Christian Wolff: Universal practical philosophy 2 (1739)

If first book of Wolff's Philosophia Practica Universalis was all about establishing the primary principle of practical philosophy, the second book, published year later than the first one, is then about application of this principle to more concrete cases. One must still remember that concreteness is here only a relative notion, and we are far from solving any determinate ethical or political questions.

The basic rules for good human action Wolff has already stated in the first book. One should follow natural law, which means striving for one's perfection. Since perfecting oneself means finding reliable and consistent happiness, natural law also guides us to strive for our own happiness. And, since God has made the world order, in which people become happy in certain manner, living according to natural law means also living according to God's decrees.

A new element in the second book is the social side of human activity. We are not just completely indifferent about each other's actions, but for instance, agree with other's actions, try to persuade them to some things etc. All these various social relations make responsibility of the actions also shared – if I convince my neighbour to do something, it is partially my fault, if something bad happens through her actions.

An important feature of this social element of human action Wolff emphasises is emulation – we tend to imitate behaviour of other people. This is important especially for making people act better. That is, if we set up examples of good life, heroes and saints, people might tend to improve their own live by imitating the lives of such good examples.

Wolff's suggestion that moral improvement might happen through emulation is an important sign of his appreciation of the less than fully intellectual side of human activity. True, Wolff thinks that one should try to improve one's behaviour through moral reasoning. Yet, he also sees that this is generally not enough, but there must be something to rouse the sensuous side of human mind. Thus, Wolff suggests that symbolism and rituals could be used for quickly teaching people about moral truths.

Despite admitting the importance of such sensuous element for morality, Wolff is still pretty antisensualist, when it comes to determining the actual principles of action. Senses and imagination provide us only with confused knowledge, which still requires conceptual analysis and reasoning to become truly valid and certain. Thus, sensuality as a source of confusion must be inhibited, in order to make oneself truly perfect.

Now, sensual side of human being is in Wolff's eyes not just a servant of morality or a mere hindrance to properly good life – it is also a sign of a person's motivation for his actions. Here Wolff once again speaks about physignomy, and since this is a topic I've discussed earlier I shall now merely mention it.

So ends Wolff's treatise on practical philosophy in general, although these outlines will be filled with more detailed treatises on ethics and politics later. But in case of theoretical philosophy, new personalities were already taking Wolff's formerly dominating place.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts of human acting and letting others act upon you - What's on your mind?

If you have always wondered how to find out what other people have in mind, Wolff instructs how to do it. One might wonder what this has to do with the topic of Wolff's German ethics. Well, in order to do good things, you must learn what is good and what is not – and one way to do this is to see what others think is good.

Wolff's method is rather simple. Suppose a person perceives or otherwise experiences some situation and in her imagination and memory she has a maxim telling whether such a situation is good or bad and what one should do in that sort of situation. Then through a simple syllogism we see that the person will evaluate the situation and act in a certain manner. So, if a person sees a beggar and her maxim is to donate to the poor, she will give an alm.

Then again, we can also reverse the process. In other words, if we know the particular experiences a person has and the actions following from these experiences, we can instantly know what general maxims she follows in her actions. Thus, if we see a person giving a fiver to a beggar he has just seen, we can suppose that the person has a general maxim of helping the poor.

Of course, it is not as simple as that, because people can act contrary to their maxims, if they feel the need to deceive other people. For instance, the person giving the alms in the last paragraph might only want to make an impression to a lady who truly likes charity. Generally, the possibility of deception prevents us to be truly certain of what is going on in other people's minds.

Wolff suggests a method for circumventing the possibility of deception. Although one's actions can be deceiving, emotions cannot be – that is, if a person thinks some situation to be good or bad, we can assume that she will generally evaluate similar situations in the same manner. Hence, the person trying to fool a lady with a generous gift to the beggar would be instantly revealed by his emotion that he disliked his act of charity.

Maxims could thus be read from emotions, but how can emotions of a person be deciphered? Now, as we might remember from Wolffian psychology, Wolff's and Leibniz's dualism with a pre-estabished harmony verges on materialism. Indeed, because of the harmony, one can at least in principle find out what emotion a soul is feeling, when one is studying the corresponding body. Indeed, we do evaluate the emotions of people by looking at the expressions of their faces and other non-verbal forms of communication. But Wolff goes a step further and appears to accept the validity of physiognomy.

Physiognomy is a discipline of great antiquity: there is a book called Physiognomy, which was ascribed to Aristotle, although the author was probably just a member of the Aristotelian school. The basic idea behind this discipline is rather simple – by studying the physical characteristics of a person we could determine also his mental characteristics. Classic physiognomy appealed, for instance, to resemblance with other animals – if he looks like a pig, he is probably going to behave like a pig.

Physiognomy was criticised even during Wolff's life and is nowadays dead as a dodo when it comes to respectable science, but similar statements can be found in more modern disciplines. For instance, genetic determinists are certain that the personality of a person is completely encoded in her DNA. Thus, Wolff's readiness to accept physiognomy implies that he might not be completely against these later theories – genetics would not then be in contradiction with Wolffian dualism.

Yet, Wolff did not accept even physiognomy wholly, because of a point familiar from the genes-environment -discussion: while physiognomy might be correct of human beings in their natural state, education can change the temperament of a person. Ironically, Wolff has more difficulties in combining the possibility of educating a person with his view of the human soul: because human soul is actually closed up from external influences, it cannot really be educated, that is, other people only seem to educate the person, who then develops freely from his natural state.

Nevertheless, Wolff admits that physiognomy is not a reliable method for deciphering people's emotions, and thus the hopes of reading other people's minds have been destroyed. This appears to be a common theme in Wolff's philosophy: he sets out an ideal of knowledge and even develops a method for acheiving it – but in the end, human frailties hinder the use of the method.

Next time, we shall look at the duties of a moral person.