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

It has taken Crusius this long to finally get to the definitions of two concepts mentioned in the very title of his book: necessity and contingency. Like definitions of modalities tend to do, Crusius’ are ultimately circular: necessary is what cannot be otherwise, while contingent is what could be otherwise. Yet, he at once gives a more substantial explanation of the terms, linked to causal terms: necessary is such that no cause could make it otherwise, while contingent is such that requires a cause making it so, without which it would be otherwise or not at all.

Crusius also suggests a criterion for recognising what is necessary and contingent: if we cannot think contradictory of something, it must be necessary, while if we can, it must be contingent. Crusius underlines that this criterion is not foolproof and definitely does not reveal the essence of necessity and contingency. Indeed, he points out, even a fatalist could think that a world might be otherwise, even if his worldview would mean that the world is necessarily what it is.

Crusius notes that necessity and contingency can concern both the essence and the existence of a thing. In case of essence, he clarifies, the question is whether a thing cannot have different properties, because changing them would make the existence of the thing impossible - this means that the essence is necessary.

Necessity and contingency of the existence of a thing, then, refer to the respective impossibility and possibility of the non-being of the thing. Crusius notes that necessary existence of a thing can be either independent necessity, where the thing exists continuously and is necessary in all circumstances, or consecutive necessity, where the thing exists necessarily in certain circumstances, when it is generated. Respectively, contingent existence of a thing can be either dependent contingency, where thing doesn’t always exist, but must have an origin, and consecutive contingency, where thing is generated in such a manner that it might have been otherwise or even not at all.

Crusius’s concepts of independent and consecutive necessity resemble the concepts of absolute and hypothetical necessity in Wolffian tradition. Yet, Crusius sees a difference. He defines absolute necessity as something, which as such cannot be otherwise. The most obvious type of absolute necessity, Crusius notes, is such where contradictory opposite of something contradicts the very principle of non-contradiction - something which many Wolffians also recognised - but it is not the only type, since similar forms of necessity should arise also from the other two basic principles.

The hypothetical necessity Crusius defines as such where something cannot be otherwise in certain circumstances that are based on a series of conditions, ultimately caused by something that at the moment of its occurrence could have happened otherwise. This concept of hypothetical necessity is obviously a form of consecutive necessity, but with a distinct characteristic that it is based on some free action. On the other hand, if no such free action is to be found behind consecutive necessity, then it will be, Crusius insists, just absolute necessity. This distinction is especially geared against the notion that God would have had to create the best possible world, without any free choice in the matter, which would make the existence of this world absolutely necessary.

Crusius thinks that only such things exist with absolute necessity, where their non-existence would contradict their essence - it is not yet made explicit, but he is clearly implying that only God fits this requirement. All other things are contingent or they could be thought to not exist, so they must have been generated by something else, that is, God. With something of a sleight of a hand, Crusius notes that since these other things cannot then be necessary in the absolute sense of the world - they could fail to exist - but they still have consecutive necessity, being necessitated by the creative act of God, this act of creation must have been free.

Crusius still has some loose ends to tie. Firstly, he notes that complex substances are always generated from their constituents, so that all absolutely necessary substances must be perfectly simple. Secondly, he defines moral versions of all the modal notions he has introduced: this is clearly something that influenced Kant in defining ethical categories of modality. Thus, Crusius begins from the notion of moral existence - what is a goal of a free person, or in effect, what should be - goes on to define moral impossibility - that something shouldn’t be - moral possibility - of which cannot be said that it should or that it shouldn’t be - and finally moral necessity - that something should be done, because of a presupposed goal. These notions and their somewhat strange definitions, where moral impossibility is not contrasted with moral necessity, but with moral existence, parallels closely Kant’s later division of the ethical categories of modality.

Crusius finally discusses the notion of coercion (Zwang), where the necessity of some action is caused by something outside the thing acting. He is especially interested to show that lack of coercion by an external thing still does not mean something would not be necessary - even an uncoerced necessity would be real necessity.

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.

Baumgarten: Metaphysics – this or that

In Baumgarten's sketch of ontology we have progressed into the section on internal disjunctive predicates, that is, to the most general classification of all things. We have actually witnessed already one of these classifications, namely, the division of things into singular or universal, which with Baumgarten can be roughly identified with the division into actual and merely possible things.

Another important distinction for Baumgarten is the one between necessary and contingent matters, which is actually a somewhat dual classification in Baumgarten's philosophy. Firstly, there is the classification of necessary and contingent features of all things. Transcendental characteristics, which belong to all things whatsoever, are clearly necessary. In particular, all essences and attributes are necessary – this means only that the realm of possibilities is inevitably fixed and what is possible, must also be possible. Modes, on the other hand, are contingent, because one and the same thing can have different modes at different times.

This classification of features leads then to a similar classification in relation to things. Necessary things are such that have only necessary features, that is, which have only an essence and attributes, but no modes. Contingent things, on the other hands, have modes and are thus not necessary. We might also describe this differentiation in terms of mutability. Modes are such things that can change, that is, a thing might have this mode now, but something else later. In other words, modes are features that can vary, and things with such features can change them. Thus, contingent things are mutable. Necessary things, on the other hand, have no features that could change and are therefore immutable.

Another distinction having a close connection with the distinction of necessary and contingent is that between reality and negation. Actually, these terms form more like a scale, at the other end of which would be found complete negation, that is, a thing which cannot be described through any positive predicates. Baumgarten notes that such a thing would be actually nothingness, that is, such an entity doesn't actually exist, but all possible things are real or positive in some measure.

The scale of reality is then formed by noting how much negation is added to realities in a thing. At the other end of the scale, there is a completely positive thing with nothing negative in it, in other words, which is not limited by anything (this means obviously God). Other things, then, are sort of mixtures of positive and negative features.

Now, these negative features are either necessary to the thing having them or not. Necessary negations concern the essence or attributes of something – for instance, human beings have necessary negation of mortality. Baumgarten notes that the contingent negations or privations must then concern modes – for instance, if a certain person is blind, this is just a privation, because it doesn't belong to the essence of humanity to be blind. While all negations are bad things or evil, necessary negations are what Baumgarten calls metaphysical – they are inherent in the nature of things and thus something of which we cannot complain. Privations, on the other hand, are true defects, because they are defects that things ought not to have.

The idea of a scale going from absolute negation to absolute reality is no mere figure of speech for Baumgarten, because he truly thinks that one could quantify such intensive notions like reality and negation. This is part of Baumgarten's Wolffian heritage, in which mathematics is seen as a key point in all properly scientific research. Indeed, Baumgarten goes even farther than Wolff and with every metaphysical topic provides explanations what would be a unit of quantity for that notion and what meaning the ”greater-lesser” -relation would have with it. Thus, for instance, in a minimal ordering a minimal reality is grounded on another minimal reality and adding both units of reality and grounding relations will make for a more complex order (unfortunately, Baumgarten does not consider the question what to do in cases where the comparison of structures is not so easy – if order A has more units of reality than B, but C has more grounding relations than either, while still less realities than A, how should we compare quantities of A and C?).

Next time I'll continue with the division of substances.

Hoffmann: Study of reason – Levels of opposition and connection

From subordination Hoffmann moves on to non-subordination, which holds on between pairs of ideas, one of which can be thought without the other. The most important subgroup of non-subordination is total diversity, in which both ideas have some aspect that is not shared by the other idea, just like body has features that soul doesn't and vice versa. Just like in many cases of subordination, diversity might also be just accidental or dependent on the peculiaties of the person thinking the ideas: for instance, one might not know that humans are animals and hence think that humanity and animality are diverse ideas.

At this point, Hoffmann introduced the notion of ”Punkt”, which we might perhaps properly translate as an aspect. Hoffmann's idea is that all subjects have various of such aspects, which can then be determined in different manners: say, a colour, a figure and speed would be such ”Punkts”. One of these aspects can always be determined only by one complete determination, thus, only subordinated ideas might determine the same aspect (thus, a strawberry can taste both sweet and strawberrish, but not salty). The notion of ”Punkt” is important, because it helps to divide diversity into two different classes. One of these classes is proper diversity, in which the two ideas are not connected, but can still exist in the same subject, because they do not determine the same aspect, like will and understanding. The more important type is opposition, in which the ideas either always exist in different subjects (like the notions of infinity and finity) or then determine the same aspect and therefore cannot exist at the same in same substances.

Hoffmann then goes on to classify different varieties of opposition: we have e.g. logical opposition, in which ideas are opposite, because they are different species of same genus, such as external and internal sensation, contradictories, one of which is always merely negative idea (visible and invisible), and contraries, both of which are determined ideas, like love and hate (note that with Hoffmann contraries can be contradictories, on the condition that the negative idea is something we can have a determinate idea of). Philosophically most interesting is perhaps the notion of causal or physical opposites, which are such that in addition to not existing in the same subject also have the tendency to cancel the other, if it happens to be just in its vicinity, like cold and warmth – this notion clearly resembles Kantian notion of real opposites.

Just as important as determining what types of opposites there are, it is also as important for Hoffmann to determine what is not opposed, although might seem to be. We might have difficulties to understand how some ideas can be combined in the same subject, like non-sensuality and cognition, but there still might be entities having both of these characteristics, just like God is supposed to know things without sensation. Similarly, one might have difficulties to understand how some entity could cause something, like how spirit could move material objects, but this doesn't necessarily mean that being a spirit would be opposed to being a cause of movement.

Hoffmann also notes that there are various levels of opposition between ideas, that is, they might cancel each other only partially, just like perpendicular and horizontal movement, which put together do not completely cancel one another and lead to a state of rest, but change into a diagonal movement. Some contrary ideas might have various intermediary stages, just like temperature can have many degrees between the extremes of cold and hot. Some contraries might be even said to exist in the same subject, if they merely cancel high degrees of the other contrary, just like vices merely cancel perfect, but not imperfect levels of virtue.

Just like there are various levels and types of subordination and non-subordination, Hoffmann thinks there are various levels between subordination and non-subordination. At the most extreme ends are essential connections and absolutely impossible connections, which are based on the very structure of the ideas. For instance, in case of essential connection, two ideas might necessarily exist together, like force and subject, or one idea might necessarily cause the other, like virtue causes good actions. Similarly, in case of absolutely impossible connections, two ideas might be unable to exist in the same subject, like roundness and squareness, or one of them might fail to cause another, like brute animals and speech.

Moving away from absolute impossibility we come at first to unnatural connections, which usually do not happen, but which might be effected by some third thing (obviously, at least God is meant here). At the other extreme are natural connections, which are something that occur, either because of the very structure of the ideas or because of some constant cause connecting them, unless some other thing hinders this connection, just like newborn humans usually have five fingers, unless some external causes hinders their development. At the very middle of this hierarchy, are then contingent connections, which occur sometimes, and merely possible connections, which are not impossible nor unnatural, but still just never happen to occur.

It is obvious that these levels of connection are modal notions, and Hoffmann is quick to note that he finds the use of such notions as necessity and possibility largely ambiguous and thus asks the reader to avoid those terms. It is not clear e.g. whether someone speaking of necessities means just essential existential connections or also essential causal connections or even merely natural connections. Furthermore, what is necessary and possible is more related to how we conceive things and what ideas we have. Thus, before trying to make any modal statements, one should carefully analyse what ideas one has. It is impossible to say what is e.g. necessary for human blood, unless one knows what one means by blood.

So much for relations of ideas, next time I shall take a look at what Hoffmann has to say about the clarity of ideas.

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.

Immutable necessities

Principle of contradiction denies the existence of contradictions, that is, the existence of combinations of contradictories. What then are these contradictories one might ask? Contradictories themselves are a kind of opposites, Wolff answers. Opposites, on the other hand, are such things that cannot exist at the same time, in the same situation (for instance, complete blackness and complete whiteness cannot exist in the same surface). Contradictories are then opposites, one of which must exist in a situation.

It is a well-known fact that when one modal notion (e.g. possibility) is defined, the rest of the modalities can be defined from that beginning. Thus, impossibility is contradictory of possibility: what is not possible, is impossible, and vice versa, and things must be either possible or impossible.

More importantly, when the opposite of something is impossible, this something itself must be necessary. That is, when some situation or thing has no capacity of ever becoming actual, it's opposite must undoubtedly have the power to actualise itself in every situation. For instance, a figure with three sides, but not three angles would be something impossible and could not ever be actualised, thus, if we do have an actual figure with three sides, it must be actualised with three angles. Generally, all such combinations or propositions describing them are necessary, if the predicate could be deduced from the definition of the subject.

Now, there is a special case of necessary propositions, that is, propositions describing the existence of something necessary. Here it is not any feature of the thing that is necessary, but the very entity is supposed to be such that its non-existence would be impossible. In other words, the actualisation of the haecceitas of such an entity would be necessary. Because this haecceitas or individual essence would contain at least implicitly all the predicates of the thing, it could not really have any other predicates. In other words, it could not change into anything else, but would eternally be what it is.

Wolff leaves it open for now, whether there are any concrete necessary individuals – this is a task left for other branches of metaphysics. Then again, Wolff does find examples of more abstract necessary entities. In Wolffian ontological scheme, what is absolutely possible is defined by its non-contradictoriness, and thus, one cannot change what is possible. If something is then possible, it is necessary possible. Then again, essences or coherent combinations of essential predicates correspond to certain possibilities. These abstract combinations or lists of predicates are then necessary, which means merely that it must be possible that some things satisfy these combinations of predicates.

Wolff also points out that there are actually two different concepts of necessity. Firstly, one can speak of necessity plain and simple or absolute necessity – this is essentially what we have considered now. Then again, there is also hypothetical necessity, that is, necessity under some assumption. Wolff's example of hypothetical necessity is the relationship between a feature of a thing determining what other features the thing has: for instance, if a certain figure has three straight lines as its sides, then it is necessary on this condition of its trianglehood that it also has three angles.

This mathematical example is a good point to move to consider how mathematics is presented in Wolff's ontology, which will be the topic of my next post.

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

When we speak of a Wolffian school, it is not just Christian Wolff himself we are thinking of, but a whole parade of more minor figures who in some sense continued the work of their masters. The 1720s appear to be the earliest point at which we can speak of Wolffians as a recognizable philosophical movement. I have already discussed a dissertation of one Wolffian, Bilfinger, that appeared 1722, and the topic of the current post, Meletemata varii et rarioris argumenti in unum volumen collecta, contains dissertations and essays published during 1720s.

Although the name does not reveal it, the continuous references to the works of the illustrious Wolff suggest that the writers are hard core Wolffians. Most of the contributors are quite minor names in the school and apparently did not even publish anything after their dissertation, so I'll skip introducing them. The only exception is the editor of the collection, Ludvig Philip Thümmig, a faithful follower of Wolff.

What I am mostly interested in this collection is the range of different topics discussed, which reflects well the multifarious nature of Wolff's philosophy. A considerable number of the essays concern natural or mathematical sciences, which was the original research field of Wolff and which he still continued to study even when he had already started his famous series on reasonable thoughts on nearly everything – even at this time Wolff published a series called Allerhand nützliche Versuche (All sorts of useful studies), which dealt with such important problems as how we can weigh objects or use a thermometer. The pupils of Wolff appear to have been interested at least of biology (there's an essay on how to study leaves), but especially of astronomy and ”things happening up in the sky”, like propagation of light.

It is not just physics that interested pupils of Wolff, but there are also more philosophical essays that concern all the four Rational thoughts we have encountered thus far. There's a logical discourse on the necessary and contingent concepts, which also has ontological consequences – the writer argues how Wolffian distinction between absolute and conditional necessity discredits Spinoza's idea that the world is necessary, because the existence of the world is not impossible, but depends on the free choice of God. This writing is the first sign thus far of the looming threat of Spinozan pantheism – we have more to say on the matter in a couple of decades.

Furthermore, the collection contains a metaphysical study of the immortality of soul – or more likely, it is an advertisement of the Wolffian proof, which is based on the simplicity of the soul and the supposed impossibility of a material basis of thinking. The only novelty in the essay appears to be the author's idea that the life of soul consists of a clarification of its ideas: the newborn child has only confused ideas, but the soul of a dead person sees everything distinctly. Despite its unoriginality, the essay shows well the appreciation of Wolff's rational psychology in contemporary Germany. Indeed, I think that Kant's theory of paralogisms is primarily targeted towards Wolffian ideas.

Morality is also topic of an essay, which analyses the notion of sincerity. A considerable portion of the essay is dedicated to defending Wolff's ideas of China as an atheist and still a moral nation – an issue that will surface often in the writings of 1720s.

Wolffian politics is not forgotten, although this essasy covers also architectural ideas. The author follows Wolff's suggestion that the needs of a comunnity determine what is good art. The outcome of the argument is that the Wolffian writings on architecture fulfill this criterion of good art perfectly.

It is this final tendency of subjugating art to the moral upbringing of people that will be the topic of my next post, where I'll discuss my first piece of fiction.