but Medicina mentis should be Lange's main philosophical work.

Regarding Lange's pietist background, it is no wonder that his view of philosophy differs radically from Wolffian view. For Wolff, as we have seen, philosophy practically equaled science and was characterised by a certain method, namely, deductive system based on evident axioms and reliable experiences. Lange, on the other hand, starts from the supposed goal of philosophy. Philosophy is love of or striving towards wisdom, and true wisdom, says Lange, lies in being itself, or as it can be said in Hebrew, Jehovah (”I am”). Thus, philosophy is for Lange all about finding God.

You won't have to read Lange to see that this idea of philosophy is in at odds with the Wolffian notion of philosophy, which is largely neutral as to the object of philosophy. It is thus no wonder that Lange explictly distances himself from the idea of philosophy as worldy wisdom (Weltweisheit) that was so important for Wolff: what is wisdom for the world is folly, when it comes to God. Lange even coins the term philomoria, love of foolishness, to describe this perverted or ”pseudo-ortohodox” brother of philosophy.

Lange even gives an account of the development of both philosophy and philomoria: the picture above is a summarised version of the latter. Nowadays histories of philosophy don't usually begin from antediluvian age, but Lange boldly starts from the creation itself. The tales of philosophy and philomoria begin with the sons of Adam. Philomoria was an invention of Cain and his offspring, who dabbled with such frivolities like music, while the third son of Adam, Seth, and his offspring meditated important matters. Yes, these still were the times when Bible passed as a reliable historical source.

I shall spare my reader Lange's further summarisation of Bible, which quickly becomes rather repetetive. Suffice to say that Lange thinks Bible to be the source of all important knowledge. All the mythologies of Greek and other people are, of course, mere incomplete recollections of the true biblical history, while all that is good in the thoughts of Greek and later philosophers is of biblical origin. Pythagoras and Plato evidently learned all that they knew from Jews: a suggestion, which goes all the way to Philo, the first famous Jewish philosopher, and which always reminds me of a devoted Hare Krishna who tried to sell me his religion by telling that Plato learned his wisdom in India.

Despite the biblical origins of Greek and later philosophy, Lange has little good to say of any particular philosopher. Especially Lange attempts to discredit Aristotle, who in logical works introduced scholastic erudition to philosophy, who in his theoretical philosophy suggested that all events are caused by the movement of the celestial spheres and whose practical philosophy is hedonism fit for Macedonian court. The only philosophers who come clean in Lange's scheme are virtuous Socrates and Descartes, who purged philosophy from scholasticism.

It would be really easy to ridicule Lange, but this would go against the primary purpose of my blog – my aim is to understand past philosophers and their theories, not make fun of them. Indeed, Lange is not just an isolated figure in the arena of German philosophy, but an instance of an antirationalist, anti-enlightenment movement that later surfaces in such fellows as Hamann and Jacobi, who were as fierce Christians as Lange and who opposed Kant and the later German idealists, but who also influenced them in some measure.

Indeed, German idealism might be characterised as a combination of the two streams of Enlightenment, the German version of which begun with Wolffe, and antirationalism opposing Enlightenment. This characterisation is illustrated by Hegel's tale of the battle between Enlightenment and faith in his Phenomenology of spirit. Enlightenment, says Hegel, is characterised by being ”a form” or a method of investigation. Furthermore, it is a method open for everyone and thus what the modern world is after. In fact, Wolffian ideal of philosophy characterised through a method of axiomatic-deductive-empiricist science fits just this description.

But as a mere ”form” Enlightenment lacks its proper content or purpose the method is used for. Instead, the method of Enlightenment or science can be applied to any, even the most superficial issue: good example is Wolff making complex deductions of the question how one can change dates between Julian, Gregorian, Hebrew, Arabic and Bablylonian calendars. Faith, on the other hand, has just this content, that is, it strives for the highest fulfilment possible, which Lange and other antirationalists called God and which we might describe in a more secular manner as the meaning of life. But faith lacks the necessary form, that is, it merely proclaims where the fulfilment is to be found without providing the tools by which a person could by herself discover it.

Combining these two strands was what Hegel thought philosophy should do, that is, philosophy should give everyone a chance to discover what makes life meaningful: it is thus highly valuable and still publically teachable enterprise. But right now we are still far from seeing how Hegel manages to do this. Instead, next time I shall be looking at more closely how Lange describes the actual methodology of philosophy – and we shall see that his antirationalist ideology has strikingly rationalist roots.