Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - The essence of the world

After going through what can be known about God, Crusius continues with the question of the world. His aim is to do metaphysical cosmology, that is, to describe what any world in general must be like and what we can know about this necessary essence of worlds without any help of prior experience. Thus, metaphysical cosmology in Crusius’ sense is not a physical endeavour and does not aim to describe our actual world.

Crusius faces the problem that since we do not even know our actual world completely and certainly don’t know what all the possible worlds are like, it seems impossible for us to know what worlds would necessarily be like. He admits that metaphysical cosmology must be incomplete. Firstly, he says, only God could know all the possible characteristics a world could have. Secondly, we are unsure even of many features of the actual world whether they are necessary: for instance, should every possible world have colours?

Despite these misgivings, Crusius thinks that we can still know some important truths of metaphysical cosmology. Firstly, all possible worlds are also things and thus must have characteristics that ontology has shown all things to have. Secondly, natural theology also implies things in cosmology, because any world would be God’s creation and would thus reflect their essential properties. Finally, he concludes, the very concept of the world must imply what a world must be like.

Furthermore, Crusius notes that we do not need to observe different possible worlds in order to form a distinct concept of a world - we just have to be able to distinguish a world from anything that is not a world. Firstly, Crusius distinguishes the world from God: the latter is necessary, the former is not. Secondly, a world is not an individual creature, but a sum of creatures, although, Crusius admits, God could have created just a single creature.

Not all collections of creatures are worlds, Crusius emphasises. Some collections are just connected by the observer, but a world should truly be a unity, not just in someone’s thoughts. Finally, Crusius notes, a world should be a real whole, not a part of something larger. Crusius’ final concept of the world is then that world is a real combination of finite things that is not again a part of another, to which it would belong through a real combination.

As a combination of things, Crusius says, every possible world must be spatial. In addition, because a world is particularly a combination of finite things, it must necessarily be of finite size. Crusius is especially keen to point out that although mathematics speaks of infinite spaces, this is just an abstract fiction that is not truly possible in a world. God, on the other hand, should exist wherever the world is, but God is not limited by the limits of the world. Crusius also accepts the possibility of world having void spaces in it - that is, spaces void of finite creatures, because God would exist even within void.

In addition to being spatial, Crusius continues, a world must also be temporal. He adds that because a world is created by God, it must have not existed at some point in time. World also could not exist by itself, even after creation, but must be sustained by God. Crusius appears to assume that God does not create anything else in the world after the first creation, but he does admit the possibility that some part of the world might have been isolated from another part for a while, while the two parts would later come in contact with one another. Thus, he suggests, the physical law of the constant quantity of forces is not as such necessary, because we cannot be sure that the world does not contain such isolated, unknown forces.

Crusius also emphasises that God has created the world for some purpose. As he has pointed out earlier, the purpose of creation has to serve especially the free creatures with the ability to reason. Thus, other things in the world must be either means for that purpose or then necessary consequences of creating and arranging the world to serve the purpose. Whatever the purpose of a particular possible world is, the world must be good, because its creator is also. Then again, no world can really be the best possible world, because all worlds are somehow imperfect and could be improved.

An interesting question Crusius considers is what belongs to an identity of a world: how much a world can be changed before it becomes a different world? Obviously, one could take the primary constituents of a world - simple substances - and reorder them in a different manner. Yet, this answer concerns only the ultimate metaphysical subject of what makes a world and ignores the intriguing problem of whether a world has some inherent structure that differentiates it from any other world made out of the same substances.

Crusius outlines next his criterion of a world’s identity: a world remains same, as long as it still serves its fundamental purpose and in particular no individual things, their combinations, laws governing them and their essential actions change in a manner that would change this inherent purpose or any means required for the fulfilment of that purpose. Any change that does not do this, he continues, merely changes the state of this world. Indeed, he points out an important type of change that does not change the identity of a world. A world is created for the sake of free creatures and for enabling their free actions. Thus, he suggests, whatever persons do freely should not affect the essence of the world they inhabit, because that would mean the very purpose of a world could contradict itself.

Because things in the world are combined, Crusius insists, they must be able to interact with one another. In these interactions some things must be active or affect one another, but Crusius notes that there can be passive things that do not have any force to affect other things, but at most enable something through their existence. Both active forces and inactive abilities can combine things into more complex wholes.

Furthermore, Crusius continues, interactions that combine things are governed by physical laws that should hold independently of our thinking of them. Crusius notes that there are also laws of understanding that merely say what propositions follow or are possible in certain circumstances, but these differ from real physical laws. Similarly, he distinguishes physical laws from moral laws, which say what should be done according to commands of some lord.

Now Crucius defines nature as the sum of all substances in the world, together with the physical laws governing their combinations. Natural is then something that happens through the fundamental forces of created substances, while God does nothing else, but sustains these substances and fundamental forces. Supernatural, on the other hand, is something caused immediately by God. Because at least the sustainment of the substances and their fundamental forces is an immediate effect of God’s action, Crusius concludes that every world has something supernatural in it.

Crusius thinks that we can conceive no other interaction between finite things than interaction through movement. Since we are dealing with finities, he continues, we can invoke the principle that this non-conceivability reveals a true dependence relation: finite things can affect one another only through movement. Thus, when a finite substance affects another, it either forces the other to move by its own impenetrability or then its motion awakens some other activity in the other substance.

This other activity that can be awakened by motion, Crusius insists, is either thinking or willing, which we know are not movement. He then distinguishes two kinds of substances in the world: material substances, which can only move, and spiritual substances, which move, but also think and will things. Furthermore, he divides matter into two further subclasses: metaphysical or inactive matter that has only a passive capacity for movement and physical or active matter that has also some active force.

Crusius has noted that the world has been made for the sake of free spirits, thus, the world must, undoubtedly, have spirits in it. One important consequence of the existence of free spirits is that Crusius’ world cannot be completely deterministic. A world need not have matter, on the other hand, but matter can exist in it. Then again, Crusius notes, because everything in the world must somehow serve its purpose or free spirits, matter and spirits must be able to interact: why else would God have created it? Crucius brushes aside the old Cartesian worry that spirit could not affect matter, because they are two different types of substances: dogs and humans share characteristics and still are of different species. Crusius sees no problem in accepting that spirits are also impenetrable, like matter, and can thus move and be moved by material objects.

Crusius is unsure about the Leibnizian principle that there are no two things that cannot be distinguished from one another. He does admit that no two spirits can be completely similar, because everyone of them perceives the world from a somewhat different perspective and perceptions change their inner state. The case is different with material substances, Crusius says. The principle itself cannot be justified without experience, he insists and thinks that all supposed proofs of the principle have been sophisms: if God would have wanted, two different and still completely similar material substances could have been created. True, he admits, experience appears to show that seemingly similar things often differ in some manner. Yet, there is no assurance that at least some of the simplest parts of matter wouldn’t be completely similar. Still, Crusius suggests, God has probably created at least many different kinds of simple material substances, because this would provide more means for helping the world to fulfil its purpose.

Whatever the ultimate elements of matter are like, they can be combined into more complex substances or bodies. Indeed, Crusius says, matter as a whole probably has to be dispersed into distinct bodies, because this better helps to achieve the purpose of the world. Crusius distinguishes physical from mathematical bodies, which are mere possible divisions of space. Physical bodies, instead, are not united just because we think of them as united, but through something real that separates them from other bodies. Crusius suggests three kinds of such unifications. Firstly, parts of a body can be held together by inactive, unmoving substances surrounding it. Secondly, parts of a body can be held together by moving substances surrounding it, such as the vortexes in Cartesian physics. Finally, parts of a body can be held together by an elastic matter, that is, matter that has an innate tendency to return to a certain shape.

No other ways to unite material things into bodies exist, Crusius insists. He is especially keen to deny any attractive or cohesive forces that would hold parts of a body together, because all explanations why material things stay together should be reducible to fundamental forces. Cohesive force cannot be a fundamental force, he adds, because cohesion is just another name for material parts staying together and so merely describes the phenomenon without explaining it. Then again, Crusius denies the existence of attractive force, because such an action in distance breaks the requirements of what a force and causal interaction should be like. Finally, Crusius also denies that parts of bodies would stay together because of common feeling, since feeling is something he allows only spirits to have.

However the bodies are held together, they then interact with one another and with the spirits. Despite the interaction between the two types of substances, Crusius notes, these different classes can also be regarded in abstraction from one another. Thus, spirits of the world, in separation from material things, form a spiritual world, while matter as such forms a material world, and when regarded as separated into distinct bodies, a bodily world.

The bodily world particularly, Crusius says, can be seen as a machine - that is, as a body of its own, combined from parts that are shaped for some purposes in such a manner that these purposes can be actualised with the aid of the shape and the position of these parts. This is not true, he adds, of the whole world, because this also includes spirits that cannot be parts of a body. Furthermore, he notes, although the bodily world is a machine, all its parts are not, for instance, a stone is just a body, but not a machine. Finally, Crusius points out that the bodily world is a rather peculiar machine, because part of its driving force comes from actions of free spirits.

Although spirits are not machines, they can be combined with naturally produced machines. Crusius is obviously speaking of organic bodies, combined to which spirits are called souls. Crusius suggests that it is not completely necessary that worlds contain animals or combinations of souls and organic bodies. Animals do make a world more perfect, but finite spirits should be able to affect the bodily world even without the help of a body of their own.

For Crusius, the world is not a deterministic whole, because it also contains spirits capable of free actions. God’s interactions with the world provide further reasons why determinism does not work. We’ve already seen Crusius to note that God has a constant supernatural effect on the world, for instance, in sustaining the world and all the substances in it. In addition to such constant effects, Crusius also thinks that God can occasionally have quite sudden effects on the world, that is, God might do miracles.

Some of the miracles can be hidden from us humans - they are done merely, because God thought it best to do things in such a manner. At other times, God might choose to reveal that a miracle has been done - in these cases, Crusius adds, God must want humans to know that some event was a miracle. Sometimes the miracle might appear to be a work of a person following God, but even in these cases it is God who actually gives the person a power for doing such miracles. In these cases, Crusius explains, it is futile to try to make experiments whether this person truly can consistently make miracles, because God can at any point just choose not to grant that power to the person anymore.

How then to know when some event has been a miracle? Crusius points out that because of the possibility of hidden miracles, we can never be sure that something hasn’t been a miracle. Yet, he also gives a general criteria for recognising miracles: something is a miracle, if it could not have happened in a natural manner generally or at least in these specific conditions. He also adds that we are sometimes very able to distinguish supernatural from natural events, because we are so familiar with what naturally happens: for instance, we know trees don’t usually talk. Crusius also points out that we do not need mathematically certain proofs to accept something as a miracle, but a lower grade of conviction is usually enough. Finally, he emphasises that miracles also have a moral aspect, that is, we shouldn’t think of something with immoral consequences as a miracle.

Such a perfect world

Wolff has attached every entity with an essence, which, as it were, contains the kernel of a thing or its central characteristics, from which all features of the thing, or at least their possibility, can be explained. Every thing, whether just possible or actual, has also an essence, or else it wouldn't be a thing. Thus, even world must have such an essence or nature, and the nature of the world (or simply nature) means for Wolff the sum of all principles of mutation inherent in the world, that is, the sum of all active forces in the world.

Now, by natural Wolff simply means something belonging to the nature of any topic. In case of world, natural then means something being or happening in accordance with the forces and laws governing motion. Events that do not happen according to these forces and laws are then supernatural events or miracles. Furthermore, there is an intricate relation between the miracles and laws of motion. Wolff admits that laws of motion are not necessary and that events we would call miraculous are completely possible events of another world. Yet, Wolff goes even further and suggests that miracles can in a sense happen even during the normal course of events – this doesn't imply contradiction, Wolff says, but only the incompleteness of the world we live in. If world is a clockwork, miracle is like a finger entering the works and doing something clock itself wouldn't be able to do. Miracle changes the world, and to do that, it must have adjusted the inner workings of the elements of the world, because elements can exist only in a single world. In order that the world would remain the same world, another miracle will have to follow that changes everything back to how it was.

Laws of motion then define the nature of the world, but they also contribute to its perfection. Perfection in general Wolff defined in his ontology as arising from the unification of a multiplicity under some rules. In case of world, this unification must take the form of a spatio-temporal whole, and the rules governing it are clearly the laws of motion. Thus, when we become aware of the laws governing physical world or the order of nature, we are not just becoming more informed, but also able to appreciate the perfection of the world. Due to the incompleteness of human cognitive capacities, Wolff thinks we can never know the perfection of the world completely – a clever way for Wolff to avoid the possible objection that world does not appear perfect.

Before I completely move away from Wolff's cosmology, I would like to point out how misleading is the Kantian account of what cosmology is about when it comes to Wolff. As it is well known, Kant uses especially his idea of antinomies to undermine the traditional cosmology – reason faces insurmountable dilemmas in its most important questions. Now, ironically the four problems Kant mentions are not treated by Wolff in his cosmology. Problems about human freedom and possible creation of the world are respectively psychological and theological for Wolff, and the questions of the spatiotemporal limits of world and of the divisibility of matter are never comprehensively discussed by Wolff, as far as I can see.

Next time we'll turn to Wolff's empirical psychology.

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.

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

It has become evident that Wolff clearly wants to distance himself from the image of a radical atheist and Spinozist. This is even more evident, if we take into consideration his comments on cosmology, which he straightforwardly defines as a discipline required especially for the proof of God's existence. Indeed, it is the contingency of the world and its dependence on God that Wolff especially wants to emphasize in his comments – thus, he once again uses considerable efforts to state the difference between absolute and hypothetical necessity, which his opponents had muddled.

Wolff also clarifies the notion that things are infinitely dependent on other things, which I also noted to be somewhat confusing statement and which the pietists read as a commitment to the eternity of the world. Wolff notes that he is merely stating what the worldly things would have to be like, if only natural explanations or causation according to natural laws would be allowed. In other words, there couldn't have been a natural beginning of the world, because every natural law requires a previous state from which the current state arose.

Such an impossibility does not of course rule out a supernatural beginning or a beginning that did not happen according to natural laws. Indeed, Wolff is convinced that the principle of sufficient ground must then lead us to accept such a supernatural beginning – infinite series of causes just isn't a possibility. Wolff is here underlining the contingency of natural laws: they are necessary only within the world, but not from a more extensive perspective.

Furthermore, Wolff even makes it clear that in a sense natural laws are not necessary even within the world, that is, if God is taken into account. Wolff states that God need not follow laws of nature, but if he so desires, he can make worldly things behave in a manner they usually wouldn't. Of course, Wolff is quick to point out that God doesn't do such miracles, unless there is a good reason, but it is evident that he wants to make God's freedom stand more out.

Interestingly, Wolff appears to take the principle of the identity of indiscernibles as a mere natural law. Indeed, he does consider it a real possibility that God could have created two completely equal things, although he just has had no reason to do it. We can see Wolff distancing himself here from Leibniz, who apparently suggested that the identity of indiscernibles might somehow be based on the principle of sufficient reason.

Even clearer is Wolff's struggle against becoming identified a a mere Leibnizian in his behaviour towards monadology. Wolff does want to present the theory of monads in as plausible manner as possible, but he emphasizes forcefully that he himself does not believe in it. Main reasons for his disbelief are physical. Wolff is unconvinced that all the richness of phenomena could be reduced to elements that all share the same force of representation. True, one could on basis of this power understand why elements or monads can form larger totalities, such a material objects, but the further characteristic of material objects that resist the intrusion of other material objects into the same place is something Wolff cannot understand as derived from force of representation.

Still further clue of Wolff's growing disenchanment of Leibniz is provided by Wolff's clarification of the status of pre-established harmony as a mere hypothesis, but this is something we have already dealt with. In addition, Wolff seems keen to downplay the importance of whole rational psychology: if one just knows e.g. that movements of soul and body somehow correspond with one another, nothing more is required, if one does not have a scientific bent for discovering grounds for everything.

The urge to distinguish himself from Leibnizian thought is probably a symptom of Wolff's need to answer the accusations of atheism and fatalism, which becomes even more evident in the rest of Wolff's book. Thus, Wolff spends considerable number of pages in explaining that while one can derive all properties of souls from its representative capacities and all properties of God from his capacity to view all possible worlds at once, this does not mean that the nature of soul and God would be mere theoretical or passive regard of actual and possible worlds, but that both soul and God are active. And just like Wolff decided to defend the freedom of the soul, equally certain is his tendency to defend the divine liberty – even if the act of creating this world is the most reasonable and God as eminently good and wise will then inevitably choose to create it, this still doesn't mean that God couldn't have chosen completely different world to create.

Thus end Wolff's remarks on his metaphysics, which set his scheduled publication back a year – it was only the next year that Wolff could finally publish his account of biology, to which I shall turn next time.

Johann Joachim Lange: Humble and detailed research of the false and corruptive philosophy in Wolffian metaphysical system on God, the world, and the men; and particularly of the so-called pre-established harmony of interaction between soul and body: as also in the morals based on such system: together with a historical preface on that what happened with its author in Halle: among treatises of many important matters, and with short check on remarks concerning duplicated doubts on Wolffian philosophy (1724)

C. D. Broad's Examination of McTaggart's philosophy is an example of how commentaries should be made. Broad goes painstakingly through all the details and intricacies of McTaggart's Nature of existence, notes all the different variations that e.g. a theory of time might have, considers fairly how McTaggart's own theory fairs and then suggests the alternative he favours. Broad attempts to read McTaggart's sometimes convoluted ideas in as clear and believable manner as possible, sometimes agreeing with him, other times not. Never is any statement of McTaggart discarded before an honest consideration of what he attempts to say.

Then there is the other type of commentary, where the opinions of the commented author are assumed beforehand, ambiguous phrases and passages are interpreted in the worst possible manner and generally the author is treated like a customer of Spanish inquisition. Lange's Bescheidene und ausführliche Entdeckung der falschen und schädlichen Philosophie in dem Wolffianischen Systemate Metaphysico von GOtt, der Welt, und dem Menschen; und insonderheit von der sogenannten harmonia praestabilita des commercii zwischen Seel und Leib: Wie auch in der auf solches Systema gegründeten Sitten-Lehre: Nebst einem historischen Vorbericht, von dem, was mit dem Herrn Auctore desselben in Halle vorgegangen: Unter Abhandelung vieler wichtigen Materien, und mit kurzer Abfertigung der Anmerckungen über ein gedoppeltes Bedencken von der Wolffianischen Philosophie: Nach den principiis der gesunden Vernunft falls into the latter category.

I cannot blame Lange for a lack of thoroughness. On the contrary, he has read through all of Wolff's major works published thus far and apparently even some not as significant publications, and has left only his logical work uncommented, because it doesn't significantly differ from other contemporary books of logic. Lange has even found time to read books of Wolff published in the same year as Lange's own title, such as the book on teleology, I've just dealt with. It is not even pretense of assuming axioms, which are far from evident that I find fault with. This is just Lange playing with Spinoza's geometric style, which is already familiar from an earlier work (Lange even makes fun of Wolff, because he fails to present his theories in such a format). What I found fault with was Lange's reading of Wolffian philosophy,

The very first ”theorem” of Lange suggests that Wolff held onto the eternity of the world. I found this rather surprising, because in reading Wolff I had received the diametrically opposed impression that Wolff thought world was not eternal. Problem lies with Wolff's ambiguity. On the one hand, Wolff makes some remarks that appear to suggest that all things are infinitely grounded on other things, that is, that there has been an infinite series of events leading to this particular moment of time. On the other hand, he also clearly states that world is contingent and contingency is equivalent with non-eternity of the world. We have then stumbled on a seeming contradiction in the Wolffian system.

Lange's strategy in avoiding the contradiction is to assume that Wolff is just trying to sneak in the assumption of the eternity of the world and only pay lip service to the idea of creation, thus making the hypothesis of a creator superfluous. I, on the contrary, try to take seriously Wolff's explicit commitment to the non-eternity of the world. True, the references to infinite grounding remain problematic, but I consider the meaning of these passages to be more uncertain. I can accept the idea that Wolff might have toyed with the idea of an eternal world, but left the question purposefully ambiguous. Furthermore, I might also assume that the infinite grounding means just the fact that any thing in Wolffian world is supposed to be in a necessary relation with all the other denizens of a spatially infinite world.

In addition to finding fault in Lange's interpretation of Wolff, I also question his assumption that the acceptance of an eternally existing world would necessarily lead to atheism. This conclusion holds only if the creation is supposed to happen with time, as the first event of the world. The assumption completely ignores the possibility that the creation happened outside time, which would still allow the eternity of the world. Lange's assumption makes God not just personal, but almost a worldly thing – God is like a lead programmer of an interactive netgaming world, who actively takes part in the events by using the powers of moderator. The supposedly Wolffian God, on the other hand, is like a programmer who knows he has done so good work that he never needs to do anything to improve it. This doesn't mean that this second type of God would be e.g. incapable of miracles – they would just be like preprogammed Easter eggs that bend the rules of the game when players stumbled onto right coordinates.

We'll continue with Lange's criticism on Wolffian cosmology with the notion of determinism.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - Soul as a force of representation

Last time we saw how Wolff denied the materiality and complexity of human soul. When we remember Wolff's twofold division of all things, we understand why he must assume soul to be a simple thing. Thus, all the characterisations of simple things fit also with souls: souls are essentially units of force and all the processes they undergo are based on this single force. The question is what sort of force a soul is.

Wolff's answer is that soul is a force for representing the world. Wolff's proof of his statement is rather circular. He can quite justifiably conclude that the soul has a capacity for representing the world, because it can sense the world and things in it. Yet, when Wolff then concludes that this force of representation is the essence of soul, because soul must have one force on which all the other characteristics are based, he ignores the possibility that the force of representation would be a mere modification of a more essential force of soul.

I suggested in a previous text that Wolff might be a precursor of German idealists, because he explicitly took activity to be the ontologically important characteristic of simple things and especially souls. But whereas German idealists like Fichte were willing to uphold concrete acting and the will behind it as the primary essence of human consciousness, Wolff decides to concentrate on the more dependent activity of representing.

True, Wolff does not consider representation to be a mere passive waiting for impressions of external things. Instead, representing is also an activity, somewhat like a painter who has to actively paint a likeness of her model. Yet, unlike action in the usual sense of the word, representation has to take its cue from the external things: it is not we who decide how the things should be shaped, but we shape ourselves to fit the things.

If Wolff’s suggestion is to be convincing, he will have to show how willing and desire can be explained through the activity of representation. Wolff’s simple solution is to state that representation of goodness equals willing or desire, that is, if we represent something as good, we at once are committed to making it happen: this commitment is will, if the representation is clear and distinct (i.e. well-defined), and sensuos desire, if the representation is obscure or even dark.

At first sight, Wolff’s suggestion appears rather farfetched. Suppose we have a lovesick boy who thinks that the object of his affection is the most desirable person in the whole wide world. Despite his devotion towards this person, the boy may still lack the initiative for suggesting a date, hence, the representation appears to still lack something contained by true active will. Still, we might consider the inactivity to be caused by an opposing fear of being ashamed: the activity that would in itself be instigated by the representation of the person as desirable would be nullified by a contrary representation. Thus, Wolff’s suggestion of representation as the essence of human consciousness has so far appeared reasonable: we shall see in the future, whether Fichte and others have more arguments against it.

One last thing that I shall discuss now is the question whether the soul really represents the world around it or whether it might fail to do so. Wolff seems to beg a question, when he bluntly says that because the force of representing world is the essence of the soul, it cannot fail to do this. Yet, Wolff appears to have a subtle point. If soul represents anything, then what we should call world is just that what is represented by the soul.

One should note that the soul might represent only a part of the world. Furthermore, the representation might still fail to be completely correct, or it might be a confused representation. The Wolffian world has only characteristics definable through the concepts of space and time. Yet, when the soul has a confused representation of such characteristics, it might sense colours, sounds etc., and if the confusion is strong, it might even have faulty sensations.

Still, the question remains whether the sensations and other states of soul might not be representations, but mere phantasma – then there would simply be no world to represent. The final nail against the idealist coffin is probably hit when Wolff discussed God and his relation to both the soul and the world. For now, he is satisfied to point out that idealism or the denial of the material world fails to follow the paradigm of finding a sufficient reason for everything. In Wolffian system change of sensations and perceptions is explained by corresponding changes in the world, but idealists cannot really explain satisfactorily why one perception is superseded by another.

So much for the soul and the world. Next time I shall discuss the relationship between the soul and the body.  

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - World as a clockwork

You might think that after a chapter on empirical psychology Wolff would turn into rational psychology, that is, that he would explain what has been observed of human consciousness. Yet, a chapter on cosmology or the study of world intervenes with the pretext that knowing the essence of human soul requires knowing the essence of the world.

The basic structure of the world Wolff discovers through observation: world is a series of variable things that exist side by side one another (i.e. in space) and one after another (i.e. in time) and generally are connected to one another in the sense that anyone of the things contains a reason why the others near it in space and time are situated as they are. World is then a complex thing, that is, a thing consisting of things that are parts of the world.

The notion of a complex thing is familiar already from Wolffian ontology, and indeed, most of what Wolff finds characteristic of the world is a simple application of previous ontological results. Thus, world as a complex is defined by being a certain combination of its parts, like a structure built out of Lego blocks. Yet, the temporality of the world ensures that it is not a mere static structure, but processual, and indeed, its later states are based on nothing else but its previous states. The world is then like a machine – and Wolff specifically compares it to a clockwork, where the position of the hand is determined by its earlier positions and by the movement of the machinery.

World is then for Wolff deterministic and all events in the world are certain, if the previous events are known. Yet, this does not mean that the events would be necessary: they could have happened otherwise. Analogically, there is not just one possible way to make a clock, but the parts could have been assembled differently. True, we don't see any alternative worlds lying around, like we do see clocks of various sorts, but we can read alternative world histories in works of fiction. Wolff is here applying the idea of possible worlds, which he has probably picked from Leibniz.

The assumption of possible worlds creates doubles of the modalities of necessity and possibility. Firstly, we could speak of absolute possibility and necessity, that is, of what is possible or necessary in all possible worlds. Secondly, we could speak of possibility and necessity within one possible world: what is possible in this sense is something that has happened, happens or will happen in this particular world. What is specifically impossible in one possible world are the events of all the other possible worlds. The possible worlds contradict then one another: only one of them can be actual, no matter what David Lewis says.

As any philosophy student should know, the idea of possible worlds was important for Leibniz as a component in the justification of the perfection of the actual world: God knew all the possible worlds and as a wise and good person chose the best possible world to be actualised. We are still at a chapter on cosmology and God will be investigated only later on. Still, Wolff prepares the issue by characterising the notion of the perfection of a world.

Wolff begins by noting that all complex things and thus all worlds have some sort of regularity and are therefore valuable: remember that in the chapter on ontology Wolff had defined perfection through regularity. Yet, worlds are not all of same value, Wolff adds: some are more regular than others. By regularity Wolff does not mean a mere uniformity, which by itself would not mean perfection. Instead, diversity is also an essential component in perfection. In other words, the value of the world is to be decided by the question what sort of laws it has: a good world follows a number of laws, all of which form a rational hierarchy. Note that Wolff does not intend that we could deduce what these laws could be. Instead, one finds the particular laws through abstraction from the actual phenomena and more general laws through abstraction from more general laws. In this manner Wolff justifies the general law that nature makes no leaps.

The possible worlds are nowadays treated as a legitimate way to explain e.g. modal properties of sentences. Yet, Wolff's manner of suggesting a scheme for the perfection of the world is rather unbelievable, because there are a number of possible scales for measuring the perfection of anything. The problem can be better grasped through the analogy of clockworks.

There are rather different types of clocks and watches, although the main principle and purpose is the same for all of them. Now, while one clock might beat the others by being more realiable and always on time – say, some atomic clock – another clock might be cheaper, although not as precise as a time keeper. Then again, a fancy pocket watch might not be cheap nor reliable, at least if its owner forgets to wind it, but it still is ecological, requiring no batteries, and probably the most sylish of the three examples. It would be rather difficult – if not downright impossible – to say which of the three clocks is the most perfect: all of them are good in some respect and bad in other respects.

It appears reasonable to suppose that the perfection of possible worlds would be similarly and most likely even more multidimensional: that is, there would be no single criteria for deciding the perfection of the world, but several. Hence, although one world might perfect according to one criterion, another world could well be perfect according to another criterion. How should one then choose between them?

True, the Leibnizian-Wolffian God might have some clever mathematical formula that would take into account all the different aspects of perfection and hence be a perfect criteria for deciding between several possible worlds. The problem with this solution is that one should still demonstrate that this clever formula could not give the same value to two different possible worlds: otherwise, the possibility of two equally good worlds would still remain. We shall see later if Wolff has any argument to support this claim.

So much for macrocosm, next time we shall visit the opposite context or the microcosm.