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 My previous encounter with Andreas Rüdiger and his rather outdated book on physics, with a quaint notion of air, aether and spirit as the fundamental elements, didn't make me expect much.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.

Barthold Heinrich Brockes: Earthly delight in God, consisting of various poems taken from nature and ethics, together with an addendum containing some relevant translations of French fables of Mr. de la Motte (1721)

At the very beginning of my blog I expressly noted that I should avoid works of fiction and poetry, because I felt I would have little to say about such manners. Yet, I also admitted that in some case I surely had to do it, if the thinker in question had written mainly fictional works – no matter how inconsequential the thinker might seem.

Barthold Heinrich Brockes is probably not the most important German thinker of his time. He was educated in the Thomasian school of philosophy, but unlike the other Thomasians we have met so far, he wasn't an ardent enemy of Wolffians. Instead, Brockes could be best described as a thinker of Aufklärung, or German enlightenment, and hence, his inclusion in the blog broadens our view of German philosophical culture in early 18^th century.

When one hears of enlightenment, one is bound to think of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and others rather radical thinkers, who at least influenced the later revolutionists in France. But the German enlightenment was never so radical and most of the times it was never as critical of church as French enlighteners were. Instead, German enlightenment was all about the education of mankind – and in this case, education was meant to include also moral instruction. We have already seen such tendencies in Wolff, particularly in his insistence that all art must serve the use of upholding morality in state.

Now, the work of Brockes is almost a paradigmatic example of Wolff's suggestion. Brockes was known as a translator, and even the book Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott bestehend in verschiedenen aus der natur und Sitten-Lehre hergenommenen Gedichten, nebst einem Anhange etlicher hieher gehörigen Uebersetzungen von Hrn. de la Motte Französisch. Fabeln contains, as the title says, translations of few French fables. Furthermore, Brockes himself was a poet, and the book I have been reading now is also a book of poetry.

Brockes' place in the history of German literature is far from glorious, which one wouldn't believe from reading the preface that praises the talents of Brockes both as a translator and as a poet. What is interesting is the explanation what makes Brockes a poet among poets. Apparently the author has not only the imagination required for creating dazzling images, but also the understanding required for making his poems well ordered and something more than just incomprehensible mess. This interplay of imagination and understanding was more generally held to be a precondition of good poetry and art. Something similar can be seen even seen in Kant's notion of beauty as caused by the free play of faculties, although there it is more about experiencing than creating beauty.

I shall briefly describe one exemplary piece of this poet-to-be. The poem with the ominous title ”the world” begins with the image of people watching the world, as it were, through the wrong end of the telescope: everything looks much smaller than it really is. For instance, a businessman sees nothing but profits and losses, while a doctor sees nothing else but illness and cures. Even philosopher fairs badly, because he sees nothing else but planets circling around the sun – Brockes is probably thinking of works like Newton's natural philosophy. Among these failed attempts to understand the world, there is one who does it right – the dreamer who sees God in all phenomena of nature.

This exemplary poem shows already Brockes' fascination with nature. Most of his poems simply describe some natural event, like the awakening of animals in spring, thunderstorm or sun. But nature is not described in these poems as an entity deserving an independent account. Instead, the worth of all these events is that they reveal the power of God – the nature is a piece of art and behind this art there must be some artist.

In a sense, Brockes' poetry is nothing more than constant use of teleological argumentation deducing from the perfection of natural objects the existence of their creator. Yet, it is not any arguments, but the sentiment behind this statement that is important. To find perfection in the colour of grass and in rain falling from the sky, and not just any perfection, but a feeling of divine serenity and splendour – this is what Brockes is trying to convey. The enjoyment of nature was even an international phenomenon during 18^th century, and in Germany it finally culminated with the pantheistic tendencies of romantic school, in which God and nature were often regarded as opposed, but still related poles.

One may feel that such a pantheistic appreciation of nature is far from theistic delight with nature, yet, at least this underlying feeling of the divinity of natur is shared by both alike. For a pantheist the splendour of nature is a part of the nature, while for a theist the perfection must originate somewhere beyond nature. The official credo at the time was theistic, both in Wolffian and Thomasian schools, latter of which will be my topic next time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on the social life of men and especially on the community - The enlightened despot

The origin of households in the Wolffian system is the desire for intercourse, together with the obligation to care for the possible outcome of the intercourse, that is, children. Now, Wolff suggests that household by itself cannot satisfy all needs of a human being. At most, a life constricted to a household can satisfy only basic needs, but this would be only animal and not human life – the households could not provide for the future nor would they be able to care for higher needs like science and arts. Wolff even invokes the Hobbesian argument that a life without a community of men would be a life of fear, because anyone could be killed by other people.

A community or a state is then created by households entering into a mutual contract that aims at the general well-being of all of them – note that it is the head of the houshold that gets to decide the loalty of everyone in his family. Wolff obediently notes all the six classical possibilities with the traditional names derived from Aristotle: the good constitutions or monarchy, aristocracy and polity and their corrupted variants or tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. Wolff then does allow the possibility of ”polities” or republics ruled by majority votes, although he notes that they are often hindered by party politics. Still, the rest of the book is clearly meant for absolute or constitutional monarchies, where the king has all or at least majority of power in his hands. Wolff's task is to enlighten the German despots and make their minds accessible to reforms their states required.

Wolffian ideal of society contains some characteristics that justify calling him an enlightenment philosopher. For instance, Wolff encourages kings to found schools, colleges and universities for educating people in sciences and handicrafts, to build hospitals and apothecaries for serving the sick and to make the cities beautiful for all senses by filling them with works of art and by making sure that nothing stinks. Then again, the main interest of Wolff in politics is the upholding of public morality, which gives Wolff's suggestions a moralizing tone. Thus, Wolff suggests that only art that teaches morals is to be accepted and that a state should be filled with buildings for public moral preaching. The most extreme suggestion from modern standpoint is that all punishments should happen in public in order that potential criminals would think twice of their immoral intentions.

The idea of places for public moral preaching is interesting as a not so veiled attempt to promote churches as necessary for the well-being of the state – the attempt becomes even more apparent, when Wolff notes that belief in God is almost a prerequisite for a moral society. True, Wolff has admitted that morality is possible without religion. Wolff even goes so far as to accept China as an atheist state that has one of the best constitutions in the world – as we shall see, this admission will be fatal to Wolff's carrieer. Still, Wolff is convinced that majority of atheists will be scoundrels incapable of living in community with other people.

Wolffian politics is then not so much interested of the welfare of the people, but of their morality – although bodily and mental welfare is, of course, part of moral perfection in Wolffian system. Thus, it is just natural that in Wolff's opinion laws of a state should be based on the law introduced already in Wolff's moral writings, that is, the natural law. Wolff does allow some changes to be made to the natural law in case when following it would be extremely difficult. For instance, natural law determines that a child should become independent, when she has all the necessary skills for taking care of herself. Yet, because it is often hard to determine the exact time when a person has become mature in his actions, state must make a concession and determine some fixed age at which everyone is to be considered an adult.

Natural law is for Wolff even a higher authority than state. Usually one must obey the rulers of one's state, but if the rulers break the natural law, people are not committed to obeying them. Thus, if a king tries to murder someone, the attemped victim has the right to defend herself. Yet, Wolff advices people to resist the ruler's will only in the cases where one's own well-being is threatened or where one is commanded to do immoral things. Hence, if a despot threatens to kill your neighbours, you have no obligation to help them – unless you happen to be the soldier who is to pull the trigger.

Wolffian system of politics appears then to have no true stopgap for tyrants and dictators. True, Wolff does advise kings to limit their own power and become as symbolic rulers as king of Sweden or queen of England are nowadays. Wolff even justifies this adivce through a comparison with the universal monarch or God, who leaves the actual government of the world to humans. Yet, there is no guarantee that a tyrant would follow Wolff's advice. Indeed, Wolff can only hope that religion and the fear of God would stop kings from tyrannical behaviour – a rather poor hope when Wolff has just congratulated God of not meddling in human affairs.

The individual states are then related like individual persons to one another, and just like persons ideally act like self-enclosed monads, so should states have no concern for the international community. Positive in this isolationism is that Wolff thinks all warfare to be evil and justifiable only as a self-defence – although Wolff does accept also reasonable suspicision of evil intentions as a reason for self-defence, somewhat like American head of state before the attack to Iraq. But Wolff appears to be blind to the invisible economic battle that his mercantilist tendencies generate – Wolff advices states to horde as much money as possible, which in effect make economic co-operation impossible in international level.

So much then for Wolffian politics. Next time I'll have something to say about the generation of Wolffian school.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on the social life of men and especially on the community (1721)

It is clear that Wolff must have already had made preparations for the Vernünfftige Gedancken von dem gesellschafftlichen Leben der Menschen und insonderheit dem geimeinen Wesen, when he published the previous title in the ”Reasonable thoughts” -series. Wolff's German ethics concentrated on the individual in abstraction from his social surroundings, but the current book promises to correct this mistake.

Wolff accepts the tradition of contractual origin of societies, which emphasises the essentialy individual nature of human beings and which was later criticised by Hegel. The story begins from an imagined point where individuals have not yet formed any societies. If human beings could provide for themselves, the story would also end here, but they have various needs for which they require the help of others. Thus arises the need for contracts, where one person offers what the other desires. Some of these contracts call for the persons involved to live together as a unit, and such units and the interpersonal relations within them are what Wolff is describing in the book.

The origin story provides Wolff already with some general principles that are valid of all societies. Every society has been generated for the purpose of promoting the well-being of its occupants – hence, the end of the society lies in the individuals and their common good. When the society strives to do something for the good of its members, it is morally mound by the same natural laws as the individuals themselves. If the society breaches those laws, individuals have then no duty to remain within that society. Finally, all of these societies can be regarded as individuals in their own right, and every society should be independent of other societies of the same sort.

Wolff calls the study of these societies politics, but the first half of the book is actually dedicated to what was traditionally known as economics after a pseudo-Aristotelian book of the same name. This was not economics in the modern sense – a study of e.g. commerce – but study of oikos or household, while politics was restricted to a study of polis or community. Wolff's book quickly turns into a description and justification of the customs of his own culture, the 18^th century Germany. Thus, we hear that a household contains three types of relations: those between a husband and a wife, those between parents and children and those between masters and servants.

The traditionality of the book can be seen in Wolff's definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman for the sake of conceiving and educating children. Wolff's justification of the tradition of marriage betrays a common ambivalent relation to sexuality. Wolff admits that the desire for sex is natural as the necessary means for the reproduction of human species – even a person in an ideal state of knowledge would want to have sex. Thus, having sex is even a duty: once you are capable, just go and do it.

Then again, Wolff thinks sex is good only as a means for reproduction. Especially the pleasure connected to sex exists only for the sake of hinting that conception of children is good. Hence, any sex that cannot lead to the birth of children is by definition forbidden. Wolff explicitly mentions e.g. bestiality, prostitution and homosexuality, but refrains from describing all possible sexual vices in order to avoid giving any bad influences. And who is the worse sinner, the prostitute or the client? Wolff's definite answer is the prostitute: while the client is governed by his sexual impulses, the prostitute could use reason, but chooses to make sin for the sake of money.

Often the defenders of traditional marriage shy away from the unwanted consequences of their premisses. Wolff takes his premisses seriously and denies even all heterosexual sex that cannot lead to conception. Thus, sex and marriage with an elderly and generally with an infertile person is forbidden. Still, Wolff does allow marriage continue throughout the life time of the married persons, so that they can take care of one another in their old age.

Mere conception of children is not enough, but one is duty-bound to take care of the children until they can take care of themselves. Hence, the need for marriage. Because one is committed only to raise one's own children, women should not have many partners, Wolff says – otherwise, we could not determine who the father is. In principle men could have many wives, but children of one wife are enough for one man to provide for – shortage of cash is the only reason for dismissing polygyny.

Husband and wife must then take care of their children. Here Wolff can conveniently just copy what he has said in his ethical writings, because duties for the welfare of others coincide with the duties for oneself: one must feed and cloth the child, and especially one must educate him or her, both in intelligence and will. Wolff shows some progressiveness, when he urges the parents to depend more on the children's intelligence than on beating and punishments – that is, when the children start to understand things better. When the children can finally provide for themselves, the duty of the parents stops, but the children are for the rest of their lives committed to respecting their parents for their kind deeds.

If the parents work for the good of the children, the servants are hired to work for their masters. Although the masters thus appear to be more in need, it is actually the servants who have the worse position: servants cannot provide for themselves and so they must sell their services for their living. What servants are to do is mostly decided by the contract made with the master – they just have to do it obediently and the master has to see that the servants are not overtasked. Wolff even allows the possibility that servants (or slaves) would be owned by the master, who could then also sell them to others. Wolff restricts slavery only to persons whose happiness essentially requires external governance. We immediately recognise a common excuse for the enslavement of Africans: they just couldn't manage themselves.

Wolff lived in an age when social relations were for the most part hierarchic. Thus, even in household there must be one person leading others. Children are still not fully rational and so are to obey their parents, while the servants are bound by the contract to obey their masters. When it comes to mixing children and servants, Wolff expressly instructs to avoid it. Children might disturb the work of the servants, but the true reason for Wolff's command appears to be the fear of corrupting influence that servants as persons of lower status might have on children.

The case of husband and wife is more interesting. The result is, of course, determined by the gender roles of the time. Husband or the lord of the house is to be the final master over the household, while the lady of the house is relegated into the position of a trusted advisor, who knows the affairs of the household best, and a representative of the lord, whom the other occupants must obey. Yet, Wolff admits that in principle men and women are not that different. Women are just more bound to the children, and it is customarily the men who have to provide for their families. Hence, the men know more about the ways of the world and should therefore rule the household. Although Wolff's argument is meant to uphold the status quo, it leaves open the option that under different customs women might have the opportunity to educate themselves and become as capable of taking care of the household as men are.

Wolffian economics shows then barely a hint of progression from the traditional trappings. We shall see if things fare better with the actual politics.

Philosophical pedantry – or, the nest of misunderstanding

Human communication is often wrought with difficulty, but in case of two philosophers from different schools the failure to understand is often quite fundamental – it is no wonder that philosophers have a hard time in explaining how communication can work, when they can't get it work for themselves. Often this lack of understanding is caused by nothing else, but different theoretical presuppositions, and in worst cases, merely by one using words in a different sense than the other. Usually a third person sees instantly where the crux of the miscommunication lies, but to the opponents this is like a blind spot – indeed, they are even unwilling to consider that the reason for argument might be just verbal and pedantically remain steadfast in their own way of speaking.

This philosophical pedantry is an important topic for a historian of philosophy, because the history of philosophy is full of bickering caused by verbal issues. Before the historian decides whether one philosophers was more correct than another in some question, he must determine whether the two were even discussing the same problematic. For instance, Kant and Hegel appear to have a different view on the relationship between thought and being. Yet, it might well be that both philosophers mean something different by thinking and being – and if one proved this, he would have defused one point of contention between the so-called Kantians and self-ascribed Hegelians.

The philosophical misunderstanding is more certain, when the words used are misleadingly familiar. Probably no one has any preconceptions as to what a conversational implicature is, but the more mundane concept of idealism has been defined in various manners – Plato was an idealist, because he spoke of ”ideas”, Leibniz was an idealist, because he thought everything perceives, Kant was an idealist, because on his opinion we do not experience things in themselves and Hegel was an idealist, because all philosophers are idealists, which in Hegelian parlance includes anyone who tries to explain everything from one principle (even a materialist).

Even the apparently non-philosophical terms contain hidden ambiguities. When a person familiar with modern analytic philosophy hears Hegel saying ”Truth is whole”, he instantly thinks that Hegel is suggesting an alternative to the traditional correspondence theory of truth – probably some coherentist theory. But a closer look reveals that when Hegel speaks of truth (Wahrheit) he is speaking of things like ”true friend”. ”Truth” means for Hegel something close to ”good”. So, the Hegelian phrase is not meant to describe what makes a belief or a statement true, but to note that wholes are in some sense better or more important than mere parts.

A common way of defending one's pedantry is to shout out loud ”this is not the way to use that concept!” Of course, to a person acquainted with the modern theories of truth Hegelian terminology appears strange. But this analytic philosopher ignores such religious claims as ”God is truth”, which do not say anything about our beliefs and statements. Indeed, it is often impossible to determine what is the right way to use a word – and then we get such non-sensical arguments as Leibniz and Clarke's discussion how to define the word ”sensorium”.

How then to avoid such pedantry? If you are faced with a pedant and want to avoid the nuisance altogether – just accept the terms he uses. You want to use this word instead of that, allright, anything goes for me. So you define idealism like this? OK, Hegel wasn't an idealist then.

If you yourself don't want to become a pedant, a good antidote is to introduce oneself to as many philosophers and philosophical schools as possible. One is definitely not enough and not even two: you might learn to translate phenomenological lingo to Hegelese and back, but you still may have a blind spot for medievals. Of course, it is not possible to familiarise oneself with all the possible philosophers, but at least you will learn to suspend your judgement, when a new philosophical figure comes up with some seemingly ridiculous statements.

How is one then to engage in a dialogue with an unfamiliar philosophical terminology? Defining one's concepts is a necessary first step, but not the complete solution, because all definitions stop at some ultimate point. After that, the best bet are concrete examples explicating how concepts are to be used – one might have difficulty explaining what truth means, but hearing someone using truth of sentences and another speaking of true friends would teach us much about the variety of ways to use the word.

Georg Bernhard Bilfinger: The three types of cognition – historical, philosophical and mathematical – articulated (1722)

Although my blog has been dedicated to the task of expounding the story of classic German philosophy in general, the field has been thus far ruled by Christian Wolff, with the exception of few pietists, who will become fierce enemies of Wolff. It is time to introduce a new minor figure, this time from the Wolffian side of the game: Georg Bernhard Bilfinger with his dissertation De triplicium rerum cognitione, historica, philosophica et mathematica, articulos.

I called Bilfinger a minor figure, and judging by his influence, he truly is such. The main point of importance in Bilfinger's career is that he introduced Germans to Chinese philosophy and especially to Confucianism – even in the dissertation he mentions these themes in passing.

We have already have the opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the dissertations of the time when we looked at Wolff's first publication, which combined elementary mathematics with rather strong philosophical conclusions without any clear connecting link. Bilfinger's dissertation is rather less ambitious and is mostly a discussion of the ideas of Wolff and his teacher Tschirnhaus.

The main purpose of Bilfinger's thesis is to classify and define different types of cognition or science. Bilfinger starts by determining various meanings of the term philosophy by comparing it with mathematics (well, actually he just follows his two predecessors, as he does in the whole book). When you learn mathematics, you might learn various definitions of mathematical objects. Similarly, philosophy if often restricted to mere verbal bickering, where the fight is all about the meaning of words. This is the lowest type of philosophy: although it is important to make one's meaning clear, it is not worth to start arguing for the meaning of a word.

Secondly, we could be taught who was the person who discovered some important theorems. This corresponds with merely historical study of philosophers, philosophical schools and their opinions. Beyond the verbal explanation of mathematical and philosophical terms and the historical description of mathematics and philosophers, there's still the real mathematics, and corresponding to it, real philosophy. What do these consist then?

To answer this question, Bilfinger presents another division, this time between different moments of cognition. Cognition should begin with a historical phase, where history has the traditional sense: we observe and experiment. The results of this historical phase are then to be used by philosophy as a material for discovering the first principles of cognition. These principles are then to be used finally in mathematics for deriving new truths.

The three types of cognition, historical, philosophical and mathematical, form then a sequence based on experience, but ending with a system of knowledge founded on indubitable experiences: note the balance between empiricism and rationalism that Wolff had already endorsed. If the sequence would form a cycle, we would be very close to the later hypothetico-deductive account of science, where theories are tested against observations.Yet, Bilfinger imagines that the creation of theories involves more than mere guess work, and indeed, is what real philosophy is all about.

It seems amazing, but this is the whole content of Bilfinger's dissertation: two divisions borrowed from other philosophers. Next time, we shall return to Wolff and to another set of reasonable thoughts.