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.

Joachim Lange: Hundred and thirty questions of the new mechanical philosophy and Philosophical questions from the new mechanical morality; Hoffman: Thoughts of the current state of scholarship (1734)

The reader might well think that by dedicating one post to three different works I am insinuating that the works are not of particular importance or even bad. The suspicion is at least partially right, at least when it comes to two works by Joachim Lange. One might remember that Lange was almost a leading figure in the attacks of pietists against Wolffian philosophy, which finally led to the end of Wolff's career in Halle and his forced move to the University of Marburg. The two works of Lange, Hundert und dreyßig Fragen aus der neuen mechanischen Philosophie and Philosophische Fragen Aus der neuen Mechanischen Morale ,were occasioned by the attempt of king Friedrich Wilhem of Prussia to call Wolff back from his exile in 1733 – the king had come to regret his earlier decision, because Wolff's case had raised objections all over the Europe. Lange's attempt was to speak against Wolff's return by reminding everyone of the evil consequences of his philosophy – somewhat in vain, because Wolff simply rejected king's offer.

Lange's doubts concerning Wolff's philosophy were old, but so were his arguments against it. With similar strategy as before, Lange picks up Wolff's statements out of their context and draws some insinuating consequences out of them. His particular target in the first writing is the Leibnizian pre-established harmony between body and soul, which combines, according to Lange. Spinozan materialism with idealistic solipsism and makes both body and soul into mere deterministic clockworks. This is all quite familiar from Lange's earlier writings, and the only new feature appears to be his answer to Wolff's suggestion that pre-established harmony might be a mere reasonable hypothesis – science and philosophy should not consider mere hypothesis, but truths, Lange proclaims proudly.

While Lange's new works are then a bit of a disappointment. Hoffman's Gedancken von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Gelehrsamkeit is somewhat interesting, despite the rather simple nature of the text. Hoffman's work is a sort of advertisement for his own lectures – it was a common habit among scholars of the period that such ads were prefaced by short essays showing the expertise of the lecturer. Hoffman's essay is a work on the state of modern philosophy and especially describes what is wrong with it.

Hoffman begins with a short analogy: philosophers have been like people constructing everyone their own buildings with their own taste and fancy and without any general plan what the whole city should look like. The result is obviously a mismatch of different and even incompatible styles built side by side and even on top of one another – when one has constructed an edifice, another comes and tears it up to make room for his own plans.

Hoffman specifies three particular problems in modern philosophy, first two of which concern the relation of philosophical and scientific theories to practice. Firstly, philosophical and scientific theories have been utterly useless in actual practice. This is a sign, Hoffmann says, that these theories are considerably bad, since general theories should be of immense worth when deciding what to do in particular cases (Hoffman has especially medicine and jurisdiction in mind). One might think that actual practicioners might be able to make – if not complete theories, then at least – generalisations out of the particular cases they've witnessed. But this brings us to the second problem that practicioners are usually so bad that they muddle things more than they help them – doctors make people even sicker and jurists just raise legal quibbles.

The third problem that Hoffman points out is the most interesting: lack of controversy. True, he has just criticised the way that scholars tear down what the other has built, but even this tearing down has happened without any scholarly interaction. Instead of saying what is problematic what is wrong with other person's writing, they just officially praise the works of co-scholars and in actual practice ignore them, when making their own contribution. Actual criticism, Hoffman thinks, is in fact a sign that scholars care for what the others say and good criticism is meant to improve their work.

Due to these faults, it is no wonder that some people have renounced philosophy altogether. In Hoffman's eyes this is a wrong answer to a real problem – it is like closing your eyes instead of fixing things. Hoffman enumerates four types of such unphilosophical scholars. The bottom rang of this hierarchy is formed by critics, who learn much of externalities of scholarly book printing: when was this and that book published etc. Not so much better are stylists, who pay much more regard to the style than the content of books. The two higher type of unphilosophical scholars are interested of the content, but they study it unphilosophically and unsystematically. First of therse are memorisers, who learn sentences that are arbitrarily pulled out of books. The highest type of unphilosophical scholars are the experientialists, who learn only the essential, but unexplained data provided by experiences – these scholars are often practicing doctors or lawyers who fail to appreciate the usefulness of systematic theory.

Even scholars who do appreciate philosophy might apply it unsuccesfully, Hoffman continues. First sort of such philosophers are titularists, who fail in a manner opposite to experientialists: they merely repeat some general and even vulgar tautologies, which they cannot connect with actual practice.

By far the most interesting class of Hoffman's classification failed scholars is the last, paralogists, who, as the name belies, use faulty reasoning. It is this group in which Hoffman things Wolff and his 

followers belong. Hoffman even provides an example of Wolff's faulty reasoning. Wolff had suggested that bodies have forces and all features of complex bodies must be grounded on their simple constituents, then even these constituents or elements must have forces. Hoffman points out that the features of bodies are not actually determined just by their parts, but also by their manner of combining with one another – for instance, unextended elements are combined in such a manner that an extended body is generated out of them. Similarly to extension, force might be something that is only generated through combination of elements.

This is what Wolff's opponents had been up to. Next I am coming back to Gottsched's philosophy.

Andreas Rüdiger: True and false sense (1722)

Books on methodology appear to have been a popular choice for philosophers wanting to make their fortune. We have already seen Wolff's Leibnizian take on the topic and also Lange's more Cartesian version. My previous encounter with Andreas Rüdiger and his rather outdated book on physics, with a quaint notion of air, aether and spirit as the fundamental elements, didn't make me expect much. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Rudiger had some intruiging novelties in store with his approach to methodology.

Although Rüdiger's two books have markedly different topics, they both share common enemies. Rudiger's philosophy is clearly anti-Aristotelian, which wasn't strange at the beginning of 18^th century. What is more, it is also anti-Cartesian. The best indication of this in methodology is Rüdiger's denial of any inherent or inborn ideas. Rüdiger is clearly inspired by Lockean criticism in this respect – different cultures have different ideas, and thus we can expect none of those ideas to be inborn. Hence, all ideas – and ultimately, all forms of cognition – should be such that they can be reduced to sensations: they should be combinations of sensory ideas, abstractions from them etc.

Rüdiger's Lockean leanings form an interesting contrast with the work of Lange, the other thus far met Thomasian. As we have seen, Lange attempted to base a pietist philosophy on the Cartesian fundament of a clear cogito. Rüdiger shies away from all things Cartesian, because Descartes' mechanistic tendencies point almost inevitably towards Spinozan pantheism and perhaps also because it is hard to reconcile Cartesian scientism with a devout religious outlook. English empiricists, on the other hand, were not so clearly scientists, and like Hume would do later for Jacobi, Locke offered Rüdiger a good basis for religious statements.

Rüdiger's Christian tendencies modify Lockean philosophy in an interesting manner. On basis of his physical writings Rüdiger notes that animals in general appear to have inborn ideas – at least they manage to do things instinctually or without any training. Rüdiger concludes then that humans should also by nature have inborn ideas, although experience tells us that they do not. This discrepancy is conveniently explained by the biblical tale of fall: humans were supposed to have inborn ideas, but due to their corrupted state, their connection with these ideas has been sundered.

Another modification of empiricism concerns the clarity of ideas, which in general should on Rüdiger's opinion be based on the connection of the ideas with sensations – the more sensuous content we can give to an idea, the clearer it will be. Such empiricist criterion of clearness is obviously meant to weed out confusing philosophical ideas – if it is not clear, discard it. The only exception is provided by Christian mysteries, such as trinity, because they apparently point out the inevitable finity and imperfection of human cognition – they show boundaries humans at least in the present life cannot break.

The idea of boundaries of human cognition shares some affinities with later Kantian philosophy, and even more similarities with Kant we can see in Rüdiger's ideas on mathematics, which I shall investigate next time.