Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What is spirit like?

If in the previous chapter Crusius intended to explain the essence of spirit, in this chapter he wants to outline the basic features of a spirit. In effect, he has to describe in more detail the two basic capacities that distinguish spirit from mere matter, that is, understanding and will.

Starting with understanding, Crusius says that every idea a spirit has cannot be something passive. If there was a passive idea, he justifies his statement, it would have to be caused either by an external or by an internal activity. If an idea was caused by an external activity it would have to be either movement or caused by movement, because external interaction occurs only via movement. Both possibilities, of course, contradict the very immateriality of a spirit, Crusius notes. On the other hand, if an idea was caused by an internal activity, it would again be caused by movement or by some other activity belonging to the spirit. The former possibility is again an impossibility for Crusius, while the latter possibility he rejects, because ultimately all spiritual activities presuppose ideas.

Although ideas are always activities, Crusius continues, they can be directly generated by God, who supposedly does not act through movement. Furthermore, he adds, ideas can be modified by other activities of spirit and their generation, forcefulness and duration can be connected to external conditions.

Furthermore, Crusius notes that while all spirits have understanding or capacity for thinking ideas, only some spirits have reason, that is, an understanding so developed it is able to consciously know what is true. To have a reason, it is not enough that a spirit can have ideas, but these ideas must also be able to continue for a while. In addition, a spirit with a reason must be conscious of itself and it must be able to make abstractions. Finally, Crusius concludes, a finite spirit cannot have reason, unless God has given it the capacity to think, distinguish and combine ideas in a manner that it can recognise signs of truth in them by imitating divine understanding.

Crusius emphasises that if a finite spirit is capable of reasoning, its capacity of understanding is not derived from a unique force, but from a sum of many fundamental forces. The only other option, he points out, would be that the fundamental force would be the general force for thinking or knowing truth. Crusius rejects this possibility, because our ideas are so multiform that they cannot all have the same source. He especially points out that it is a very different matter to have an idea and to be conscious of this idea, because one can e.g. be angry without being aware of being angry.

If Crusius defined understanding as a capacity to have ideas, he defines will as a capacity to act according to one’s ideas. Every spirit must have a will, he adds, or otherwise its understanding would have no purpose. Every act of will presupposes an idea and therefore, Crusius insists, will as such is called a blind force.

Crusius is adamant that will requires fundamental forces distinct from those required for understanding, because otherwise will would be just a modification of understanding, which he has already denied. He especially objects to the idea that will could be understood as deriving from a representation of goodness, because good wouldn’t even be a meaningful concept without will. He does admit that the representation of goodness can awaken our will, but he doesn’t think this would yet reveal what will is. Crusius doesn’t even accept the Wolffian idea that the representation of goodness together with conatus or innate striving toward goodness would be enough to define will, simply because Crusius regards conatus as an unfamiliar manner of referring to will.

Every will must will something, Crusius points out, that is, it must be directed by specific ideas, which the will then strives to achieve by action. When such striving continues for a longer period of time, Crusius calls it a drive. Will must then have drives, and even, Crusius says, some fundamental drives, from which other drives are derived. Actions caused by the same fundamental drive can have various grades and directions, thus, Crusius concludes, only few fundamental drives are required for manifold variations in actions. Since a state of a spirit can be in accordance with a fundamental drive, in opposition to it or neither, we can speak of pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent states of mind or feelings. A reasoning spirit, Crusius adds, is also conscious of its state being pleasant and unpleasant, which makes it possible to speak of pleasure and pain. For animals, on the other hand pleasant and unpleasant sensations act then as mere physical causes.

Crusius notes that all animals should control their body and so they must have drives concerning the body and therefore also an idea of their body. Reasoning spirits, he continues, should also have fundamental drives that serve their moral perfection. Such fundamental drives include a drive for perfecting one’s essence, a drive to love other spirits and a drive to fulfil obligations toward God or conscience.

In addition to fundamental drives, Crusius insists, at least reasoning spirits must also have freedom. Even freedom, Crusius admits, does not do things completely without any reason, but it has to be guided by motives. These motives just do not determine the free will to do anything, but just make it inclined to something, leaving the will the final choice whether to pursue these inclinations. Free will can also boost smaller inclinations against stronger inclinations. Yet, Crusius notes, free will of finite spirits must also be finite and can thus be overcome by strong motives.

Activities of a spirit form a clear hierarchy, Crusius says. For instance, movement is the lowest kind of activity, which serves both understanding and will: Crusius again emphasises that the spirit should be able to move its own substance. Of the two other activities, on the other hand, understanding is subservient to will. This does not mean that e.g. laws of truth should be dependent on arbitrary choices of the will. Instead, it means that understanding ultimately does what the will wants, and indeed, for this reason we can speak of the moral perfection of understanding: e.g. a failure to develop one’s understanding could be taken as morally evil. With free spirits, Crusius concludes, freedom is the highest activity, which the fundamental drives should serve.

Crusius notes that there is a certain ambiguity in the concept of a purpose, which he defines as something that a spirit wills. He explains that we might be speaking of a subjective purpose or our own activity of desiring something, of an objective purpose or the object which we specifically desire, and finally, of a formal purpose, by which he means a relation between the subjective and the objective purpose. Purposes form a hierarchy, Crusius explains, since one purpose could be desired because of another purpose. He is convinced that such a series of purposes cannot continue indefinitely, but there must be one or several final purposes, which are desired for their own sake and not to fulfil another desire.

It is common knowledge that we often cannot directly achieve our purposes and so have to use some means to do this. Crusius notes that actually means is an ambiguous concept: it might refer to material means or the mediating cause used for furthering the purpose, but it could also refer to formal means or the activity of using the material means. Crusius also remarks that means can be divided into means in the proper sense, which are active causes that have in itself the power to further the purpose, and mere conditions, which do not have the power to further the purpose, but are still required by other causes to further the purpose. In order to be a proper means, Crusius adds, means must, firstly, make something happen to further the purpose, when so directed by a spirit, secondly, bring about something that the spirit wants before wanting to use the means, and finally, be used by spirit because of desiring the purpose. Thus, if a spirit doesn’t intend to use something because of a purpose, but for a completely different purpose, and this something happens to further the purpose, spirit hasn’t used it as a means for the purpose, but it has been a mere accidental intermediary cause for the purpose.

The notion of spirit is closely connected to that of life. Crusius defines life as a capacity of substance which enables it to be active from an internal ground in many, qualitatively different ways. The seemingly innocuous demand that activities enabled by life should come in many different forms actually implies that these activities cannot be distinguished by mere quantitative means, like spatiotemporal terms or grades of strength. Thus, these activities, and so also life, cannot be based on mere motion and can therefore belong only to spirits. Crusius notes that his concept of life excludes plants, which do not have spirit or soul. In fact, he adds, only spirits really have life, while animal bodies have life only in the sense of being connected to a spirit or a soul.

Crusius also notes that life is more of a continuum, with some substances being more alive than others. Thus, while one substance is alive in the sense that it has all the capacities required for living, another would be alive in a stronger sense, if its capacities of life are truly active. This higher phase of life begins, Crusius suggests, when the will of the spirit becomes active. Depending on the perfection of the will, life can then be also more or less perfect, and the highest type of life is the life of a free spirit.

While God can be alive and still have only one fundamental force, a finite living being must have several, in order to create a qualitative manifold of activities, Crusius insists. These fundamental forces must then be interconnected in the sense that one force is a condition or an object of an activity based on another force. Such an interconnection of forces then modifies the activities enabled by these forces and thus creates the manifold of activities required of a living being. These interconnections are then, Crusius concludes, controlled by laws, some of which describe interactions of spiritual activities, while others describe their interactions with the body and the material world.

Crusius goes through several of these interconnections of spiritual activities. Thus, he notes that force of will is dependent on the force of understanding, and especially, free will requires an ability of abstraction and consciousness of oneself. Other examples include when a drive for some purpose awakens a drive for the corresponding means or when thinking a certain idea activates also some other ideas through association.

An important type of interconnection connects the higher powers of the spirit to its capacity to move. These connections enable external sensations, in which ideas are not literally caused e.g. by our substance moving because of external objects, Crusius notes, but they still are conditioned by the presence of such a movement. Such an external sensation can even be an occasion for a substance becoming alive in the stronger sense, that is, for the substance activating its powers of life. The connections with the capacity of movement also explain why movements of the body can hinder our thinking and why spirits can finally return to the same inactive state in which they were, before having the first sensation. Although such interconnections are then possible, Crusius points out that a finite spirit can also be independent of the movement of its substance, which means that it would be constantly alive.

As an important instance of interaction with external things, Crusius points out that in order to interact with one another, spirits should be able to communicate with one another. With mere animals, this communication can happen through expressions, while spirits with reason are also capable of languages using words that express abstract thoughts. Both kinds of communication use the material world and its movement, but Crusius thinks that God is capable of a more direct sort of communication, in which thoughts are awakened straightaway in the other spirit.

Although activity of one power of spirit would be a condition for another power becoming active, it is still not necessary that when the first power stops its activity, the second should also stop: in some cases it might do this, in others not. This distinction between the behaviour of the powers is important for Crusius especially in cases where external sensations are a condition for the spirit becoming alive in the stronger sense. Some spirits might be passive in the sense that their activities both begin when certain sensations occur and end when these sensations stop. Other spirits, on the other hand, might be capable of independent activity in the sense that while their activities are awakened by sensations, these activities can still continue even after the corresponding sensations have stopped.

With a spirit capable of independent activities, these activities can then continue for a long period of time. Crusius emphasises that such continuing activities are not free choices, which always endure only for an instant. An enduring activity can then be strengthened by new sensations awakening similar activities and this strengthening makes it more probable that the activities lead to effects. In effect, Crusius says, such repetition of activities makes them habits. With human beings, some of these habits might have even been generated, when the human was still a foetus, and could thus be called inborn habits.

Crusius notes that spirits of the world can now be divided into four different classes. The two first classes consist of passive and independently active spirits, that is, firstly, a) spirits that live in the proper sense of the words only while they have sensations, and secondly, b) spirits that are awakened by sensation, but continue to live even after the sensations have stopped because of their inner activities. Both of these classes consist of spirits that do not always live, but must be awakened to life. The two other classes consist then of spirits that do live, even without the help of external sensations. These two classes are then distinguished from one another by c) one still having external sensations, d) the other class not.

Whatever the class a spirit belongs to, Crusius says, it is always a simple substance and thus immaterial. Crusius does admit that God could give a partless element of matter capacities to think and will. This wouldn’t still mean that God would have created a material spirit, but only a transformation of matter to spirit.

Christian August Crusius: Instruction to live reasonably (1744)

(1715-1775)

Although most important of Christian Wolff’s critics, Adolph Friedrich Hoffmann, did not have the chance to publish anything beyond logic of his system, we could view the work of his student, Crucius, as a sort of completion, and furthermore, as a conduit, through which basic anti-Wolffian ideas were transmitted to Kant.

The first book of Crucius I shall be looking at, Anweisung vernünftig zu leben, is almost at the opposite of spectrum from the methodological work of Hoffmann, that is, the interest of Crucius lies in the question how to live well. But before studying that question, Crucius says, we must first investigate the nature of human will. While in Wolffian school this study was a part of psychology - itself a part of metaphysics - Crucius noted that human will could not actually be a topic of metaphysics, which should study only what is necessary. Instead, Crucius introduced a completely new discipline, thelematology, dedicated just to human will.

A further difference from Wolffian practices is the definition of will Crucius endorses. While Wolffians usually distinguished will as a rational faculty from sensible appetite, Crucius saw will more as having irrational and rational modifications - in other words, instead of the difference between animals and human beings, Crucius emphasised the difference between mere material and animated objects.

In addition, the relation between representation and will was somewhat different with Wolffians and with Crucius. While Wolffians apparently defined appetite and will as a capacity for certain type of representations - irrational or rational representations of good and evil - and actions flowed in a seemingly necessary manner from these representations, for Crucius will was more a power to act according to representations. In other words, Crucius thought that representations provided a mere model for action, while will was the cause actualising these models. Indeed, Crucius said that without will a representing entity couldn’t act. Still, Crucius noted, there isn’t really any merely representing entities, because representations of such an entity would be completely purposeless, and God never creates anything without a purpose.

Capacity for representations - what Crucius calls understanding - is then, he says, dependent on will as its goal. Then again, will is also dependent on understanding, Crucius continues, because without representations provided by understanding will wouldn’t have anything to act in accordance with. Despite this mutual presupposition, Crucius insisted, the two capacities must be based on different basic forces - that is, when we are speaking of finite entities, while with God understanding and will are merely different names for one infinite force. In case of finite entities, on the other hand, representing something does not explain why the entity strives for something, and similarly, striving for something does not explain why the entity has representations.

Will acts for some purposes, Crucius says, although in a sense we speak of purposes only when the subject of willing knows distinctly what it strives for. In a sense, this notion of purpose, Crucius notes, can mean three distinct, but related things. Firstly, we may say that the subject strives for some state of itself or subjective purpose, for instance, when Alexander the Great wanted to receive the title of the high king of Persia. Secondly, the subject may be said to strive for some external object or objective purpose, for instance, when Alexander the Great was interested of the realm of Persia. Finally, the subject strives for a formal purpose, that is, to be in some relation to the objective purpose, for instance, when Alexander the Great wanted to subject Persia under his rule.

Will, Crucius notes, is free, when and in so far as it could be directed to another purpose than it happens to be directed. When this freedom of will is applied, a person is said to make a decision. On the contrary, when will continues to strive for some purpose without any decision, Crucius defines will to be controlled by a drive. Some of the drives are basic or belong to the essence of the person, while other drives are essential or contingent consequences of these basic drives.

Once a striving of human will is fulfilled, Crucius says, the person enters into a state of pleasure, while a contrary state of events leads person into a state of pain. Because human being is controlled by many drives, a person can experience many types of pleasure and pain. Crucius notes that we have no reason to assume that other animals are conscious of anything, thus, we have no reason to assume they feel pleasure or pain. On the other hand, Crucius thinks that God can feel pleasure, but no pain, because God’s will is always fulfilled.

Crucius defines good and evil in terms of will: what is good for a person is what is in accordance with her will, while evil for a person is what is contrary to her will. This is only a relative notion, Crucius says, and against Wolffians, he is quick to distinguish good from perfection. Crucius does note that there is an absolute or metaphysical sense of goodness, as what is in accordance with God’s will.

Although will and understanding are two different forces, Crucius noted, will can affect understanding, because human beings can think purposefully. Will does not have a complete control over understanding, Crucius says, because it also follows its own laws, for instance, association, but it can at least determine how long understanding considers something. Furthermore, Crucius insisted that will could be said to affect itself in the sense that certain desires and drives could have an effect on one another and the power of decision could also affect the desires and drives.

In addition to understanding and itself, Crucius was certain that will - or more accurately, the whole soul of human being - could affect body, because when we earnestly willed to move healthy limbs, the limbs truly moved. Crucius explicitly argued against occasionalism by saying that God could not continuously act as a mediator between soul and body, because it would be below the status of divinity. Probably against the Leibnizian notion of pre-established harmony Crucius noted that God would not have created world, if it had no interaction with souls (what Crucius appears to have missed is the Berkelyan possibility that material world might not exist at all). Crucius admitted that this interaction could not be explained, because we did not know the nature of souls nor of the smallest parts of bodies. Still he was certain that we could know why God had to provide the possibility of the interaction - finite spirits had to exist in some definite place and not omnipresently, like God, thus, they had to be able to change their position in relation to other things.

A move toward accepting the soul-body -interaction had happened also within the Wolffian tradition. A more notably anti-Wolffian stance in Crucius’s thelematology was his insistence that will was free in a strong sense of not being externally coerced nor internally necessary. Crucius defended his position, firstly, through a need to take ethics seriously: unless will would be free in a strong sense, we would have no reason to praise or condemn the actions of a person and becoming virtuous would be down to mere luck.

A more metaphysical reason for believing the possibility of free will, Crucius noted, is that a series of causes must finally come back to an uncaused cause or basic activity. True, he admitted, not all basic activities were free: elemental activities are by nature continuously actualised, while other basic activities, like that of human understanding, are bound to certain conditions, but by their nature inevitable, whenever these conditions are in place. Free will differs from these other basic activities, because its actions are only made possible by external conditions, but free will is still required to turn this possibility into an actuality. To make matters more complicated, Crucius noted that finite understanding cannot demonstrate beforehand whether free will would actualise some possibility, but infinite understanding or God could know it intuitively.

While his ethical and metaphysical arguments for free will were not completely foolproof, Crucius had to rely on a mere assurance that we are conscious of being able to do things otherwise. He admitted that some philosophers had held this idea to be mere imagination. Yet, he concluded, God must have created some freely acting entities, so that creation as a whole would have some purpose.

Free will, Crucius assured, was not against the principle of sufficient reason, because all generated things do need a cause. Where Wolffians had went wrong was in insisting that the cause would always be completely determined to produce only a certain result - something that Wolff himself might actually have agreed upon. Furthermore, Crucius was also aware that we are not always completely free - we do have drives that might restrict our decisions, and we might require considerable effort for diminishing the hold of drives. Only God has a completely free will, which is not restricted by anything - true, God can will only things in conformity with his goodness, but, Crucius argued, this was merely an explanation of what kind of things God wills.

This is what we would usually hear about Crucius’s notion of will in a treatise on history of philosophy. But I would like to go all the way through this book and see how Crucius applies these abstract notions to more concrete questions. Next, I’ll be looking at the general properties of human desires.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 – What is a soul?

Just like Wolffian tradition in general, Darjes distinguishes between empirical study of human personality – the recounting of what we can observe in ourselves – and rational study of it – explanation of these observations. The important characteristic in humanity, Darjes says, is that in addition to body, human person must have as its constituting element some spontaneous entity. He considers for the moment the possibility that a person would consist of more than one spontaneous entity, but finally notes that there is no reason to assume it.

Darjes goes on to develop further common characteristics of this spontaneous entity, based on its essence. First of all, it is an entity, and as such, it can be regarded as a possibility – it does not involve any contradiction – but also as actually existing – is perpetuates and is a substrate for properties. Furthermore, as an entity it must necessarily act.

Secondly, the spontaneous entity constituting one part of human is a simple entity. This means that it cannot be divided into any constituents. This implies, according to Darjes, that this element of humanity cannot be destroyed in the same manner as its body can. Thirdly, this entity acts spontaneously. In other words, it controls its natural conatus toward acting and regulates it according to its own perceptions on what is good or bad.

Darjes notes that the spontaneous entity every human being has two different aspects. Firstly, it is an animal soul, which interacts with body and thus represents things with the inferior cognitive faculty. Secondly, it is a spirit, which is a connected to a nexus of truths and thus represents things with the superior cognitive faculty. Human soul is thus a rational animal, combining features of both animal soul and spirit. Souls in general can then be classified into mere animal souls, rational animal souls and pure spirits. Still, Darjes thinks that these three classes are not completely distinct, but what once was a mere soul and not a spirit could develop into a real spirit.

Animal souls are then characterised by the inferior cognitive faculty. In other words, this animal soul – or just soul – cognises things through the medium of external sensations, which must be explicable through previous external sensations. A mere soul requires new external sensations to get new cognitions, and if the flow of sensations stops, soul effectively dies. That is, the entity that is the soul can well go on existing in another form, but it wouldn't anymore be a mere animal soul.

Spirits, on the other hand, are not intrinsically connected to sensations. That is, even if spirit does not sense anything, it might still produce new representations from its old representations through conceptualising intellect and reasoning. Thus, cessation of sensations does not mean death of a spirit. Furthermore, spirits, Darjes says, are not just spontaneous, but their actions are based on reasoned decisions – in other words, Darjes concludes, spirits are free.

Rational soul, such as that of a human being, is then both an animal soul and a spirit. As a soul, rational soul is dependent on sensations, while as a spirit it should not be dependent on sensations or it should be able to have cognitions without sensations. Still, in another sense rational soul, even as a spirit, is not completely independent of sensations, because sensations or in general changes in the body might hinder the use of conceptual faculties of rational soul. An obvious question is why rational soul needs this connection with the body and sensations, when these just seem to drag it down and restrict it. Darjes suggests as an answer that we require sensations as the original source of cognitions. Indeed, he considers it probable that only God would not require sensations for its cognition, while all finite spirits are finite just because of this dependence on external sensations.

As a spirit, human soul might still exist separately from its body and is thus practically immortal, Darjes notes, although it might still be annihilated. A more problematic question, according to Darjes, is what was the state of human soul before its connection with its body. Darjes notes that the final explanation of this connection must go back to God, but recounts three possible options. Firstly, one might think soul is created out of the souls of its parents. Darjes quickly discards this option, because it would make sense only if soul would be a complex entity.

Secondly, soul might be created by God at the very same moment as the body comes into existence, or thirdly, soul might have lived before the birth of the body. Darjes admits that both options are possible, but leans more clearly to the side of pre-existence. His argumentation is based on observation of human semen, which contains, of course, small organic bodies – this, Darjes insists, is sufficient evidence for the pre-existence of human soul. Clearly, soul in this pre-existent state would not have similar cognitions as us, because the corpuscles of the semen could not sustain human life.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 – Desires and fears

Darjes singles out a distinct group of cognitions, namely, those where the objects cognised are something which we either incline to or recline from, in other words, appetites and aversions. The difference between appetites and aversions and other cognitions is quite evident, whenever we have the object of appetite or aversion present to us – we feel pleasure or pain. On the other hand, whenever we do not have the object with us, we desire for or fear it.

Darjes notes that appetites and aversions can be quantified, depending on how strong the respective desire or fear is. This quantification comes to the fore especially when appetites and aversions contradict one another. In other words, whenever an appetite and an aversion clash, the stronger prevails. One might wonder how appetites and aversions could clash. The simple answer lies in two sources of human cognition. If our appetites and aversions are based on the inferior cognitive faculty, they are sensible, and if they are based on the superior cognitive faculty, they are rational or volitions and nolitions belonging to a faculty called will. Thus, our sensible and rational appetites and aversions can clash, and if the sensible have the other hand, we experience some affect, while if the rational side preponderates, we have something analogous to affects.

A further distinction Darjes mentions concerns the relation of appetites and aversions to previous cognitive states – some of these rise from earlier states, others are innate to human mind. He still does not mean that we could simply explain appetites and aversions mechanically through the earlier states or the nature of human mind. Indeed, he is quick to emphasise that appetites and aversions spontaneous and hence contingent. This does not mean that appetites and aversions would be completely inexplicable, just that these explanations would use other means than mechanical causality.

In case of volitions and nolitions in particular, the explanation is based on their goals. It is somewhat unclear whether these goals are chosen by the will or not. In any case, when these goals are given, the will considers all the possible means for this goal and freely chooses the one it considers best. Of course, at least humans can have an erroneous view on what means are best and even what goals are good. Darjes is adamant that this possibility of error is the only explanation for the human ability to freely choose bad things. In fact, a spontaneous entity who couldn't make errors could not choose anything bad, Darjes concludes.

Joachim Georg Darjes: The existence of freely existing necessary human actions (1739)

We have already seen one book of Darjes, namely, an interesting text book on logic, which deviated slightly from the normal Wolffian manner of presentation. De necessaria actionum hominis liberarum existentium existentia is just a short text of under ten pages and its topic seems rather worn out in the field of German philosophy: how to reconcile the principle of sufficient reason with the apparent freedom of human action. Yet, although Darjes' solution to this question is far from original, it at least is a refreshingly clear and straightforward account of one position in this dilemma.

Darjes begins, like a good Wolffian, by accepting the principle of sufficient reason. We have many times seen how difficult it is to read this principle, and in many cases, to decide what it actually means. Darjes has a very strict understanding of the principle – if a sufficient reason exists, then that which it is reason of must also exist. In effect, sufficient reason becomes with Darjes almost the same thing as determining cause.

How does such a determinism then combine with free actions? Well, it all comes down to how freedom is defined. For Darjes, freedom of human actions lies in the fact that it is the human itself, who gets to decide what she will do from several equally possible actions. Although such free actions cannot be based on anything outside humans, they can be based on something inside humans. This basis of action must be, Darjes concludes, a representation of maximal good in human mind.

Combining determinism and freedom becomes then quite easy. Human being has a representation of highest good and her actions are determined only through that representation – hence, they are free actions. Then again, this representation determines necessarily what the action following it will be, and so the determinism is retained.

One might think that Darjes's attempt to break the Gordian knot is as effective and as against the rules of the game as the fabled original was. Indeed, it all seems to depend on Darjes merely assuming what freedom of actions means. Yet, Darjes does have other arguments for his position. Notably, he says that his definitions are believable, because they agree with some of our important intuitions. We do think it is possible to know from the values and beliefs of a person how she will act in certain situations – the whole popular psychology is based on this assumption. Unless our representations truly determined our actions, none of this would be true.

As interesting as Darjes's defense of his deterministic position is, the shortness of the text makes it a bit undeveloped. Next time, we shall see what Wolff had to say about free actions in his writings on natural law.

Christian Wolff: Natural theology, prior part – Good and powerful

Wolffian God is not satisfied with mere contemplation of possibilities, but decides to actualise one of the possible worlds. In order to do this, he needs to have the capacity to actualise anyone of them. Indeed, God could make anything happen that is possible and only impossibilities are limits to his capacities – in effect, God is omnipotent, Wolff says.

What God requires for this use of his capacity is mere act of will. This is of course completely different from what human beings do – in us, decision and actualisation of a plan are two completely distinct events. In fact, there is an even further difference, Wolff says. Human beings usually start by contemplating all the possibilities and only after careful consideration make their choice. With God, these two events are connected in one act – God chooses even in contemplating possibilities.

Now, when God chose to actualise this world, he knew exactly what would happen in this world, because he knows everything that would happen in any possible world. This appears to lead to the famous problem of divine prescience – how could our choices be completely free, if God already knows what we are going to choose beforehand. The answer to this problem is also quite traditional – knowing something does not cause it, thus, even if God knows what Obama will do tomorrow, he did not choose it for Obama's sake. Of course, this line of reasoning has the striking weakness that God does choose the world that is to be actualised and seems so responsible of everything that happens in the world.

What is more important is that God must have had some reason for picking this particular world – as we know already, Wolff thinks it is because the actual world is the most perfect of all worlds. The Leibnizian story of a necessary evil which all worlds must have and which God doesn't cause, but only allows should be familiar by now. Wolff also emphasises God's wisdom and goodness. God is wise or he knows the best means for actualising his ends, thus, the world and its laws are the most efficient there can be and allow, for instance, human beings to actualise their ends. Indeed, God has given humans liberty, because he is good and hopes they will of their own choice make good decisions – and even if they don't and end up doing evil things, in the end, even this serves the final good.

God's wisdom is then for the most part incomprehensible to human beings – we simply cannot see all the strings that should turn evil actions into good effects. Yet, God can reveal us information that goes over what we can directly know through experience – Wolff's take on the idea of divine revelation. This is also a good place to stop, because in next post I will finally think of the ways God effects other things, that is, nature and spirits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Wolff: Rational psychology - Lack of harmony

If one would have to pick out a single most central topic in the formation of Wolff's philosophy, it might well be the notion of a pre-established harmony. It is this theory, borrowed from Leibniz, that was one of the main reasons why pietists attacked Wolffian philosophy and it was also a place that Wolff had to most carefully reconsider when answering the criticism. The problematic of this theory led Wolff to a careful demarcation between empirical and rational psychology. Empirical psychology is based on incontrovertible facts, like correspondence between sensations and certain movements of physical world and human freedom.

Rational psychology, on other hand tries to explain, among other things, why changes in world and consciousness correspond with one another and how human freedom is related to this correspondence. As Wolff has for a number of times explained, this explanation has only the status of a hypothesis that might be replaced by a better theory. The hypothetical nature of the explanation is still not detrimental, because this explanation serves only our interest to understand ourselves, but is of no concern in other fields of philosophy.

Wolff is also now more careful in explicating his reasons for abandoning the two other competing explanations of the correspondence, namely, the traditional influx theory and the occasionalist theory of many Cartesians. It is clearly the influx theory, with which Wolff engages more, probably because his main opponents, the pietists, endorsed it. In comparison, occasionalism Wolff dismisses quickly with the familiar remark that it breaks the principle of sufficient reason and replaces natural law with mere whims of God.

The main defense against influx theory is also familiar: true interaction between soul and body would contradict physical laws. Still, Wolff also has few other points of interest. He notes that influx theory actually explains nothing: the correspondence between motions of body and soul is just an appearance of an inexplicable interaction between soul and body and the influx theory just says that there really is an inexplicable interaction between the two entities. Influx theory is then no true theory, but just a denial of our capacity to explain anything, hence, of no use in rational psychology. On the other hand, since it is only the fact of correspondence that is of need in morality and theology and not any explanation (or lack of explanation) of that fact, the influx theory is of no use in philosophy.

Pre-established harmony is then left as the only viable option, that is, as the best hypothesis available. But even this is not enough, because Wolff is willing to emend this theory even more to make it a better fit with human freedom. Wolff's emendations are of such importance that they make some of my own comments on the pre-established harmony suspect. I proposed that pre-established harmony ties soul and body so tightly together that Wolffian philosophy becomes too close to materialistic theories of soul, which Wolff wants to avoid. Wolff's explanations serve to loosen the bonds of soul and body and so make my suspicions unfounded.

The essence of Wolff's emendations is that the pre-established harmony is only partial. We have seen that Wolff accepts correspondence of soul and body in case of sensations, imaginations and affects. Yet, when it comes to self-conscious states of thinking and volition, he has explicitly stated that nothing in a material body can correspond to such states – at most there can be correspondence between linguistic utterances expressing such self-conscious thoughts and images of such utterances. This means that soul and body are not exactly like two clocks showing the same time, or at least one clock has further features not present in the other clock.

What Wolff's emendation especially allows is the possibility of freedom – self-conscious actions can well be free and even not causally related to sensations corresponding to bodily events (remember that Wolff has explicitly also said that grounding in case of souls takes the shape of motivations, instead of causes: actions require motivations, but motivations do not necessitate actions). Indeed, the more free a soul is, the more independent its actions are of its body. It is then more that the God has looked upon the free actions of human souls and fashioned the material world to fit in with the actions, instead of God having made several mechanical machines that work in harmony. True, one might even now ask whether God's foreknowledge is detrimental to human freedom, but this is a question common to almost all philosophies of the time.

So much for pre-established harmony, next time I shall look at Wolff's general theory on spirits.

Christian Wolff: Rational psychology - Seeing is wanting

I tried to argue last time that Wolff's attempt to reduce faculties of soul to a single force of representation is acceptable, when it comes to cognitive faculties, which truly are nothing but modifications of representation. The attempt seems more difficult in case of appetetive faculties, like desire of will. In effect, Wolff appears to be saying that representing something as both good and somehow absent makes us motivated to reach for it. Yet, firstly, the causal link between this representation and motivation seems sometimes quite faint. Take, for instance, Kantian example of a person acquainted with some beautiful object: the observer of such an object would be disinterested and thus would not desire to possess it.

True, one could argue that perhaps beauty just is completely distinct from goodness – or perhaps one might suggest that we do desire to gaze upon beautiful objects. Still, a more pressing question would still be left unanswered: even if representing good and wanting it are inevitably connected in human mind, wouldn't they still be different acts of human consciousness, one mere passive cognition, other a beginning of activity?

Now, one must carefully note that Wolff wants to reduce all faculties of human soul to force of representation. Force means, for Wolff, already some activity – forces are in constant state of activity, or they have a conatus for changing their state. Thus, if soul is a force of representation, it does not mean just that soul is constantly looking at the world from some perspective, but it is also constantly seeking to change that perspective. In other words, when soul senses or perceives something, it also has an impulse for changing what it senses or perceives. This impulse occurs with e.g. an imagined phantasm of what the object sensed or perceived should be like. This combination of perception of current state of affairs, a phantasm of a different state of affairs and an impulse for replacing one with the other constitutes the general structure of appetite in Wolffian philosophy. Hence, even such appetites can be regarded as modifications of a force of representation.

As we now have solved the apparent problem of reducing appetite to representation, we can just quickly note that like Wolff distinguished between two levels of cognition (indistinct and distinct), he also distinguishes between two levels of appetite, depending on the level of distinctness of the corresponding representation of the desired goal: indistinct representations are connected with sensuous appetites and their stronger modifications of affects, while distinct representations are connected with volitions.

Just like indistinct representations (sensations and phantasms) were connected with some bodily activities, Wolff also connects sensuous appetites and affects e.g. with certain activities of heart (the heart of an excited person beats faster etc.). Then again, distinct representations of concepts and their combinations were only mediately connected with brain through the aid of linguistic symbols. This means, Wolff suggests, that volitions are not that tightly connected with human body. True, volitions usually end with some bodily movement and they are also conditioned by the state of body, but this still leaves a possibility that human soul could freely choose its actions. This is a topic I shall look into more carefully next time, when I try to unravel Wolff's opinions about the interaction between soul and body.

Christian Wolff: Rational psychology (1734)

I have a feeling that the meaning of the epithet ”rational” in Wolff's Psychologia rationalis has not been generally understood. Wolff does not want to express his dedication to some rationalist school of thought, but merely points out that he wants to give ratio, reason or explanation to empirical data presented in his empirical psychology: we know what our soul does, now we will see why it does that.

Due to suspicions that the central ideas of the rational psychology lead somehow to atheism and mechanistic philosophy, Wolff is quick to point out that nothing in his later philosophy – especially in theology and ethics – hinges on the explanations of rational psychology, but only on the data given in empirical psychology (I have a hunch that he might have actually transferred some of the statements in the former to the latter, in order to make this explanation more convincing). Rational psychology is then rather unexpectedly a field of philosophy that has no use in other fields of philosophy, but serves only as a path to greater understanding of oneself by showing things that we could not directly observe of ourselves.

The primary fact that rational psychology should explain is self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, Wolff begins, is not just some murky feeling of oneself, but instead, distinct perception of oneself. That is, when one is conscious of oneself, one is able to distinguish oneself from other things. This requires that in self-consciousness one must be able to concentrate attention on oneself, but at the same time remember what other things one had perceived in addition to oneself.

Yet, as I have noted earlier, Wolff wants to go even further and not remain in the level of empirical details. He crosses the line of what Kant would approve and purports to prove that soul cannot be material, because material complexes cannot represent anything as a unity, which would immediately disprove the existence of self-consciousness. I have already discussed the weaknesses of this argument, thus, I can move to Wolff's discussion of what the soul should then be like.

If soul cannot be material complex, it must be one of the simple entities, which in Wolff's ontology were argued to be forces. Question is then what sort of force should be on base of all the phenomena occurring in soul. Wolff notes the obvious fact that whatever soul does, it always views of represents the world. Of course, it does not represent the whole world perfectly, but only from a certain vantage point: during dreamless sleep, soul has only obscure representations, and even while awake, its representations are conditioned by the place of its body in the world and the condition of this body. Still, Wolff insists, we could say that the basic force of soul is one of representation.

I have criticized Wolff's answer of circularity and this was one point the pietists attacked also: how can one pick out representation as the essential ingredient of what it means to be a soul with no other justification, but the obvious fact that soul happens to represent? Wolff's answer appears to have been that representation was not meant as the only feature of the essence of soul, but merely as one central ingredient, out of which all the other central ingredients could be found. If we accept this explanation, Wolff still has to show how all the other faculties of human soul can be derived from this central force – that is, he has to show that they can be interpreted as mere modifications of the force of representation.

In case of cognitive faculties this derivation appears simple. Sensations clearly represent objects in the world or at least the modifications these objects cause in the sense organs of the body. This does not mean that sensations should present a perfect picture of the world. Indeed, only those features of sensations could be said to represent things, which happen to resemble the things, that is, Wolff insists that only traditional primary characteristics like number, motion and figure represent anything. Furthermore, not even all primary characteristics are faithful representations, according to Wolff, for instance, we sense a continuous space around us, although everything in the physical world must consist of a distinct and non-continuous, individual points of force. And of course, if some harm happens to sense organs, the corresponding sensations become more obscure or even completely vanish.

While sensations are clearly representations of objects actually present, phantasms of imagination are representations of objects that we have sensed, that is, they are representations of past, or at least they are recombinations of past sensations. Similarly, intellectual faculties are representations of features shared by several objects.

Cognitive faculties are then quite naturally just representational for Wolff. Furthermore, they all have a close relationship with body. This is obvious in case of sensations, because we cannot have any sensations without sense organs. Still, Wolff goes a step forward and suggests that there is something resembling the sensations in our brains: material ideas Wolff calls them. The point is understandable in case of vision, because contact of eyes with light produces an image, which might then be transferred to brain. Clearly Wolff wants then something analogical to hold with other senses.

Wolff suggests that material ideas of perceived objects remain in the brain, but after a while they start to lose their vividness, unless reinvigorated by new sensations. These afterimages of sensations are then the physical counterpart for the phantasms of imagination. But at the level of intellectual faculties the correspondence of soul and brains ends: concepts are distinct perceptions and thus involve also self-consciousness, which Wolff just had declared to be impossible to represent materially. Despite this, Wolff admits that the brain at least has material ideas of words necessary for articulating the thoughts.

The correspondence between body and soul raises then a natural question whether it refutes the 

supposed liberty of human actions – a common complaint against Wolff's philosophy. Indeed, human body follows the laws of physical universe. Changes in human soul and especially its sensations correspond with some changes in human body. Thus, it appears that sensations particularly follow their own laws, and because other cognitive faculties, like imagination, are based on sensations, they too must have their own laws. Wolff goes even so far as to suggest that one can define what is natural for human soul on basis of these supposed laws – and just like in case of physical universe, one might define supernatural or miraculous in terms of what is against such laws.

Wolff still supposes that these laws of sensation and imagination leave room for human liberty. Thus, although I cannot just by wishing make an object send to me different sensations, I can, for instance, change my spatial setting and look at a different object. Clearly this is not enough to guarantee human liberty, but I shall return to the topic in a later text, when speaking of the different ways to explain the correspondence of body and soul.

In any case, the important result Wolff thinks he has established is the reduction of all cognitive faculties to representational force. This still leaves open the question whether appetetive faculties can also be so reduced – this shall be the topic of my next post.

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

It is especially in Wolff's comments on empirical psychology where his wish to show the usefulness of his theories becomes evident. Wolff emphasizes that he has especially found two different types of faculties in human mind: cognitive and volitional. The study of cognitive capacities should generally help to improve our mental capacities and particularly help us to find a proper methodology for science. Wolff makes here some barbed strikes against Lange's Mental medicine, which he dismisses as a useless piece of charlatanry that wouldn't help anyone know anything.

Wolff's strategy for improving cognitive capacities is based on his attempt to quantify all mental capacities: capacity of memory can be quantifies by the number of new things a person can hold in his mind at the same time etc. On this quantitative basis Wolff can then make such useful recommendations as that capacities of concentration are improved in the morning, when there are still less distractive stimuli. Wolff's quantification goes in some cases further than with some previous philosophers. For instance, while Descartes thought that all people have an equal light of reason, Wolff states that this light varies according to natural capacities.

The aim of the education of cognitive capacities is to make one's ideas more distinct, that is, analysed. Although Wolff does define sensations in terms of distinctness, this does not mean that he would want to base science in some non-empiricist manner, which has become increasingly clear. Indeed, Wolff merely suggests that we should continue to analyse or conceptualize our individual sensations and so transform them into experience. Wolff thus wants to say that experience is something more than mere sensation: in a somewhat rasist comment Wolff even says that Hottentots, Lapponians and Samoyeds don't really have reliable experiences, although they undoubtedly sense things. The conceptual analysis of sensations turns them into experiences, which then can act as basis of scientific axioms.

Wolff appears to admit that the cognitive capacities of human mind are in some sense unfree. This is clear with sensations: we cannot choose that we'll see green, when we focus our gaze on a certain piece of grass. Furthermore, in case of conceptual reasoning there are also certain restrictions: if we are following a line of reasoning, the conclusion isn't haphazard, but follows from the premisses, perhaps true some psychological necessitation.

In contrast, Wolff emphasizes that human will is definitely free and capable of undetermined choice – an answer to the accusation of Wolff being a determinist. As we saw earlier, Wolff suggests that a person cannot will to do something he is not motivated to do, but that he can emphasize some motivation over the others. True, even the volitional part of human mind can become unfree, if mind is slave to its own affections. Still, this state of slavery does not prevent the possibility of a truly free action. Indeed, it is just such a task of becoming as free as possible that makes the study of volitional part of the mind important for morality and ethics.

Next time I'll turn to Wolff's comments on cosmology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Wolff: Of different interconnections between things, wisdom and fatalistic necessity, system of pre-established harmony and Spinozan hypothesis splendidly commented, while at the same time weighing justifications for demonstrating existence of genuine God and illustrating many chapters of rational theology (1724)

We have just seen Lange's thorough criticism of Wolffian philosophy leading to the surprising conclusion that Wolff was no better than a common atheist like Spinoza was thought to be. By coincidence, Wolff had the very same year written a treatise – De differentia nexus rerum sapientis, nec non systematis harmoniae praestabilitae et hypothesium Spinosae luculenta commentatio, in qua simul genuina Dei existantiam demonstrandi ratio expenditur et multa religionis naturalis capita illustrantur – where he explicitly tried to show how the Leibnizian tradition differed from Spinozism.

As the title so clearly says, Wolff tried to establish two points of difference: one concerned the supposed necessity of the world, while the issue of second was the interaction of souls and bodies. Of these two points, the second is easier to decide. True, it appears that Wolff and Spinoza have identical views of the topic: both deny any true interaction of souls and bodies and maintain that the series of bodily changes and the series of mental states should somehow reflect one another. Yet, there is a crucial difference. Leibniz and Wolff envisioned the body and the soul as two different substances, while Spinoza thought them to be mere aspects of one human being. With Spinoza then, as Wolff's student Bilfinger had already pointed out, bodies and souls were necessarily intertwined. Wolff and Leibniz, on the contrary, accept that the union of the two substances is contingent and therefore separable. This is important especially as a justification of the Christian notion of life after death – soul or consciousness might exist also without any body to sustain it.

A more interesting questions concern the difference between a fatalistic world of Spinoza and a world created by a wise God. At first sight it appears quite incomprehensible how one could even confuse the two. After all, Spinoza's world is necessary and only that is possible what happens within that world – there is then nothing truly contingent, because all things follow necessarily from the very necessity of God and therefore only a person with inadequate information could call things contingent. Wolffian God, on the other hand, can think of true alternative possibilities and chooses one of them as the world to be created. Hence, even if the laws of Wolff's actual world are just as unbreakable as in Spinoza's necessary world, these laws are still contingent according to a more extensive perspective – God could have chosen other laws.

But as we saw from Lange's criticism, the true problem lies in Wolff's notion of God. Wolff emphasizes the understanding of God, when he describes God as a wise and intelligent creator. But understanding is a passive capacity – when God sees that a certain possible world is the most optimal, he cannot decide himself what to describe as the best possible world. Thus, because God is also good and he must automatically choose to create the best possible world, it appears that we could replace God with a very powerful computer that would just have enough capacity for viewing even the smallest details of all possible worlds.

Wolff's answer is to suggest that his opponents fall into equally ridiculous consequences and are even closer to outright Spinozism. Wolff's point is that if his opponents wish to de-emphasize the omniscience of God's understanding, they must at the same time emphasize the omnipotence of his will, that is, they must hold that divine will has a power to do things that the divine understanding has not decreed to be good. Now creation becomes a blind act of will – God becomes like an unstoppable and irrational manufacturing plant that just spurts out things without any rhyme or reason. Sure, what is produced is in a sense contingent, but because of the omnipotency of creator, the world feels like it is governed by a rigid necessity – and this time there's not even the justification that this is all for the best.

The struggle between Wolff and his supposed opponents circles then around the question whether the freedom of God, and indeed, any conscious being, falls more to his will or to his understanding. In a sense, it is quite obvious that it is our capacity to choose that makes us free – if we could just watch what happens, without having the ability to affect anything, we would not be truly free. Yet, as Wolff among other philosophers has pointed out, mere blind will without understanding is equally not free – after all, we wouldn't call a machine that works on randomly generated numbers a free person. It appears then that both understanding and will are required for the possibility of truly free decisions; I shall not pursue the question how to unify the two faculties into a coherent whole.

So much for the question of necessity. Next, we'll have a short detour on Chinese philosophy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - The animal that couldn't decide

Nominalist philosopher Jean Buridan is nowadays best remembered from the infamous ass that was placed at equal distance from food and drink and starved to death, because it couldn't decide which it should choose first. In effect, the story of the ass involves a question on how the capacity of deciding and willing works: if the ass has a capacity to make a spontaneous and completely arbitrary choice, it can avoid the trouble quite easily. The dilemma of Buridan's ass has a long history, but now we are interested in Wolff's manner of solving it.

Wolff defines willing (Willen) as an inclination towards something that is taken as good. Somewhat confusingly he defines unwilling (nicht Willen) as the inclination to avoid something that is taken as bad: I shall ignore this complication and treat Wolffian unwilling as a mere modification of willing. What is important is that Wolffian willing always requires a preceding notion of what is good and bad: this notion is a motive (Bewegungs-Gründe) for the act of willing.

Wolff seems then step right into the trap of Buridan's ass: if one cannot act without any reason, then one cannot just choose one form of sustenance over another. Yet, here the Leibnizian notion of inobservable effects on human soul becomes important. Wolff can assume in earnest that the case of Buridan's ass can never truly happen, because there will always be some small detail that will subconsciously make us inclined us to choose one possibility over the other.

Wolffian notion of subconsious motives implies that the process of human willing can never be completely transparent to the subject of willing. In other words, although a person would have a clear idea of what was good for her (such as not smoking cigarettes), an affect could still tempt her to act against her better interests. This is the idea of the enslavement of human will to the affects that was a common subject at the time of Wolff.

The problem of Buridan's ass is often connected with the question whether humans have a free will. In my opinion, the supposed connection is spurious: Buridan's ass could circumvent its dilemma through a simple flip of a coin or some quantum mechanical randomiser forcing the ass to act, but such a mechanism is not really free will. Now, Wolff appears to agree with me: if willing always requires a motive, a purely arbitrary choice is still not willing.

One might criticise Wolff for making human free will deterministic: if one would know all the motives of a person, one would know what she would choose in a particular situation. Yet, I find, firstly, that this possibility is just something that is commonly accepted: if one knows my likes and dislikes, one can immediately say that I will always choose a keylime pie over a chocolate cake, and in general, if a person's character is known, her actions can be predicted in some measure. The question of predictability of human willing cannot decide the question of the freedom of the will: chaotic phenomena like weather are practically unpredictable and quantum mechanical phenomena are unpredictable even in principle, but they cannot be called free actions.

Furthermore, the whole setup of knowing all the motives of a person is rather unbelievable, especially as the person interacts all the time with her environment and might gain new, previously unknown motives. For instance, if I heard two persons betting over whether I will eat keylime pie or chocolate cake, I might choose the cake just for the sake of upsetting the gentlemen. Thus, the existence of motives for all human actions does not even rule out the unpredictability of these actions.

Wolff himself notes that the deterministic theory of human mind confuses the analogy between motives and causes. Both are types of reasons or grounds, but they are still essentially different. For instance, scales require some cause to move them out of the state of equilibrium, but they cannot be motivated to do something as humans are.

Wolff himself places the freedom of human will in the capacity of self-determination. This does not mean that a human being could arbitrarily choose what it wills, because Wolff thinks such a notion would lead to a vicious circle. Instead, Wolff emphasises the fact that a free action is caused by the human being itself, according to its own notion of what it would be good to do in the current situation. Hence, Wolff can present a sort of evaluation of actions: the more a person knows about what is truly good for him, the more freedom his actions show. On the other hand, freedom cannot be forced on anyone, because a forced freedom would be just externally determined self-determination – a contradiction in terms.

With this text, the chapter on empirical psychology in Wolff's German metaphysics is closed. Well, Wolff does remark that the processes of human soul appear to be related to processes in our body, but this unification of soul and body will be dealt in more detail, when we come to rational psychology.

In the next post I shall begin the study of Wolffian cosmology, but I would still like to make some comments on empirical psychology in general and especially its Wolffian version. Later German philosophers were not really enthusiastic about this discipline. Hegel's criticism is still rather mild: empirical psychology is just disorganised observation of whatever capacities we happen to find within ourselves and does not reveal the nature of consciousness, of which all these capacities are mere modifications. Hegel's description is rather accurate, especially in case of Wolff, who has merely moved from one faculty of soul to another, still, a bit unfair: the nature of the soul Wolff intends to reveal in another chapter, dealing with rational psychology. Analogically, one should not disregard natural history just because it does not offer any general theory of nature, but mere empirical observations on individual natural phenomena.

Kant's objections against empirical psychology in his Metaphysical foundations of natural science are more severe: science of psychology based on empirical observation is an impossibility, because a) all true science, such as physics, must use mathematics, b) all mathematics requires constructing concepts in a priori intuition, c) the a priori intuition corresponding to the object of psychology or soul is time and d) time as one-dimensional cannot be used for constructions.

Kant's argument is rather convoluted, especially as we are still far from Kant's main works and concepts like ”a priori intuition” and ”construction” in their Kantian sense are to be defined only much later in my blog. Yet, we may for now note one important link in the argument: psychological notions cannot be quantified. Indeed, if by science is meant something like physics, science aims largely to discover relations between various quantities.

Now, Wolff appears actually to uphold the ideal of mathematized science, as befits a mathematician. In fact, he points out that many human faculties come in grades, that is, have a quantity that is analogical to numbers and sizes. For instance, a person can have a better or worse memory and one might even improve one's memory or enlarge its grade.

Of course, the existence of quantities of mental faculties does not still mean that these quantities could be measured, which is a condition for truly quantifying phenomena. Yet, in case of some mental faculties this seems rather easy. For example, we could well measure the grade of our memory e.g. by measuring how many words I could remember after a certain time of practice: the relation between the time and the number of the words might then be used as describing the grade of one's memory.