Baumgarten: Metaphysics – World in general

A central part of Wolffian cosmology was the notion of a possible world – an alternative to the actual world. The notion appears also in Baumgarten's cosmology, but the nature of these worlds is necessarily quite different. In Wolff, it seems that these worlds are meant to be individual entities, although not actual – they are thoughts flying in God's mind, but infinitely detailed and thus completely determinate. With Baumgarten, on the other hand, there are no non-actual individuals, thus, merely possible worlds can be nothing but universals.

Indeed, what we are dealing with in Baumgarten's cosmology is more like a notion or concept of world – Baumgarten starts from the actual world and abstracts certain features that belong to the world. One could then add more features to these features of ”world in general” and these combinations might even be non-contradictory and therefore possible – yet, these combinations would still have an extension of at most one individual thing, that is, they would be predicates of actual world or no world at all.

World, for Baumgarten, is then such a series of actual finite entities, which is not a part of any other series. Without further ado, Baumgarten simply accepts that there is such a totality of actual finite entities, although nothing speaks against the possibility that we might have only a series of ever larger collections of finite entities.

World is not just a combination of finite entities, but an ordering of them, for Baumgarten. Indeed, there are several nexuses holding worldly entities together – causal chains and series of ends, for instance. It is then an important part of the very concept of a world that is must have some regularity and coherence – otherwise, it wouldn't even be unified. By this statement, Baumgarten denies that fables or faery tales could form any possible world.

Because world consists of finities, it cannot be completely good, but must contain some badness or imperfection. In particular, Baumgarten says, world cannot be completely necessary. Thus, Baumgarten can deny Spinoza's theory that world would be necessary. Then again, the existence of the world works also against an acosmicist interpretation of Spinoza – there is something else beyond God.

So much for the general notion of world, next time we shall see what Baumgarten has to say about the elements of the world.

Christian Wolff: Natural theology, posterior part – The enemies of faith

Included with the second book of Natural theology is also Wolff's first complete take on worldviews that rivaled Christianity – one might suppose that it was especially atheism controversy that generated his interest in the topic. It is no wonder that Wolff rejects all these theories, but what is interesting is how he groups these various viewpoints into distinct sets.

The most important of the wrong theories is obviously atheism, which Wolff thinks is so important that it deserves a chapter of its own. We all know atheists are of the opinion that God does not exist. What is more, a consistent atheist must even deny the possibility of God, because by Wolff's a priori proof, God would exist, if he just were possible. Because God does not exist, there is no final explanation of the world, but instead, the world must be an independent entity requiring no explanation – a strange conclusion in Wolffian eyes, because nothing extended could be really independent for Wolff. The worldly events must either go on forever or form a loop in which things repeat one another. In any case, they must follow an iron necessity, since nothing outside the universe could come and change anything. This doesn't mean that there would be no freedom, since human souls might still have the freedom to do things – this freedom just probably would have no consequences on the level of material world. Still, it means that morality is difficult to combine with atheism, because the necessity of the world makes it impossible to apply values like good or bad to it.

After atheism, Wolff groups together fatalism, deism and naturalism, probably because his pietist opponents had often grouped these three together. Fatalism, or the idea that everything in the world happens necessarily, is evidently the one Wolff likes least. Wolff clearly states that atheists must inevitably be fatalists, at least if they want to accept the laws of physics. Still, all fatalists need not be atheists, but they may well be deists, that is, they may believe that God has just created the world, but does not afterwards interfere with it in any manner. Wolff also points out that deist, like atheist, cannot use the idea of divine providence as a way to booster people's behaviour, yet, deist can be more consistent with morality, because he can accept that God might have chosen another world, which might have been better or worse.

Still, it is the third idea or naturalism that is the most interesting of the three theories. By naturalism Wolff does not mean belief in natural sciences, but the idea of natural theology as the only true source of religion. Wolff might have sympathised with the view, but he clearly wanted to show also that natural theology and revealed religion need not be rivals, but could in many cases meet one another.

It is not so strange to see materialism and idealism in the same chapter, but anthropomorphism seems a stranger bedfellow. Yet, Wolff obviously has a point – if God is thought to be shaped like a human, he is obviously material or at least has a material constituent. This also shows that materialist need not necessarily be atheist, since she can just assume that God is some material things (perhaps even the world itself).

Wolff criticizes both anthropomorphists and materialists, because they make God into something very ungodlike – a material object that could be cut to pieces. Interestingly Wolff is less critical of idealism and even says that idealist need not deny physics, because she can just think it concerns an apparent world. Still, Wolff finally denies idealism, because it takes away from the glory of God, who then wouldn't have created an independent world.

The final chapter of the book gathers together various philosophical theories, but also paganism or belief in the existence of several gods, which is perhaps highlihted, because it shares similarities with Manicheanism: both theories suggest that there are several principles guiding world and thus they essentially lower the status of God. The final two systems, Spinozism and Epicureanism, are quickly dealt with. Spinoza has the disadvantage, because it clearly confuses the notion of independency and substance – God is the only independent thing and others are God's creations, but these creations surely are not parts of God. Epicureanism, on the other hand, falls from traditional reasons – emphasising mere sensual pleasure destroys values in themselves.

Finally a last page on Wolff's natural theology. Next time I'll turn to a new philosopher.

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.

Andreas Rüdiger: True and false sense - Sensational mathematics

I have often wondered where Kant got the idea of dividing judgments into analytic and synthetic, analytic referring to judgments where the content of the predicate was included in the content of the subject and synthetic referring then obviously to judgements where this inclusion did not hold. It's not any difficulty in the definitions I am speaking of, but of the nomenclature that would have in Kant's days reminded the reader of two different methods of reasoning, analysis and synthesis.

Originally analysis and synthesis were used by Greek geometers as referring to processes that mirrored one another. In analysis, one assumed that the required conclusion – proposition to be proved or a figure to be constructed – was already known or in existence. One then had to go through the conditions of this conclusion in order to find self-evident principles on which the conclusion could be based.

If analysis moved from conclusions to premisses, the synthesis moved the other way. One began from some principles already assumed or demonstrated to be true and from methods that one already knew how to use, and from these principles and methods set out to prove some new theorem or to draw a new sort of figure.

A certain step in the evolution of the mathematical methods into Kantian judgement types is symbolised by Rüdiger's notion of analysis and synthesis. Just like in the tradition, Rüdiger uses analysis for a method moving from consequences to principles behind them. Yet, he also calls such method judicial and separates it from synthetic method, which he describes as invention. That is, analysis does not produce any new information, just like in Kant's analytic judgement predicate does not reveal anything that wouldn't already be in the subject. Instead, analysis merely determines whether a given proposition is clearly true or at least probable.

Rüdiger's account of synthesis or invention of new and informative truths includes even more aberrations from the traditional account. For Rüdiger, synthesis might involve also mere probable conclusions that are based on the correspondence of various sensations – for instance, by seeing that a certain effect follows always from certain conditions, we may conclude that a new occurence of similar conditions would probably lead to similar effects. Here we see Rüdiger's empiricist leanings, but he does not restrict synthesis to mere empirical generalisations – in addition he also accepts necessary demonstrations.

Rüdiger divides demonstrations into three classes, according to three components required for thinking. One type is based on the verbal form of thinking and grammar: for instance, we deduce from the statement that Jane hit Mary the related statement that Mary was hit by Jane. The second type contains various forms of reasoning, such as traditional syllogisms, but the common element Rüdiger suggests is that all of them are based on the relations of ideas – we might name these forms logical.

By far the most interesting is the third type of reasoning, the mathematical. Leibniz and Wolff had thought that mathematics was based on inevitable axioms and even empiricists like Hume grouped mathematics with logical reasoning. Rüdiger, on the other hand, clearly separates logic and mathematics. Logical reasoning is based on the relations of ideas, while mathematics is based on the sensuous element of thinking.

Rüdiger's position shares some interesting similarities with Kant's ideas on mathematics. Both Kant and Rüdiger are convinced that mathematics are not mere logic, but synthetic or inventive. True, Kant speaks of mathematics as based on intuitions, while Rüdiger speaks of sensations, but this might not be as great a difference as it first seems. Rüdigerian concept of sensation is clearly more extensive than Kant's and would probably include also what Kant called pure intuitions. Indeed, Rüdiger also separates mathematical reasoning from mere empirical generalisations – mathematical truths are not mere probabilities.

The reason behind Rüdiger's desire to separate mathematics from logic is also of interest. Once again Spinoza is the devil that one wants to excommunicate. Spinoza's Ethics is supposedly philosophy in a mathematical form, but Rüdiger notes that this is intrinsically impossible. Mathematics can rely on certain sensations, when it constructs its definitions and divisions – it can tell that triangle is a meaningful concept, because it can draw triangles. Philosophy, on other hand, does not have a similar possibility for infallibly finding sensations for its concepts – a very Kantian thought.

So much for Rüdiger this time. Next time we are back with Wolffian philosophy.

Ludwig Philipp Th'ummig: Varied essays and rare arguments, collected in one volume (1727)

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.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - Pre-established harmony

Ever since Descartes suggested that the finite world consisted of two types of substances, material and spiritual, the question of possible interaction between the two had formed a dilemma. Descartes' own suggestion that pineal gland had something to do it was considered a failure. An easy solution would have been to get rid of one side of the equation altogether. But the rejection of spiritual substances or souls, that is, materialism of Hobbesian sort was considered antireligious. On the other hand, the opposite of materialism, which denies the existence of matter and which Wolff called idealism, attracted religious men like Berkeley, but was otherwise seen as rather farfetched.

Spinoza's solution was to deny that there is any true difference between soul and matter: both are merely one and the same thing from two aspects, thus, they do not interact, although changes in one reflect the changes in the other. But Spinoza's answer led to a pantheistic world view, where everything was a mere modification of original unity or God. A more theologically acceptable solution was occasionalism, according to which God had to give a helping hand, whenever an apparent interaction of any substances would occur. Problem was that occasionalism required constant wonders and so undermined scientific discussions.

Wolff follows Leibnizian solution of the problem, that is, he supposes that God had created the material world and the souls in such a manner that they appeared to work in harmony with one another. For Leibniz and Wolff, soul was closed off from any influences and all its states followed from its previous states. Still, soul could represent the world around it, because when the soul had been generated by the God, it represented the world perfectly and thereafer, because of the laws governing both matter and souls, the two will remain in perfect sync (one might object that two clocks that begin by showing the same time might not be synchronised after few days, but I will assume that God has ordained the laws in question so that the harmony remains).

Leibniz's theory is undoubtedly ingenious, but it somehow feels too elaborate. Furthermore, it still appears to verge on materialism. The body is not truly controlled by the soul, thus, whatever words are coming out of the mouth of the person sitting next to me, whatever actions she will perform – all this must be caused by some changes in her body in general and her brain in particular. I know that in myself there is something more – namely, my consciousness that exactly corresponds to the actions of my body – but in case of other persons I might as well assume that they are mere machines.

Leibniz and Wolff had, of course, a reason for adding independent souls to the equation. The material bodies can be destroyed through disassembly of their parts, but partless and simple soul cannot be disassembled. Thus, human consciousness should live on after the death of the body.

What is most unsatisfactory in this account of the immortality of the soul is that it apparently fails in its purpose. True, Wolff and Leibniz do conclude that the soul is immortal. But the connection between the soul and its body has been defined to be very tight: what soul perceives, what it imagines and what it thinks all correspond to some states in the body of the soul. Indeed, Wolff even goes so far as to admit that a fault in person's brain will lead to a fault in the corresponding perception of the soul. It would then seem reasonable that the capacities of the soul would be gravely diminished when its body completely ceased to exist.

Here Wolff relies on some outlandish speculations. He assumes it to be proven by a collague that the soul is generated at the very instance when its body is assembled. The capacities of the soul grow all the while when it is connected with the body (Wolff conveniently forgets cases of senility). Thus, Wolff concludes, as the state of the soul after death is a mystery to us, it is reasonable to suppose that it will continue developing and perfecting itself.

This is a good example about what I think the greatest fault in the whole chapter on rational psychology. Wolff already knows the answer he must get – soul must be immaterial, it must be immortal and its life after death must be happy and perfect. The grounds for these conclusions are then discovered afterwards, and no puzzle about the nature of the soul has ever actually existed.

So much then for soul: there's only God to discuss anymore.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - Imagine all the people

Thus far Wolff has mentioned a capacity of thinking oneself and a capacity of thinking other things that happen to affect one's body – the latter capacity we might call sensation or perception. These two capacities concern things which are truly present, but human beings have also the capacity of thinking something that is not present. Wolff calls this capacity Einbildung – word which is usually translated as imagination.

Whereas we would nowadays think of creating something novel as an epitome of imagination, for the early modern philosophy imagination was particularly a capacity for representing something that had been perceived or generally thought earlier. Thus, Spinoza explains imagination through the example of Paul thinking his friend Peter, although Peter is currently somewhere else. Later on, Kant and his followers would call this capacity reproductive imagination and separate it from productive imagination, which was required for constituting experience itself.

It is then no wonder that Wolff also connects Einbildung with memory (Gedächtnis). Memory is not then, according to Wolff, a capacity for thinking things that once were thought – this is already covered by imagination. Instead, the memory is left only with the task of recognising that a certain thought is something that has been thought before. Note that neither imagination nor memory need to concern just earlier sensations, but they can also reproduce all sorts of thoughts or conscious states.

Still, Wolffian Einbildung also includes the possibility of thinking something that has not been thought before: if nowhere else, this happens at least in dreams. This is still no Kantian productive imagination, because Wolff admits that at least the materials of these imaginations must derive from perceptions, that is, that the imaginations are mere recombinations of previous thoughts. The imaginations in general are thus always dependent on perceptions. Furthermore, the products of imagination are also weaker than direct perceptions. Thus, the Wolffian difference between perceptions and imaginations shares some similarities with the Humean difference between impressions and ideas.

Wolff distinguishes two possibilities of imagining new thoughts. Firstly, the imagined recombination of previous thoughts might be groundless, that is, something that could not be generated. This is what Wolff calls an empty imagination and it is exemplified by mythical notions like centaur, but also by fantastic notions of different types of artists. Wolff would probably include the utopian Lennon song mentioned in the title among the products of an empty imagination.

Then again, the combination might be based on the principle of sufficient reason, or in other words, we might know how to produce it. In this case, Wolff maintains, the combination has truth, and as we've seen before, Wolff means by truth actually order: in other words, such a combination is regulated. This is the highest point of beauty for Wolff – creativity that is controlled by rules. It seems no wonder that Wolff is especially presenting architecture as an example of true beauty (I have examined Wolff's attitude towards architecture in an earlier post). Wolff is pleased of a roof protecting us from the weather, because it is something we can truly make to happen, unlike dreams of love and peace.

In addition to architecture, Wolff assumes the controlled, but creative imagination is used in mathematics: we might not have seen a particular sort of curve, but we still know how to construct one, because we know its equation. In Wolff's time all known curves were undoubtedly such that could be constructed so easily. Yet, nowadays we are familiar also with curves that cannot be completely constructed, but which can only be approximated through a series of constructible curves: the desired curve is then defined as the limit of such series. If Wolff were consistent, he would probably have to consider such curves results of an empty imagination.

In any case, Wolff appears to think that if creative imagination is to be fruitful, it requires external control. Although the control is not assigned to any particular faculty, it is probably understanding (Verstand) Wolff is thinking. I shall consider this faculty next time.