Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - Laws of movement

In every world, Crusius notes, things interact by moving, thus movement is a topic that should be studied in cosmology. More precisely, he continues, the topic of movement can be approached with three questions: what is movement, how it can be measured and what laws govern it. Of these three, Crusius explains, the first one is clearly cosmological, while the second one was dealt in ontology. The third one, Crusius concludes, is partially cosmological, because some laws of movement can be deduced from the very essence of movement, although some laws of movement must be proven empirically and thus belong to physics.

Crusius then defines movement as a state of a substance that changes its place. Its opposite is rest or a state where a thing does not change its place. Crusius notes also that some movement is only apparent, when a thing does not change its absolute place, but only its place in relation to some other thing. True change, where a thing changes its absolute place, he further divides into external change, where the whole thing is moving, and internal change, where some actual parts of a thing change their places so that their positions in relation to other parts of the whole are changed. Crusius points out that these two classes are not mutually exclusive, since there can occur situations where a thing moves, while its parts change their place in relation to one another.

What then could move in these different ways? Crusius notes that a simple substance cannot at least move internally, since it doesn’t have any actual parts. Then again, infinite things (or from Crusius’ perspective, God) cannot move externally, because there is nowhere where such an infinite thing could move as a whole. Furthermore, he adds, everything that is finite, can move at least externally, whether it is simple or complex.

Crusius divides external movement into total external movement, where the whole substance moves completely from one location to another, and partial external movement, where actual or ideal parts of the thing change their place: once again, the two classes are not mutually exclusive. While the notion of total external movement seems clear enough, it might be difficult to see how partial external movement differs from internal movement. One example of a partial external movement that is not internal nor total, Crusius says, is such where a simple substance grows and thus its ideal parts change their places, since this involves no change of actual, distinct parts of the substance. Another example would be rotation of a sphere: the sphere as a whole does not go from one location to another and the relative positions of its parts remain the same, but the parts of the sphere do change their absolute positions.

Crusius derives some simple consequences from his definition of movement. Movement, as he sees it, has always a definite direction, and indeed, a start and end point. It also has certain characteristics: velocity and strength by which it withstands resistance. Furthermore, Crusius notes that movement of a complex substance is defined by the movement of its parts.

Movement, Crusius emphasises, is a positive change and thus requires a positive cause. Rest, on the other hand, is for Crusius just a lack of movement and does not therefore require any cause. In other words, a thing rests, Crusius says, if it has no reason to move, and if the cause of the movement vanishes, the movement must also cease. A direct consequence of this is that increase in the velocity of movement requires a similar increase in the cause of the movement. Crusius also thinks that change of the direction of the movement must also have a cause, which would make the Epicurean idea of atoms swerving without a reason ridiculous.

Because motion always requires some cause, Crusius continues, state of movement cannot be indifferent to the matter. By this Crusius means that a moving cause has to at first overcome an inherent resistance in moving a piece of matter. This inherent resistance is, of course, inertia. More precisely, Crusius calls it metaphysical inertia, distinguishing it from physical inertia, where the resistance is not just an inherent property of matter, but also involves a force, although one that is, as it were, dead, that is, suppressed by the moving force. Beyond inertia, motion can be resisted also by a living force, that is, a force that truly can resist the moving cause.

Crusius notes that a finite cause of movement cannot really affect a thing more than the thing resists the movement. Of course, the cause can have more force, but it only uses as much force as is required for overcoming the resistance. Thus, Crusius thinks he has justified the law of action being equal to reaction. Although a non-empirical proof, Crusius clarifies, we still require empirical observations to determine how much a finite cause acts at a given situation.

It is an essential feature of substances that differ from God, Crusius says, that they cannot penetrate one another. Thus, when a finite substance, whether matter or spirit, tries to occupy the same place as another finite substance, it will drive away the other substance, that is, pushes it. Crusius adds that pushing is just an existential effect, in other words, it doesn’t require any force, but the mere presence of one substance trying to occupy the place of the other.

Pushing a substance makes it move: Crusius calls this a communicated movement. Indeed, he says, communicating movement is the only way finite substances can affect one another. Series of communicated movements cannot go on forever, he immediately adds, and such series cannot all derive from God’s miracles, because that would be against the purpose of the world. Thus, Crusius argues, there must be some finite substances that can move their own substance through their inner activity - such movement he calls original. The inner activity causing original movement can be constant or conditional striving, inherent to some elements of material things, or it can be free willing. Because even the activity of elements is ultimately derived from God, Crusius concludes, all movement is generated by some spiritual activity that is not movement.

Communicated movement, Crusius notes, need not always be just an effect of the impenetrability of finite substances, but can also involve an inner activity of a substance. He is thus against the Cartesian idea that interactions of material things would have to be explained solely through geometric properties: God can give material things some inner activities. Crusius faces the possible objection that such activities are what were disparagingly called occult qualities by noting that we can know such activities as well as finite creatures can, when we can distinguish them from one another and deduce their existence from their effects.

Crusius progresses then to describe several rules involved in the communication of movement, such as parallelogram rule and behaviour of elastic substances. I will not follow him to these details, but I shall take a look at a few conundrums concerning movement that Crusius considers. First of these involves the question of the quantity of movement in the world: is it always constant? Crusius’ answer clearly has to be negative, because this would preclude the possibility of spirits to interact with the world. He even denies the weaker assumption that the world would have a constant amount of moving force, because spirits should be able to choose how strongly they move other things.

Another conundrum concerns the question whether all the matter in the world is moving constantly. A reason for upholding such an opinion would be that a constant movement is required for explaining why shapes of things remain stable: without the constant movement of the surrounding matter, a thing could just change willy-nilly its shape. Crusius does not find this argument convincing. The shape of a complex thing is determined by the shape and position of its parts, while the shape of a simple thing is either chosen by God, with or without any reason, or caused by themselves or by external forces - where is the need for movement here?

The answer to the question, Crusius concludes, belongs to physical, not metaphysical cosmology. He does state that the ultimate limits of the world cannot move and similarly all things that God has determined to rest. Other things, then, probably at least strive to move, whether through their own inherent activity or through being spurred to movement by things outside them.

Finally, Crusius ponders the question whether movement of one material thing necessarily sets all other material things in motion. He notes that if the world contains spaces void of any finite things, movement of one thing could go through this void without communicating movement to other things. Furthermore, he continues, even if there is no void, certain material things could also just switch places without affecting other material things.

Crusius also thinks that these arguments disprove the idea endorsed often by Wolffians that from state of any substance in the world could be determined the state of all other substances. This proposition of Wolffians was explicitly based on the supposed continuous causal nexus of all the parts of the world, where movement of one piece would eventually affect all the other pieces. If this nexus fails, as Crusius deems very possible, the states of the substances in the world would not be as closely interlinked, although they would be really connected.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - The essence of the world

After going through what can be known about God, Crusius continues with the question of the world. His aim is to do metaphysical cosmology, that is, to describe what any world in general must be like and what we can know about this necessary essence of worlds without any help of prior experience. Thus, metaphysical cosmology in Crusius’ sense is not a physical endeavour and does not aim to describe our actual world.

Crusius faces the problem that since we do not even know our actual world completely and certainly don’t know what all the possible worlds are like, it seems impossible for us to know what worlds would necessarily be like. He admits that metaphysical cosmology must be incomplete. Firstly, he says, only God could know all the possible characteristics a world could have. Secondly, we are unsure even of many features of the actual world whether they are necessary: for instance, should every possible world have colours?

Despite these misgivings, Crusius thinks that we can still know some important truths of metaphysical cosmology. Firstly, all possible worlds are also things and thus must have characteristics that ontology has shown all things to have. Secondly, natural theology also implies things in cosmology, because any world would be God’s creation and would thus reflect their essential properties. Finally, he concludes, the very concept of the world must imply what a world must be like.

Furthermore, Crusius notes that we do not need to observe different possible worlds in order to form a distinct concept of a world - we just have to be able to distinguish a world from anything that is not a world. Firstly, Crusius distinguishes the world from God: the latter is necessary, the former is not. Secondly, a world is not an individual creature, but a sum of creatures, although, Crusius admits, God could have created just a single creature.

Not all collections of creatures are worlds, Crusius emphasises. Some collections are just connected by the observer, but a world should truly be a unity, not just in someone’s thoughts. Finally, Crusius notes, a world should be a real whole, not a part of something larger. Crusius’ final concept of the world is then that world is a real combination of finite things that is not again a part of another, to which it would belong through a real combination.

As a combination of things, Crusius says, every possible world must be spatial. In addition, because a world is particularly a combination of finite things, it must necessarily be of finite size. Crusius is especially keen to point out that although mathematics speaks of infinite spaces, this is just an abstract fiction that is not truly possible in a world. God, on the other hand, should exist wherever the world is, but God is not limited by the limits of the world. Crusius also accepts the possibility of world having void spaces in it - that is, spaces void of finite creatures, because God would exist even within void.

In addition to being spatial, Crusius continues, a world must also be temporal. He adds that because a world is created by God, it must have not existed at some point in time. World also could not exist by itself, even after creation, but must be sustained by God. Crusius appears to assume that God does not create anything else in the world after the first creation, but he does admit the possibility that some part of the world might have been isolated from another part for a while, while the two parts would later come in contact with one another. Thus, he suggests, the physical law of the constant quantity of forces is not as such necessary, because we cannot be sure that the world does not contain such isolated, unknown forces.

Crusius also emphasises that God has created the world for some purpose. As he has pointed out earlier, the purpose of creation has to serve especially the free creatures with the ability to reason. Thus, other things in the world must be either means for that purpose or then necessary consequences of creating and arranging the world to serve the purpose. Whatever the purpose of a particular possible world is, the world must be good, because its creator is also. Then again, no world can really be the best possible world, because all worlds are somehow imperfect and could be improved.

An interesting question Crusius considers is what belongs to an identity of a world: how much a world can be changed before it becomes a different world? Obviously, one could take the primary constituents of a world - simple substances - and reorder them in a different manner. Yet, this answer concerns only the ultimate metaphysical subject of what makes a world and ignores the intriguing problem of whether a world has some inherent structure that differentiates it from any other world made out of the same substances.

Crusius outlines next his criterion of a world’s identity: a world remains same, as long as it still serves its fundamental purpose and in particular no individual things, their combinations, laws governing them and their essential actions change in a manner that would change this inherent purpose or any means required for the fulfilment of that purpose. Any change that does not do this, he continues, merely changes the state of this world. Indeed, he points out an important type of change that does not change the identity of a world. A world is created for the sake of free creatures and for enabling their free actions. Thus, he suggests, whatever persons do freely should not affect the essence of the world they inhabit, because that would mean the very purpose of a world could contradict itself.

Because things in the world are combined, Crusius insists, they must be able to interact with one another. In these interactions some things must be active or affect one another, but Crusius notes that there can be passive things that do not have any force to affect other things, but at most enable something through their existence. Both active forces and inactive abilities can combine things into more complex wholes.

Furthermore, Crusius continues, interactions that combine things are governed by physical laws that should hold independently of our thinking of them. Crusius notes that there are also laws of understanding that merely say what propositions follow or are possible in certain circumstances, but these differ from real physical laws. Similarly, he distinguishes physical laws from moral laws, which say what should be done according to commands of some lord.

Now Crucius defines nature as the sum of all substances in the world, together with the physical laws governing their combinations. Natural is then something that happens through the fundamental forces of created substances, while God does nothing else, but sustains these substances and fundamental forces. Supernatural, on the other hand, is something caused immediately by God. Because at least the sustainment of the substances and their fundamental forces is an immediate effect of God’s action, Crusius concludes that every world has something supernatural in it.

Crusius thinks that we can conceive no other interaction between finite things than interaction through movement. Since we are dealing with finities, he continues, we can invoke the principle that this non-conceivability reveals a true dependence relation: finite things can affect one another only through movement. Thus, when a finite substance affects another, it either forces the other to move by its own impenetrability or then its motion awakens some other activity in the other substance.

This other activity that can be awakened by motion, Crusius insists, is either thinking or willing, which we know are not movement. He then distinguishes two kinds of substances in the world: material substances, which can only move, and spiritual substances, which move, but also think and will things. Furthermore, he divides matter into two further subclasses: metaphysical or inactive matter that has only a passive capacity for movement and physical or active matter that has also some active force.

Crusius has noted that the world has been made for the sake of free spirits, thus, the world must, undoubtedly, have spirits in it. One important consequence of the existence of free spirits is that Crusius’ world cannot be completely deterministic. A world need not have matter, on the other hand, but matter can exist in it. Then again, Crusius notes, because everything in the world must somehow serve its purpose or free spirits, matter and spirits must be able to interact: why else would God have created it? Crucius brushes aside the old Cartesian worry that spirit could not affect matter, because they are two different types of substances: dogs and humans share characteristics and still are of different species. Crusius sees no problem in accepting that spirits are also impenetrable, like matter, and can thus move and be moved by material objects.

Crusius is unsure about the Leibnizian principle that there are no two things that cannot be distinguished from one another. He does admit that no two spirits can be completely similar, because everyone of them perceives the world from a somewhat different perspective and perceptions change their inner state. The case is different with material substances, Crusius says. The principle itself cannot be justified without experience, he insists and thinks that all supposed proofs of the principle have been sophisms: if God would have wanted, two different and still completely similar material substances could have been created. True, he admits, experience appears to show that seemingly similar things often differ in some manner. Yet, there is no assurance that at least some of the simplest parts of matter wouldn’t be completely similar. Still, Crusius suggests, God has probably created at least many different kinds of simple material substances, because this would provide more means for helping the world to fulfil its purpose.

Whatever the ultimate elements of matter are like, they can be combined into more complex substances or bodies. Indeed, Crusius says, matter as a whole probably has to be dispersed into distinct bodies, because this better helps to achieve the purpose of the world. Crusius distinguishes physical from mathematical bodies, which are mere possible divisions of space. Physical bodies, instead, are not united just because we think of them as united, but through something real that separates them from other bodies. Crusius suggests three kinds of such unifications. Firstly, parts of a body can be held together by inactive, unmoving substances surrounding it. Secondly, parts of a body can be held together by moving substances surrounding it, such as the vortexes in Cartesian physics. Finally, parts of a body can be held together by an elastic matter, that is, matter that has an innate tendency to return to a certain shape.

No other ways to unite material things into bodies exist, Crusius insists. He is especially keen to deny any attractive or cohesive forces that would hold parts of a body together, because all explanations why material things stay together should be reducible to fundamental forces. Cohesive force cannot be a fundamental force, he adds, because cohesion is just another name for material parts staying together and so merely describes the phenomenon without explaining it. Then again, Crusius denies the existence of attractive force, because such an action in distance breaks the requirements of what a force and causal interaction should be like. Finally, Crusius also denies that parts of bodies would stay together because of common feeling, since feeling is something he allows only spirits to have.

However the bodies are held together, they then interact with one another and with the spirits. Despite the interaction between the two types of substances, Crusius notes, these different classes can also be regarded in abstraction from one another. Thus, spirits of the world, in separation from material things, form a spiritual world, while matter as such forms a material world, and when regarded as separated into distinct bodies, a bodily world.

The bodily world particularly, Crusius says, can be seen as a machine - that is, as a body of its own, combined from parts that are shaped for some purposes in such a manner that these purposes can be actualised with the aid of the shape and the position of these parts. This is not true, he adds, of the whole world, because this also includes spirits that cannot be parts of a body. Furthermore, he notes, although the bodily world is a machine, all its parts are not, for instance, a stone is just a body, but not a machine. Finally, Crusius points out that the bodily world is a rather peculiar machine, because part of its driving force comes from actions of free spirits.

Although spirits are not machines, they can be combined with naturally produced machines. Crusius is obviously speaking of organic bodies, combined to which spirits are called souls. Crusius suggests that it is not completely necessary that worlds contain animals or combinations of souls and organic bodies. Animals do make a world more perfect, but finite spirits should be able to affect the bodily world even without the help of a body of their own.

For Crusius, the world is not a deterministic whole, because it also contains spirits capable of free actions. God’s interactions with the world provide further reasons why determinism does not work. We’ve already seen Crusius to note that God has a constant supernatural effect on the world, for instance, in sustaining the world and all the substances in it. In addition to such constant effects, Crusius also thinks that God can occasionally have quite sudden effects on the world, that is, God might do miracles.

Some of the miracles can be hidden from us humans - they are done merely, because God thought it best to do things in such a manner. At other times, God might choose to reveal that a miracle has been done - in these cases, Crusius adds, God must want humans to know that some event was a miracle. Sometimes the miracle might appear to be a work of a person following God, but even in these cases it is God who actually gives the person a power for doing such miracles. In these cases, Crusius explains, it is futile to try to make experiments whether this person truly can consistently make miracles, because God can at any point just choose not to grant that power to the person anymore.

How then to know when some event has been a miracle? Crusius points out that because of the possibility of hidden miracles, we can never be sure that something hasn’t been a miracle. Yet, he also gives a general criteria for recognising miracles: something is a miracle, if it could not have happened in a natural manner generally or at least in these specific conditions. He also adds that we are sometimes very able to distinguish supernatural from natural events, because we are so familiar with what naturally happens: for instance, we know trees don’t usually talk. Crusius also points out that we do not need mathematically certain proofs to accept something as a miracle, but a lower grade of conviction is usually enough. Finally, he emphasises that miracles also have a moral aspect, that is, we shouldn’t think of something with immoral consequences as a miracle.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 – The city of God

While the metaphysical compendiums in Wolffian tradition have usually ended with a look on natural theology, Darjes has left cosmology as the final chapter of his metaphysics. This makes some sort of sense, since he has already emphasised that cosmology is no proper part of metaphysics, since it does not deal with characteristics of all things or of things from one of the highest genera of things – cosmology is about world, which is a certain complex of things, consisting of many kinds of things (in Darjesian philosophy, material bodies and immaterial souls and spirits).

Another oddity is Darjes' inclusion of certain notions from natural law to his discussion. He is particularly interested of the concept of right and possession. Right to something, for Darjes, means that a person has the ability to use that something without hurting other persons or their rights. This seemingly innocuous definition allows Darjes to conclude that in fact God is the primary owner of everything – God surely can control everything that exists, and he cannot really hurt rights of others, since he made all things in the first place.

Darjesian definition has also important consequences for the rights of finite entities. Firstly, he notes that finite entities can really have rights only for complex things, because they have no power to do anything to simple entities. Secondly, since all things already belong to God originally, finite entities can have right to anything, only if God has provided them the right to use things in some manner.

In addition to owning everything, God also governs world. This means that he sets the goals toward which this ”city of God” strives. The main purpose divinity has set for everything, according to Darjes, is the happiness and perfection of all rational beings. Thus, Darjes concludes, all rational beings should strive for their own happiness and perfection and help others to find these also – and definitely not hinder others in their search.

Darjes does not go into particularities of what actions are good for happiness and perfection, but merely notes what tools God uses for guiding rational entities toward their appointed goal. Firstly, God can directly reveal some guidelines. Secondly, God might appoint further rewards and punishments and even a kind of heaven and hell, to provide further incitement for good actions. Despite these rather naive Christian notions, Darjes also supposes that all rational entities will eventually be able to perfect themselves – the purpose of punishments is also just to help personal perfection.

We are now finally finished with Darjesian metaphysics. Next up on the list is a return to the work of Martin Knutzen.

Baumgarten: Metaphysics – Such a perfect world

The account of world in general and its parts completes the independent part of Baumgarten's cosmology. There is still one section of cosmology we haven't dealt with, but it still requires to be fulfilled by an important proposition, proven only in theology. The section concerns the perfection of the world and the proposition to be proven states that the world is perfect, because it is created by God.

We have already seen that the notion of perfection in Baumgarten is quite aesthetical – the more things we have following the same laws, the more perfect world we have. This notion by itself rules out certain worldviews as being clearly imperfect. We already know that Baumgarten holds materialistic world to be an impossibility. Furthermore, egoistic world is clearly not perfect, because in such a world exists only one entity. Similarly, a dualistic world is more perfect than idealistic, because idealism allows only the existence of spirits, while dualism accepts also the existence of matter and its simple parts – that is, if matter and spirits are just something that can exist in the same world.

One part of the notion of perfection rules then that there should be as much entities in the world as possible, while the other part states that these entities should be governed by same laws. An interesting question is whether the other part speaks against the possibility of events happening against natural laws, that is, miracles. One thing is certain – the inclusion of spirits in Baumgarten's world does not violate natural laws, but instead just extends the notion of natural from mere material universe to spiritual entities. Thus, whatever spirits do, it is not in any way miraculous. Indeed, it is only God who could act in any way against the laws of nature.

We might think that as an avid Leibnizian Baumgarten would be quite against the notion of miracles – in a perfect world God needs not wind the clock from time to time. Yet, as a Wolffian, Baumgarten is still willing to leave the possibility of miracles open. Supernatural events might be possible even in the perfect world, if they just somehow improved the world. If some perfections could not be achieved through mere natural means or if they could not be achieved as perfectly, then miracles might be in order.

Interestingly, Baumgarten uses the notion of perfect world to decide the topical question of interaction between substances. If we begin from the least acceptable alternative, occasionalism would state that no finite substances would actually act, but everything would be done by infinite substance or God. This view would contradict a proposition Baumgarten takes to be self-evident, that is, that when a thing is in some respect passive toward another thing, it must be in another respect active. Hence, occasionalism would fall to a contradiction and would be unacceptable even on that account.

The decision between causal influx, Leibnizian pre-established harmony and some mixture of the two is not as simple. Before Baumgarten can decide between these alternatives, he must obviously explain what they all mean. Causal influx, Baumgarten says, means that all interactions are real, that is, when substance A is active in respect to a change in passive substance B, B is in no respect active in respect to this same change. Then again, pre-established harmony states that all interactions are ideal, that is, when substance A is active in respect to a change in passive substance B, B is also active in respect to that same change – in other words, it is just a matter of perspective, whether A has caused something in B or whether B has caused it in itself. In mixed positions, some interactions are real, some ideal.

Now, Baumgarten insists that the system of pre-established harmony does not deny that causal interactions do occur between different substances – it just states that at the same time these substances, in a sense, act for themselves. Similarly, a system of universal causal influx does not deny that world would contain universal harmony, and indeed, causal influx would glue all the parts of the world as well together as pre-established harmony. Then again, causal influx does have its problems. Particularly, since an activity of a thing must always be derived from some other substance, eventually no finite substance would be active in the sense that its activity would be consequence of its own nature.

But the final proof Baumgarten accepts is based on the notion perfect world. If the world would be glued by a universal causal influx, all the reasons for some event would be external to the things involved in the event. Then again, in pre-established harmony, all events have two different types of influence – the events are really caused by the things themselves and ideally by other things. Because of this consideration, Baumgarten is willing to accept pre-established harmony, except in case of God, who obviously is a real cause of the whole world.

So much for cosmology! Next time I will turn to questions of psychology.

Baumgarten: Metaphysics – Elements of the world

Just like with ontology, in cosmology Baumgarten appears to be rather close on Wolff's ideas, but a more careful study reveals important differences. One interesting point of distinction concerns the question what belongs in a world. With Wolff, it appears that souls do not exist within deterministic universe, but follow their own causal series. With Baumgarten, on the other hand, souls appear to be just as much part of the world as material objects. Thus, while for Wolff, egoism is a statement on what there exists in general (nothing but one soul), for Baumgarten it is a cosmological proposition (world consists of one soul or is simple).

Reason for Baumgarten's inclusion of souls in world might be his commitment to Leibnizian notion of monads. True, even Wolff had said that monads do correspond to what he called elements, but this admission was a bit halfhearted. Baumgarten, instead, is quite insistent on using the term monad. He even endorses the notion that these monads have some soul-like properties, by stating that materialists must deny monads, either in general or at least as parts of the world – because Baumgarten, like Wolff, believes that all complex substances consist of simple substances, which he identifies with monads, he can then simply deny materialism as contradictory.

While it is difficult to say what is the relation of elements and space in Wolff's philosophy – and even more difficult to say what is the relation of souls and space – Baumgarten states at once that monads are located at some point in space. They are still not mere points in space, because they also represent the world around them, some darkly, others clearly (idealism is then defined as the idea that all monads represent world clearly or are spirits).

Wolff was almost silent on how his elements combined into, first corpuscles, then visible material bodies – for instance, should we need an infinity of them? Baumgarten does not provide a full explanation either, but he at least has a more detailed story to tell. First of all, monads are spatially located, that is, they must be in some sense positioned in relation to one another. Now, this positionality was reduced in Baumgarten's philosophy to interactions – being near another thing meant just affecting it.

Now, Baumgarten held that monads in some sense affect one another. In fact, when one monad acts one another, this other monad must also react on the other monad. Such interlocking combinations of monads form them more stable connections. Their interaction forms their contact, and if no external reason makes them lose their contact, the monads stay together, forming a relatively stable material body.

Just like in Wolffian philosophy, with Baumgarten the activities of monads explain all phenomena on the level of bodies. Indeed, Baumgarten even says that because all monads are active and e.g. change constantly their relative positions (that is, start and cancel interactions with one another), bodies also must be in constant movement.

Although Baumgarten thus uses the language of monads interacting one another, it is still unclear how seriously this statement is to be taken. Does Baumgarten, like Wolff, admit interactions only with some primary elements, but deny it between spiritual and other monads? Or does he accept or deny all monadic interactions? These questions, along with the problematic of a perfection of the world, will be dealt next time.

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.

Gottsched: First grounds of whole worldly wisdom (1733)

I've already described Gottsched's original take on poetry and I am now about to embark on the first part of his work on the whole of philosophy, Erste Gründe der gesammten Weltweisheit, and especially its first part that deals with theoretical philosophy. Since, the number of such philosophical compendiums is about to grow and I assume they mostly follow the same formula, I am not about to make a thorough series of posts about each individual book on metaphysics. Instead, I shall merely make some general remarks and comment on the novel features of each work.

Before starting the work itself, Gottsched begins with a short presentation of the history of philosophy, and just like the pietist Joachim Lange, begins with the account of Genesis. Whereas Lange's vision of philosophy was one of depressing downhill, in which humans had lost the original wisdom that consisted of a connection to God, Gottsched has a more positive view, no doubt tied to a very different idea of what philosophy is all about: for Gottsched, just like for Wolff, philosophy is worldly wisdom, which then is a science for discovering happiness in this world, which can clearly become more perfect as we discover more things about the world around us. Curiously, Gottsched's take on history is rather unhistorical: he goes through nations and asks what philosophical or scientific discoveries they had made. This feeling of ahistoricity is heightened by Gottsched's decision to end the history of philosophy quickly after Socrates.

After this pseudohistorical introduction begins the work itself. Gottsched's take on what belongs to theoretical philosophy is pretty traditional: the book considers much the same topics as Wolff had done in his logical, metaphysical and physical writings. Still, Gottsched's arrangement of these topics is rather peculiar. After logic comes metaphysics, but this contains only ontology and cosmology. Metaphysics is followed by physics, which is then followed by a section on pneumatology, study of spirits. I shall briefly go through all novel and surprising features in Gottsched's treatment of these topics.

Gottsched's logic does not at first sight hold much surprises and seems rather Woffian in tone. True, Gottsched does mention other philosophers as inspirations of the study of logic, but it is clearly Wolffian logic, which Gottsched thinks is nearest to the truth: he explicitly mentions Wolff's German logic, while the organisation of the logic reveals clear influences of Latin logic. Still, Gottschedian logic has tendencies not existing in Wolff's logic. While Wolff accepted experience as one source of cognition among many others, Gottsched instead tries to reduce empirical judgements to reasoning. His justification is rather original: empirical judgements depend on the reliability of our sensory apparatus, but this is something that might be proved (for instance, Descartes tried to justify it by relying of the goodness of God). One could protest that such a reliability guarantees still only a probability of empirical judgements, but not necessarily their truth. Yet, this still would not be fatal to Gottsched's position, because in the Wolffian tradition probabilities were also something that could be reasoned with.

Although Gottsched mentions no names, it is clear even from the chapter divisions that he is closely following Wolff's Latin Ontology. The only clear deviation is the lack of a direct proof of the principle of sufficient reason. Instead, Gottsched favours the transcendental argument that this principle is required to distinguish dreams from reality. As this had been done by previous Wolffians, it still means no great leap forward. The other part of Gottschedian metaphysics, cosmology, seems at first sight also rather Wolffian. But while the details truly are lifted almost verbatim from Wolff's works, there is something novel in Gottsched's separation of cosmology as a part of metaphysics from the pneumatology that does not belong to metaphysics. Gottsched explains this division by noting that world must be a topic of metaphysics, because souls also are part of the world. Now, this is something that was at least unclear in Wolffian account of philosophy, and in fact, it is much easier to see Wolffian souls as not belonging to the world, which is causally closed whole, which souls most likely cannot directly interact with.

Gottsched's account of physics is, as is to be expected, full of references to sources beyond Wolff – Gottsched is drawing on developments that were still unknown in time of Wolff's physical writings. Most of what Gottsched recounts feels nowadays very trite – like the account of Ptolemaic and Copernican systems and Kepler's discoveries – or then quite dated – like a theory that first chapter of Genesis describes a time when Earth was still not rotating and each day took one year, while the dust covering Earth's surface slowly flew away, first to reveal light and only couple of ”days” or years later the Sun and the Moon.

What is truly revolutionary in Wolffian setting is Gottsched's pneumatology, which contains, in addition to empirical and rational psychology, also natural theology (God is also, after all, a spirit). We might firstly note that by the time Gottsched was writing this work, Wolff had not yet published Latin versions of these themes. What is truly novel is not Gottsched's new arrangement of topics, but Gottsched's rejection of the pre-established harmony as the explanation of soul/body – interaction.

This development seems remarkable at first, but in some sense is quite natural. We've seen that Wolff moved to a position, in which the pre-established harmony had only a status of a likely hypothesis. Gottsched now suggests that if it at this stage all theories are mere hypothesis and none of them is truly certain, we should choose the option that is most familiar – that is, the theory of a true interaction between soul and body. The problem how souls as substances beyond world can have any effect on world as a closed series of causes and effects Gottsched solves easily through his earlier admission that souls are part of the world and thus the soul/body -interaction belongs to the natural course of events.

Gottsched's pneumatology thus shows a new tendency in Wolffian school. Furthermore, Gottsched wasn't even the only figure to do this. He explicitly refers to a study of one Martin Knutsen - best known as the teacher of Kant - in which the interaction was defended. But what did Wolff himself had to say about the topic? We shall see soon, as I am now about to embark on Wolff's rational psychology.

Such a perfect world

Wolff has attached every entity with an essence, which, as it were, contains the kernel of a thing or its central characteristics, from which all features of the thing, or at least their possibility, can be explained. Every thing, whether just possible or actual, has also an essence, or else it wouldn't be a thing. Thus, even world must have such an essence or nature, and the nature of the world (or simply nature) means for Wolff the sum of all principles of mutation inherent in the world, that is, the sum of all active forces in the world.

Now, by natural Wolff simply means something belonging to the nature of any topic. In case of world, natural then means something being or happening in accordance with the forces and laws governing motion. Events that do not happen according to these forces and laws are then supernatural events or miracles. Furthermore, there is an intricate relation between the miracles and laws of motion. Wolff admits that laws of motion are not necessary and that events we would call miraculous are completely possible events of another world. Yet, Wolff goes even further and suggests that miracles can in a sense happen even during the normal course of events – this doesn't imply contradiction, Wolff says, but only the incompleteness of the world we live in. If world is a clockwork, miracle is like a finger entering the works and doing something clock itself wouldn't be able to do. Miracle changes the world, and to do that, it must have adjusted the inner workings of the elements of the world, because elements can exist only in a single world. In order that the world would remain the same world, another miracle will have to follow that changes everything back to how it was.

Laws of motion then define the nature of the world, but they also contribute to its perfection. Perfection in general Wolff defined in his ontology as arising from the unification of a multiplicity under some rules. In case of world, this unification must take the form of a spatio-temporal whole, and the rules governing it are clearly the laws of motion. Thus, when we become aware of the laws governing physical world or the order of nature, we are not just becoming more informed, but also able to appreciate the perfection of the world. Due to the incompleteness of human cognitive capacities, Wolff thinks we can never know the perfection of the world completely – a clever way for Wolff to avoid the possible objection that world does not appear perfect.

Before I completely move away from Wolff's cosmology, I would like to point out how misleading is the Kantian account of what cosmology is about when it comes to Wolff. As it is well known, Kant uses especially his idea of antinomies to undermine the traditional cosmology – reason faces insurmountable dilemmas in its most important questions. Now, ironically the four problems Kant mentions are not treated by Wolff in his cosmology. Problems about human freedom and possible creation of the world are respectively psychological and theological for Wolff, and the questions of the spatiotemporal limits of world and of the divisibility of matter are never comprehensively discussed by Wolff, as far as I can see.

Next time we'll turn to Wolff's empirical psychology.

Matter and forces

An important feature of world, according to Wolff, is that it is a composite, that is, it consists of parts. Some of these parts are familiar to us from experience. Wolff points out that none of these experienced parts are indivisible, but consist of further parts – we might call them in a modern philosophical vocabulary middle-sized objects.

As composites, Wolff continues, everyday worldly objects must be such that can be completely explained through the structure and mutual relations of these parts – in effect, they are machines similar to the world itself. Because of the dependence, one need just change parts of a middle-sized object in order to change the object itself. In fact, this is the only way to truly have some effect on these objects.

All the changes on the bodies require then moving some stuff from them or moving some stuff in them – that is, movement or motion and direct physical contact is an essential element in changes of the worldly objects. It is then no wonder that a huge part of Wolff's cosmology is dedicated to determining the so-called laws of motion – mostly descriptions of what happens when several bodies collide with one another, depending on their size, mass, velocity and cohesion. Although determining what the correct laws of motion were was an ongoing philosophical and scientific theme at least from the time of Descartes' Principia philosophiae, I won't go into any further details here, besides one exception.

The one interesting element in the laws of motion is the notion that a resting body will not by itself start to move and that a moving body will not by itself change its velocity or direction. This property, known nowadays as inertia, is called by Wolff a passive force of a body, and according to him, should be taken as defining what is called matter, which he takes to be the extension of passive force. With just matter, bodies would then just have stayed in the same place for all eternity. The movement must have then been generated by something else, that is, by an active force, which is then transferred from one body to another in various collisions. Matter and active forces are then what one requires for explaining the constitution of our world and they might be taken as substances in what we observe of the world.

Yet, matter and active forces are not the whole story. As I've mentioned in a previous text, beyond the level of material bodies exists the level of elements of bodies, because as composite entities material bodies must ultimately consist of some simple entities. As simple, these elements cannot have any extension and are therefore indivisible. They are not like atoms are thought to be, Wolff says, because atoms are supposed to have no true distinguishing qualities, which would contradict the ontological principle that no two entities can have exactly same qualities.

The differentiating principle of the elements, Wolff suggests, should be their conatus, that is, the basic force containing in nuce all the changes that will happen to a particular element. In effect, elements are differentiated by their whole life history. Because an essential part of a life history of an element consists of its interactions with other elements and these interactions are essential part of a nexus forming a world, an element cannot exist except in a single world, that is, by changing world you must change also its elements and vice versa.

The actual relation of elements to bodies is rather confusing in Wolffian philosophy. What is clear is that elements constitute the realm of bodies we observe. This means that many features we appear to observe in bodies must be deceptive. For instance, bodies appear to consist of continuous masses of such types of stuff as water. Yet, because all matter and even water must consist of individual, indivisible and completely distinct elements, they must actually be discontinuous. What is unclear is how this phenomenal realm of continuities is supposed to arise from true realm of discontinuities. The question is muddled even more by corpuscles, which Wolff introduces as constituting a level between observed bodies and elements. The behaviour of bodies Wolff explains as constituted by the corpuscles, parts of body, which still are divisible. Yet, no explanation is given how corpuscles are generated from the level of elements, and number of confusing questions remain. For instance, should a corpuscle consist of an infinity of elements?

This enigma is a point where we must leave the Wolffian concept of microcosm. Next time I still have something to say about the order and perfection of the world in Wolff's cosmology.

General cosmology (1731)

After Wolff's huge works on logic and ontology, his Cosmologia generalis feels refreshingly short with its under five hundred pages. The shortness of the book might also reflect its lack of importance in the purely philosophical part of Wolffian system. Wolff's cosmology works mostly as an introduction to general natural science or physics and is thus firmly connected with Wolff's more empirical studies. Then again, of other parts of metaphysics only theology is essentially said to be based on cosmology, because Wolff argues for the existence of God from the existence of a certain type of universe.

The topic of Wolffian cosmology is then world or universe and general types of objects in it. The very existence of universe is not so much proven by pure reasoning, but assumed – or at least the existence of a universe is justified by certain empirical observations we have. What we actually perceive or observe are certain things – rocks, trees, houses and such. Now, all of these entities are finite, that is, their existence requires a number of other entities, either existing at the same time (like trunk supports branches) or existing before them (like rain requires gathering of clouds).

As they say, no smoke without fire.

The entities we observe are then connected to various other entities in space and time through causal influences. These intricate relations form a kind of web or nexus, in which one thing can be connected to any other thing of the nexus through a string of causal relations. A totality of such interconnected spatio-temporal things is then a world or a universe. There might be different possible universes, because a number of possible strings of events might have occurred, but only one of them truly has occurred, that is, the string of events constituting the history of our world.

I have investigated the nature of this Wolffian universe in quite a detail earlier, but there's no harm in going through it all again. World is a composite of things, and as a composite, its nature is dictated by the nature of its parts. Thus, Wolff concludes, if we replaced just one peck of sand, the world would be completely different, because its identity is determined by the very entities constituting it.

Now, in the actual universe, all things we happen to observe are composite substances, that is, they consist of other things and what they are or their essence is determined by their constituents. If we then want to change these substances, we must essentially change their constitution, that is, remove some parts or add other (for instance, if we want to make blackened metal objects shiny, we must remove all the grime on the surface of the objects), or then we can change the way they happen to move at the moment. All these changes require then direct contact with the object to be changed: you cannot pluck something out, if you are not close enough. In effect, this means that world and all the composite objects that we observe can be changed only through motion that comes in contact with what is to be changed. Wolff can thus add that the world is like a machine or a perfect watch which remains in action, even if its creator fails to wind it.

As we have mentioned number of times, Wolff does not think that his account of world could be called necessary in the strict sense of the word. Indeed, it is easy to see that even if we could explain all the events of a current day, we would be forced to explain them by referring all of them to past events, which would then be completely unexplained and required a new explanation. At the end, these events would be necessary in the strict sense, only if no other series of events would be even conceivable, which is clearly not so.

Then again, Wolff also claims that worldy events are not completely inexplicable facts. Indeed, this non-explicability of some facts should be contradicted even by the principle of sufficient reason, which states that all contingent things and events arise out of some more primary things and events. In case of universe, these primary things and events are movements of material bodies, which with machine-like predictability leads to further things and events. This deterministic view of universe does not completely cancel the non-necessity of the worldly events, because a deterministic series as a whole is not necessitated by anything,

This is enough for the Wolffian scheme of macrocosmos, next time I'll take a look of what he has to say on microcosmos, that is, bodies and their parts.

Reduction of physics

At least since Aristotle's Posterior analytics, mathematics has been the model of science, in which everything should be deduced from self-evident axioms and definitions. Indeed, mathematics was quite long considerably more advanced and certain than any other field of research. It is then no wonder that Descartes tried to fit physics and especially mechanics into this model. Even more, he suggested that basic laws of mechanics could be derived from mere geometrical considerations: after all, matter was defined by extension, so the characteristics of the motion of matter should be reducible to the extensional characteristics of matter, such as size and velocity.

What Descartes had failed to take into consideration was that the nature of matter is not exhausted by its extension and that it cannot be identified with mere space. Thus, one had to take into account also the mass of bodies, when considering e.g. how two bodies behaved in a collision. Recognizing this made it a necessity to empirically observe the actual movement of bodies and to look for regularities that could be generalized from these observations. Inconsistently, such studies were still often called mathematical and even a semblance of mathematical deduction was upheld.

Followers of Leibniz in Germany were more aware of the inability to reduce physics to mathematics. Hence, we see Christian Wolff admitting that his cosmological considerations had an empirical basis and that reliable experiences in general must supplement the inabilities of human understanding. In light of the empiricist tendencies of Wolff, it is interesting to see that Bilfinger supposed that it might be possible to derive basic laws of physics apriorically. I do not think Bilfinger is necessarily going against Wolff, but merely explicating the Wolffian position from a different angle: true, in practice we must use empirical method, but in principle we should be able to use deduction.

Bilfinger still doesn't advocate a return to supposedly geometrical demonstrations of Descartes. Instead, he supposes laws of physics should be derived from metaphysics. In other words, Bilfinger doesn't want to state that physical laws would be necessary like laws of logic and mathematics. Instead, they are based ultimately on the decision of God. According to the Wolffian position, God has created the best out of all the possible worlds. Hence, all the laws that the world follows must also be as perfect as they could be – and if we knew what is objectively best, we could know the laws chosen by God.

What Bilfinger's position makes clear is the contingency of physical laws. Specifically, the creator of the laws still holds the power to suspend these laws for a limited period and place. In common parlance such local suspensions of laws are called miracles. In effect, Bilfinger is saying that miracles are possible and that God has power to make them – another defense of Wolff against suggestions of atheism.

So much for physical laws, next time I shall deal with the difference between intuitive and symbolic cognition.

Christian Wolff: Remarks on Reasonable thoughts on God, the world and the human soul, also on all things in general - Fragments of cosmology, rational psychology and natural theology

It has become evident that Wolff clearly wants to distance himself from the image of a radical atheist and Spinozist. This is even more evident, if we take into consideration his comments on cosmology, which he straightforwardly defines as a discipline required especially for the proof of God's existence. Indeed, it is the contingency of the world and its dependence on God that Wolff especially wants to emphasize in his comments – thus, he once again uses considerable efforts to state the difference between absolute and hypothetical necessity, which his opponents had muddled.

Wolff also clarifies the notion that things are infinitely dependent on other things, which I also noted to be somewhat confusing statement and which the pietists read as a commitment to the eternity of the world. Wolff notes that he is merely stating what the worldly things would have to be like, if only natural explanations or causation according to natural laws would be allowed. In other words, there couldn't have been a natural beginning of the world, because every natural law requires a previous state from which the current state arose.

Such an impossibility does not of course rule out a supernatural beginning or a beginning that did not happen according to natural laws. Indeed, Wolff is convinced that the principle of sufficient ground must then lead us to accept such a supernatural beginning – infinite series of causes just isn't a possibility. Wolff is here underlining the contingency of natural laws: they are necessary only within the world, but not from a more extensive perspective.

Furthermore, Wolff even makes it clear that in a sense natural laws are not necessary even within the world, that is, if God is taken into account. Wolff states that God need not follow laws of nature, but if he so desires, he can make worldly things behave in a manner they usually wouldn't. Of course, Wolff is quick to point out that God doesn't do such miracles, unless there is a good reason, but it is evident that he wants to make God's freedom stand more out.

Interestingly, Wolff appears to take the principle of the identity of indiscernibles as a mere natural law. Indeed, he does consider it a real possibility that God could have created two completely equal things, although he just has had no reason to do it. We can see Wolff distancing himself here from Leibniz, who apparently suggested that the identity of indiscernibles might somehow be based on the principle of sufficient reason.

Even clearer is Wolff's struggle against becoming identified a a mere Leibnizian in his behaviour towards monadology. Wolff does want to present the theory of monads in as plausible manner as possible, but he emphasizes forcefully that he himself does not believe in it. Main reasons for his disbelief are physical. Wolff is unconvinced that all the richness of phenomena could be reduced to elements that all share the same force of representation. True, one could on basis of this power understand why elements or monads can form larger totalities, such a material objects, but the further characteristic of material objects that resist the intrusion of other material objects into the same place is something Wolff cannot understand as derived from force of representation.

Still further clue of Wolff's growing disenchanment of Leibniz is provided by Wolff's clarification of the status of pre-established harmony as a mere hypothesis, but this is something we have already dealt with. In addition, Wolff seems keen to downplay the importance of whole rational psychology: if one just knows e.g. that movements of soul and body somehow correspond with one another, nothing more is required, if one does not have a scientific bent for discovering grounds for everything.

The urge to distinguish himself from Leibnizian thought is probably a symptom of Wolff's need to answer the accusations of atheism and fatalism, which becomes even more evident in the rest of Wolff's book. Thus, Wolff spends considerable number of pages in explaining that while one can derive all properties of souls from its representative capacities and all properties of God from his capacity to view all possible worlds at once, this does not mean that the nature of soul and God would be mere theoretical or passive regard of actual and possible worlds, but that both soul and God are active. And just like Wolff decided to defend the freedom of the soul, equally certain is his tendency to defend the divine liberty – even if the act of creating this world is the most reasonable and God as eminently good and wise will then inevitably choose to create it, this still doesn't mean that God couldn't have chosen completely different world to create.

Thus end Wolff's remarks on his metaphysics, which set his scheduled publication back a year – it was only the next year that Wolff could finally publish his account of biology, to which I shall turn 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.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - World as a clockwork

You might think that after a chapter on empirical psychology Wolff would turn into rational psychology, that is, that he would explain what has been observed of human consciousness. Yet, a chapter on cosmology or the study of world intervenes with the pretext that knowing the essence of human soul requires knowing the essence of the world.

The basic structure of the world Wolff discovers through observation: world is a series of variable things that exist side by side one another (i.e. in space) and one after another (i.e. in time) and generally are connected to one another in the sense that anyone of the things contains a reason why the others near it in space and time are situated as they are. World is then a complex thing, that is, a thing consisting of things that are parts of the world.

The notion of a complex thing is familiar already from Wolffian ontology, and indeed, most of what Wolff finds characteristic of the world is a simple application of previous ontological results. Thus, world as a complex is defined by being a certain combination of its parts, like a structure built out of Lego blocks. Yet, the temporality of the world ensures that it is not a mere static structure, but processual, and indeed, its later states are based on nothing else but its previous states. The world is then like a machine – and Wolff specifically compares it to a clockwork, where the position of the hand is determined by its earlier positions and by the movement of the machinery.

World is then for Wolff deterministic and all events in the world are certain, if the previous events are known. Yet, this does not mean that the events would be necessary: they could have happened otherwise. Analogically, there is not just one possible way to make a clock, but the parts could have been assembled differently. True, we don't see any alternative worlds lying around, like we do see clocks of various sorts, but we can read alternative world histories in works of fiction. Wolff is here applying the idea of possible worlds, which he has probably picked from Leibniz.

The assumption of possible worlds creates doubles of the modalities of necessity and possibility. Firstly, we could speak of absolute possibility and necessity, that is, of what is possible or necessary in all possible worlds. Secondly, we could speak of possibility and necessity within one possible world: what is possible in this sense is something that has happened, happens or will happen in this particular world. What is specifically impossible in one possible world are the events of all the other possible worlds. The possible worlds contradict then one another: only one of them can be actual, no matter what David Lewis says.

As any philosophy student should know, the idea of possible worlds was important for Leibniz as a component in the justification of the perfection of the actual world: God knew all the possible worlds and as a wise and good person chose the best possible world to be actualised. We are still at a chapter on cosmology and God will be investigated only later on. Still, Wolff prepares the issue by characterising the notion of the perfection of a world.

Wolff begins by noting that all complex things and thus all worlds have some sort of regularity and are therefore valuable: remember that in the chapter on ontology Wolff had defined perfection through regularity. Yet, worlds are not all of same value, Wolff adds: some are more regular than others. By regularity Wolff does not mean a mere uniformity, which by itself would not mean perfection. Instead, diversity is also an essential component in perfection. In other words, the value of the world is to be decided by the question what sort of laws it has: a good world follows a number of laws, all of which form a rational hierarchy. Note that Wolff does not intend that we could deduce what these laws could be. Instead, one finds the particular laws through abstraction from the actual phenomena and more general laws through abstraction from more general laws. In this manner Wolff justifies the general law that nature makes no leaps.

The possible worlds are nowadays treated as a legitimate way to explain e.g. modal properties of sentences. Yet, Wolff's manner of suggesting a scheme for the perfection of the world is rather unbelievable, because there are a number of possible scales for measuring the perfection of anything. The problem can be better grasped through the analogy of clockworks.

There are rather different types of clocks and watches, although the main principle and purpose is the same for all of them. Now, while one clock might beat the others by being more realiable and always on time – say, some atomic clock – another clock might be cheaper, although not as precise as a time keeper. Then again, a fancy pocket watch might not be cheap nor reliable, at least if its owner forgets to wind it, but it still is ecological, requiring no batteries, and probably the most sylish of the three examples. It would be rather difficult – if not downright impossible – to say which of the three clocks is the most perfect: all of them are good in some respect and bad in other respects.

It appears reasonable to suppose that the perfection of possible worlds would be similarly and most likely even more multidimensional: that is, there would be no single criteria for deciding the perfection of the world, but several. Hence, although one world might perfect according to one criterion, another world could well be perfect according to another criterion. How should one then choose between them?

True, the Leibnizian-Wolffian God might have some clever mathematical formula that would take into account all the different aspects of perfection and hence be a perfect criteria for deciding between several possible worlds. The problem with this solution is that one should still demonstrate that this clever formula could not give the same value to two different possible worlds: otherwise, the possibility of two equally good worlds would still remain. We shall see later if Wolff has any argument to support this claim.

So much for macrocosm, next time we shall visit the opposite context or the microcosm.