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

Whether it was called something (Etwas) or thing (Ding), which Crusius prefers, ontologies of the time often began from a concept opposite to nothing. By this thing that is not nothing, Crusius explains, we can mean anything whatsoever that can be thought of. Yet, he continues, we can also distinguish in the class of things that can be thought those which we can only think (merely possible things) and those that are or exist also outside our thought (actual things or things in a more proper sense).

Crusius follows Hoffman in trying to find criteria for recognising what is possible and what is not and finding ultimately three criteria, only one of which is absolutely certain. The basic sign of something being a possible thing, Crusius insists, is whether someone can think it: possibility is thus equated with an ideal comprehensibility. Since no one could think as true such things that contradict themselves or known truths, we must assume that such contradictions are a sign of an impossible thing.

The principle of non-contradiction, Crusius says, is a demand that all possible things should fulfill. Then again, he adds, all possible things need not be comprehensible to us humans: a point that Hoffman made before Crusius. The idea behind this rejection is that a more perfect mind (such as God) might be able to comprehend something we cannot. Thus, if such a perfect and undeceiving person tells us to believe some apparent absurdity (say, about three persons in one divinity), then we should believe him. Crusius points out two other cases where we should believe such absurdities to be true or at least possible. Firstly, since the law of non-contradiction is the highest criteria of possibility, we must believe a seeming absurdity, if denying it would create contradictions. Secondly, if we are obligated to assume something incomprehensible in order to perfect ourselves, then we should surely accept these incomprehensibilities as true or at least possible. If none of these conditions holds and nothing else speaks to the contrary, then we should think it impossible to separate what we cannot think as separated and to combine what we cannot think as combined. These two principles complete Crusius’ criteria of possibility.

Moving on to Crusius’ criterion for recognising what is actual we might wonder whether he is actually talking about necessity: if we try to deny something actual, we immediately or mediately assume something we cannot think as true, that is, something impossible. The perplexity might go away, if we assume that, just like possibility was defined in relation to the perfect divine mind, so perhaps actuality is also here defined in relation to God. After all, God knows perfectly what there is, so if he assumes something to be non-existent, which actually is, he would land in contradiction.

Humans are not divine, so we have only a limited connection to what is actual. The human criteria of actuality, Crusius says, are always linked to sensation, which Crusius defines as a state where we are immediately forced to assume something without any further proof and which will not be revealed as imagination or dream when compared with other sensations. Indeed, without sensation we could not know that anything exists outside our own thoughts. Even our own existence we become aware of not through our thinking, like Descartes insisted, but through our internal sensation, Crusius concludes.

Having thus delineated the realm of possible and actual things, as far as we humans can know them, Crusius defines some further concepts that he will study in more detail later. For instance, when we think of a thing, whether possible or actual, we think it as distinct from other things. In other words, we think what this thing is as different from all others or we think about its (metaphysical) essence. This essence might be divided into various aspects, which help to distinguish the thing in question from some things, but not from others, just as redness serves to distinguish rose from green things, but not from tomatoes. Such aspects Crusius calls properties or qualities. Since what a thing is is a question different from whether a thing is, existence is still something different from essence and its constituent properties: essence and properties are something we can think of, existence is something beyond thought.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 1 – Thinkable and possible

While philosophers of Wolffian school began metaphysics usually with ontology, Darjes starts with something called primary philosophy, which should be distinct from ontology. The main difference between the two disciplines is that only latter deals with entities (ens). I shall speak in a later post what Darjes meant by an entity, but for the moment I am concentrating on his primary philosophy.

Like all Wolffians thus far, Darjes begins his account of metaphysics with the principle of non-contradiction. It is not surprising that this principle delineates the realm of possible for Darjes. More interesting is that Darjes actually has an account of what is left outside this realm. Even Wolff did define nothing as what is impossible, but it was unclear what this nothing should be – something in our minds or something more ontologically robust. Now, Darjes notes that nothing and something or impossible and possible are simply kinds of cogitable or thinkable, while thinkable simply is what we can think. Thus, metaphysics is then forcibly defined in relation to our thought, which paves the way for a complete change of ontology into an analytic of principles, which will happen with Kant. It is also important that according to Darjes we can think even contradictions – something not admitted by all philosophers – and very telling about Darjesian attitude toward thinking, which seems then to be nothing more than mere combining words together.

Darjes notes that everything thinkable, whether it be possible or impossible, has something that makes it possible or impossible. This feature making something possible or impossible Darjes calls the essence of thinkable. Darjes thus actually has a definition for an essence, which is more than one could say of Wolff. Then again, Darjesian notion of essence is is another deviation from the usual Wolffian stand, where essences belong only to possible things. Darjes also calls essence a constitutive or adequate primary concept, implying that essences are nothing but thoughts.

Darjes also introduces at this point the primary division of complex and simple, although he extends this classification to all thinkables. His method is to introduce these notions through the idea of essence. Essence of something we can think might be resolvable into further thinkables. If it is, the corresponding thinkable is complex, while if it isn't, this thinkable is simple. Note that we still appear to be moving in the level of thoughts, since Darjes especially calls the parts of essences or essentials partial or inadequate concepts. Further evidence that we are here dealing with thought is provided by Darjes' statement that division of complex thinkables must inevitably end with something simple, because we simply cannot think a bottomless series of constitution. Furthermore, Darjes notes that all impossible thinkables – nothings – must be complex, since simplicities cannot contain contradictions (another assumption that Wolff never made).

Beyond essence and its constituents or essentials, what is thinkable has what Darjes calls affections or adjuncts, in relation to which the thinkable is a subject. Knowing a bit about Wolffian tradition, one might suspect that Darjes would mention attributes and modes at this point. He will mention them, but in a completely different place, because his division of characteristics of thinkable is much more fine-grained than with earlier Wolffians. Still, something similar is in Darjes' mind, when he mentions that affections can be divided into two sorts. Some of them the thinkable has absolutely – that is, they characterise the thinkable in any situation whatever, for instance, like triangle is characterised by certain sum of angles. Some affections, on the other hand, are hypothetical, that is, characterise the thinkable under some conditions, such as when a triangle could be characterised by a certain colour, if it happens to painted in some manner. While the former affections are stable, the latter could be changed without any contradiction.

Beyond essence, essentials, attributes and modes, Wolffians also mentioned relations and Darjes makes no exception. For him, relation or extrinsic determination is something external to a thinkable which it characterises, that is, even when we have assumed the existence of the thinkable, we still need to assume the existence of something else, before this determination could hold of the first thinkable (for instance, one cannot be a child without someone else, whose child one is).

An opposite of an extrinsic determination is, of course, an intrinsic determination, that is, a determination that characterises a thinkable, even if there were no other thing to relate it to. Darjes doesn't leave this class of characteristics here, but goes on to divide intrinsic characteristics further. At first sight the division appears to just repeat the division between extrinsic and intrinsic determinations- some intrinsic determinations can be conceived without other things, some cannot. Yet, it is the word ”conceive” which is obviously important here – a determination might ontologically not be dependent on relations with other things, but we might epistemically require such relations.

The first part of the division or qualities is an easy thing to understand, and for instance, essence and essentials are obviously qualities in this sense. But what belongs to the other category? Darjes suggests that at least quantities belong to this class of intrinsic determinations. Clearly, quantity is an intrinsic determination in the sense that a thing can be of certain size without any thing external to it. Yet, if thing has a size, it must, firstly, be a complex and contain other things as its constituents. These other things or parts are then what is required for conceiving that a thing has a certain quantity – for instance, to say that a field is four acres large, we must think of field as consisting of acre-sized parts.

A thinkable with a quantity should not just consist of parts, but of parts that are in some sense same – this if how we can say e.g. that a field is six acres in size or that there are six wolves in a pack. This sameness, Darjes defines, means that these thinkables can replace one another, at least in some respect (just like if wolves are required, one wolf is as good as another, and that's why we can determine the size of a wolf pack). Darjes goes into more details of various kinds of sameness – identity or sameness of all characteristics, equality or sameness of quantities, similarity or sameness of qualities etc. - but none of this is surprising.

The one final thing to discuss at this point is Darjesian notion of existence. Unlike Baumgarten, Darjes does not try to beat Wolff in finding a definition for existence, but like Wolff, he merely accepts it as a given notion, which is related in a certain manner to the notion of possibility – what exists is possible, but something might be possible, without existing. Thus, Darjes divides possible essences into two kinds – ideal or merely possible essences and real or actual essences. The ideal essences Darjes also takes as a kind of nothing. That is, they are not nothing, in the official Wolffian sense of the word of being impossible – in other words, they are not complete negations of all existence. Instead, Darjes calls them nothing in a privative sense – they could exist, but happen to not exist.

We've already seen how innovative Darjes is in his use of the absolute and hypothetical viewpoints on various notions, and possibility is not an exception – in addition to absolute or intrinsic possibility or non-contradictoriness, Darjes mentions hypothetical or extrinsic possibility, that is, potentiality in some specific conditions. Another and more interesting use of these viewpoints concerns Darjesian differentiation between possibles of first and second order – possibles of first order absolutely cannot fail to exist,while possibles of second order cannot fail to exist under some hypothetical condition. We are obviously already speaking here of absolute and hypothetical necessity, although the term necessity hasn't yet been introduced. Darjes also makes a quick interesting remark about absolute necessity. He notes that while a thing exists, we cannot really distinguish between the essence and the existence of the thing. We can do this separation only with things that at some point won't exist and with things that must exist essence and existence just cannot be distinguished.

Hoffmann: Study of reason – Opening up probabilities

Hoffmann's idea of demonstrating truth of something is based on the notion of closing off possibilities – when we can show that alternative accounts are against some principle of reason, we can be sure that the remaining account is the true one. In some cases, we cannot do this either for a proposition or for its contradictory. In that case, we can just conclude that both propositions are possible.

This possibility in question is logical, and as one might have guessed, Hoffmann thinks it is just one type of possibility. A more formal notion is verbal possibility, which just means that the words used in a proposition refer to some ideas. On the other hand, a more substantial notion is metaphysical possibility, by which Hoffmann means lack of contradictions, while even more substantial is physical possibility, which means capacity to physically actualise content of some proposition.

Getting back to logical possibilities, they are lacking in the sense that they come with no way to justify them. Indeed, this lack of justification makes it natural for us to reject them and thus they can be called internally improbable. As one can clearly see, if proposition and its opposite are both considered just possible, both of them are internally improbable. A more interesting notion of improbability is relative improbability, which is improbability arising from comparison of proposition with its contradictory. Probability is then defined as a counterpart to relative improbability: if we consider proposition to be more likely to affirm than its opposite, although both are possible, the proposition is probable.

Just like demonstration must be based according to Hoffmann to some principles, so must argumentation through probabilities. The basic idea behind argumentation of probabilities is that a proposition always implies or involves a number of conditions that the world must satisfy. Some of these conditions could be accepted without any ado, but others require more justification. The more a proposition involves conditions that require justification, the less probable it is.

One interesting question is whether Hoffmann meant us to read these characterisations of probability objectively or subjectively. The answer is that he actually had both possibilities in mind. Probabilities might be just subjective, if our incapacity to justify the seemingly improbable propositions is just based on our lack of experience or on general limitations of human cognition. If we can show that neither is the case, we can conclude that the probabilities are objective.

It might appear that Hoffmann's principle of probability is difficult to apply in concrete cases. Yet, just like in case of demonstration, the highest principle implies a number of more particular principles that are easier to use. Thus, we know that the less possibilities an event has for occurring, the less probable it is. This means, among other things, that a single possibility is more probable than a combination of many independent single possibilities and that a more indeterminate possibility is more probable than a more determinate possibility.

Hoffmann is satisfied with mere general rules, but notes that there are many kinds of probability, each having their distinct rules. As one could guess in case of Hoffmann, the probability could be about causal or existential propositions. Causal probability can be physical, that is, concern reasoning either from causes to effects or from effects to causes. On the other hand, it may also be political probability, which concerns reasoning from the means a person uses to the ends he strives to attain, or moral-practical probability, which concerns reasoning from given ends to means required for those ends.

Two kinds of existential probability concern things past (historical probability of what has happened) and things in future (whether something will happen in these conditions). In addition, Hoffman points out a third class relating to signs. These signs might be some concrete things, for instance, when a diplomat tries to determine what a representative of foreign nation means by his expression. Yet, in most cases the signs are words. One is either trying to determine the meaning of words in general, in critique, or then the meaning of words in a particular text, in hermeneutics.

The importance of emphasising these different types of probability lies in the distinct presumptions made in each field. Presumption, Hoffman defines, is a proposition taken as probable in some particular field of knowledge. The presumptions are valuable, because due to their probability they can be used as premisses in probable reasoning. Particularly, if some proposition is in conflict with such a presumption, its contradictory will be more probable. Hoffmann enumerates a number of possible forms of presumptions: we might, for instance, think something is probable, because its absence is rarity or because there is no cause to suggest otherwise – or even that this presumption is accepted by reliable authorities.

Hoffmann goes to some lengths to describe how probabilities could be quantified. In general he delineates two alternative possibilities, arithmetical and geometrical. In arithmetical quantification of probability one chooses some arbitrary unit of probability and compares other probabilities to it, while in geometric quantification of probability they are compared to the totality of completely certain proposition.

***

This is as far as I will go with Hoffmann's Vernunftlehre, although he still does have couple of interesting things to say about the forms of method (analytical, synthetical and analytic-synthetical) and their various subtypes (for instance, mathematical synthetical method differs in Hoffmann's eyes very much from other types of synthetical method, because it alone cannot be used to justify existence assumptions). Instead, I am going to make a comprehensive estimate of Hoffmann's life work.

Because most of Hoffmann's shorter writings had been written against Leibniz, Wolff and Wolffian school and even his masterpiece, Vernunftlehre, contained many explicit and implicit criticisms of their positions, it seems especially interesting to consider what are the actual differences between Wolff's and Hoffmann's positions. Clearly, Wolff and Hoffmann disagreed especially in metaphysical questions – e.g. Hoffmann thought Leibnizian idea of pre-established harmony to be ridiculous, while Wolff suggested it was the best possible hypothesis about body-soul interaction. But what is especially interesting is the question whether Hoffmann's logical works are any different from Wolff's logic.

It is easier to begin with similarities and on basis of the common elements to find the specific differences characterising Wolff's and Hoffmann's notion of logic. First of all, it is clear that both Wolff and Hoffmann understand logic not just as a description of a formal structure of thinking, but as a methodology of scientific research. But the two philosophers differ in their beliefs concerning the unity of this methodology. Wolff strives to give a unified methodology of sciences, and in cases where he admits the existence of many methodologies (e.g. historical and philosophical methods, or demonstration of truth and argumentation for probability), he is keen to suggest that one of them is ideal. Hoffmann, on the other hand, is more aware of the differences between disciplines and their methodologies – mathematical reasoning differs from physical and moral reasoning.

Wolff is not a hard-headed rationalist trying to spin everything out of empty definitions, which is often the caricature applied for him, but instead, he used a more mixed methodology, in which empirically discovered premisses play an important role. Hoffmann's methodology is similar, when it comes to empirical matters, but his acceptance of a variety of methodologies allows far more tools of securing knowledge – all reasoning cannot be reduced to syllogisms, Hoffmann insists.

Both Wolff and Hoffmann also accepted that all human methodologies have their proper limits and that especially divine affairs lie beyond the ken of human understanding. Yet, the reasons for their acceptance were somewhat different. For Wolff, it is more of a quantitative question – human understanding just cannot regard all the infinite facets of the actual world, let alone all the possible worlds or the infinite mind of God. In Hoffmann's eyes, there are more essential reasons, why human mind cannot understand some things – it has to follow the agreement of its ideas and shun from conflicts between ideas, but it might well be that these are merely laws of human thinking, which might lead even to contradictions if taken to extremes. This brings us to the greatest difference.

What is missing in Wolff's methodological works is a deep consideration of the very capacity to know – he just assumes the psychological make-up of human mind and proceeds to state what are the best ways to gather knowledge for such a mind. It is characteristic that Wolff relegates the question of truth to the applied part of logic. With Hoffmann, on the other hand, this question takes the center stage. He is quite aware that justifying our capacity to know the truth is quite difficult and requires a completely different methodology from other sciences – if we would dare, we could call him a transcendental philosopher before Kant.

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.

Ocean of essences

When blogging about Wolff's German metaphysics, I described his idea of modalities through an analogy of an ocean warmed by sun: possibilities swam like drops of water within the ocean, and occasionally heat of the sun made one such drop rise to the air of actuality. In this text I am going to dive deeper to that ocean and describe in more detail its denizens or possibilities. But before going into possibilities, I must begin with impossibilities.

As should be familiar, Wolff defines impossibility through the notion of contradiction: what is contradictory cannot exist and vice versa. Impossibility is then also identified with what in previous text was called nothing. Possibility is defined as contradictory of impossibility, that is, possibility is something or what is not contradictory.

Now the definition above gives a rather good recipe for recognizing an impossibility – if a contradiction pops up, it cannot be. On the contrary, it is still uncertain how one can recognize something as possible, because it is more difficult to know when something is without contradiction. Wolff himself mentions that we can have a priori proofs that something is possible, which might sound rather preposterous. Yet, one must remember that by a priori Wolff actually means all sorts of demonstrations, which can have empirical premisses. Indeed, Wolff appears to accept only actuality of something as an undemonstrated justification of it's possibility. Thus, we can learn that something is possible only by showing where to find or how to make it actual or by demonstrating it from the actual existence of something else.

What then are the possibilities and impossibilities according to Wolff? Simply put, we can think of them as lists of characteristics. Picture a huge paper full of descriptions like ”triangular”, ”round”, ”square”, ”humanoid”, ”animal”, ”mushroom”, ”pouty”, ”frivolous”, ”intelligent”, ”rioting” and infinitely many others. Circle some of these characteristics or determinations: if the set of characteristics is such that all its members can belong to a single entity, the set describes a possibility, if not, an impossibility. Note that we then have more and less detailed lists – a pair ”pyramid” and ”red” can be made more detailed by the inclusion of characteristic ”coppery”.

Now, if you are aiming at possible result, obviously circling some determinations will make it necessary to circle also other determinations. For instance, if we accept Euclidean geometry without further ado – and they did this back at Wolff's time – circling description ”triangular” forces us also to circle the description ”sum of angles equals two right angles”. The first characteristic, as it were, determines the second, or using terminology of the previous text, thing having this characteristic is a sufficient reason for it having that characteristic.

Let us now assume that we have chosen a set of characteristics, which are meant to define certain possible thing. This set forms then the essence of the supposed possibility (say, triangularity forms the essence of triangles). Clearly, changing any characteristics that is part of the essence would change the possibility (e.g. square wouldn't be a triangle anymore). In this sense essence is always constant for the possibility it corresponds to. This doesn't mean that e.g. triangular pieces of matter could not turn to square piece of matter: then this piece of matter just wouldn't correspond to the essence of triangularity anymore. In effect, when we speak of an essence of a thing, we must assume some viewpoint from which to decide what is essential and what not for the thing in question.

Note that just putting together characteristics does not produce an essence, because such a list does not necessarily refer to any possibility. What one must do is also to show the possibility of this set of characteristics. We have just seen that it is only through actuality that such a proof can be effected. In fact, we need what Wolff has called a real definition, that is, an account of how the thing to be defined can be generated.

Now, when we have determined an essence, clearly also those characteristics determined by the essence will be constant – they cannot change, unless the essence changes. Such determined constant characteristics Wolff calls attributes (note that it might be equally contextual what to takes as essence and what as attribute). Some of these attributes are shared by things with other essences – these Wolff calls common attributes – while others are proper only for the things with that essence.

While essences and attributes are constant for thing of a certain sort, there are characteristics that are not, that is, modes. Thus, triangle could continue being triangle, even if its colour would change. Clearly such a distinction between essential and non-essential characteristics depends on the perspective – while colour is not essential to a triangle, it would be to a green triangle. Furthermore, the modes are not completely separate from essential characteristics and attributes. In fact, some sets of possible modes (say, a set of possible colours of a triangle) clearly form an attribute of the thing in question (it is not necessary that a triangle has any particular colour, but it must definitely have some colour).

In addition to essential characteristics, attributes and modes, things also have relations to one another. A peculiar notion of Wolff, derived probably from Leibniz, is the conviction that all relations could be reduced to modes. In effect, this means that one need not discuss other things when dealing with one thing. Thus, while essential characteristics and attributes of a thing can be explained through one another, its modes can be grounded on its other modes, current or past – that is, all causal processes can be regarded as involving only one object at a time.

Wolffian sea of possibilities is then filled with such groupings of characteristics. Characteristics of one thing cannot clash with one another, or otherwise there wouldn't be any such thing. Yet, just by being a possibility, the thing still isn't actual – one must still add something to make it actual. Kant was later to criticize Wolff, because no addition of a new characteristic could make possibility into actuality. Yet, here Kant is clearly too harsh for Wolff, who knew that mere addition of characteristic would no difference, but ”something else” is required – what this something else, is purposefully left unsaid by Wolff at this point of discussion, although later on it becomes evident that it is the spark of God that makes everything actual.

So much for possibilities, next time I shall look at what Wolff has to say about identity.

Philosophical dilucitations on God, human soul, world and general affects of things (1725)

Georg Bilfinger hasn't really struck me thus far as an original thinker, and indeed, many of his writings have been mere summaries of theories belonging to other philosophers. Hence, I did not have high expectations of Bilfinger's metaphysical work, Dilucidationes philosophicae de Deo, anima humana, mundo, et generalibus rerum affectionibus. In fact, the very first pages felt very familiar: the division of metaphysics into ontology, cosmology, psychology and natural theology has been used already by Wolff, and even many of the doctrines readily reveal the philosophical allegiances of Bilfinger. Because Wolff's other student, Thümmig, had already latinized Wolff's philosophy, Bilfinger's motives for publishing his own work appeared confusing.

Even so, Bilfinger's work feels somewhat more substantial presentation of Wolffian philosophy than Thümmig's summaries, and surprisingly, often manages to round even the discussions of Wolff himself. One clear reason is Bilfinger's habit of expounding opinions of previous thinkers, which was something sorely lacking in Wolff's texts. This does not make Bilfinger's work a mere redundant repetition of familiar ideas, but allows him to engage in a fruitful philosophical discussion. Bilfinger was a man of compromises, and Kant later adopted in his early work Bilfinger's suggestion that one should always try to reconcile opposing views by finding out what is good in both of them.

Good example of Bilfinger's abilities is his theorizing on modalities, that is, notions of possibility, impossibility, necessity and contingency. While Wolff was content with just one definition of e.g. possibility, Bilfinger starts with several definitions and notices interesting relations between them. In addition to Wolffian definition that possibility means lack of self-contradiction, Bilfinger considers the explication that possibilities are something inherently potential in other things. This second notion of possibility is clearly dependent on actuality in the sense that nothing could be possible in this sense, if there were nothing actual: there couldn't be any potential, if we had no source for such a potential.

Now, Bilfinger notes rather ingeniously that if some preconditions hold, the two notions of possibility coincide. Clearly, potentialities must also be non-contradictory. Furthermore, if we have an entity with infinite powers, it will obviously have the capacity to produce anything that is not inherently contradictory: thus, the extension of the two concepts of possibilities coincide. Bilfinger can so explain reasonably why e.g. Wolff did not notice or at least ignored the crucial distinction: he accepted the existence of God and did not therefore need to consider the second form of possibility.

Just like possibility is not a single concept for Bilfinger, similarly impossibility isn't either. Of course, there is the absolute impossibility of contradictions like round square, but there's also contextual impossibility, where a certain thing or person is incapable of doing something. Furthermore, this incapacity might be proper or due to a lack of power, but there are also important cases of improper incapacities. Firstly, Bilfinger thinks that the general incapacity to change past is an improper incapacity: it's just the nature of past to be completely determined. Secondly, an even more important type of incapacity concerns moral issues. Thus, God could well have created quite a horrible world, full of torture and grief, in the sense that he has the necessary power for doing this, but because of his infinite goodness, he doesn't have the moral possibility for doing this – a distinction clearly influenced by the need to defend Wolff against the suspicion of determinism.

It is in making these clarifications and in pointing interesting problems where Bilfinger's worth really lies. Some of these are familiar already from Wolff, like Bilfinger's notion that a sufficient reason does not need to necessitate an action, because of the freedom of agents, or his idea that imperfection might be just contextual. I shall thus proceed by picking up one important point in all of the four major divisions in Bilfinger's work. As I've already noted an important ontological statement of the plurality of the concepts of possibility, I shall next time plunge in cosmology and ask what sort of validity physical laws are supposed to have.