1723 was a turning point in Christian
Wolff's career. Until then, he had spent relatively uneventful life
as a professor in the university of Halle, writing immensely popular
text books on nearly everything. In the conservative atmosphere of
German philosophy, Wolff's philosophy was not universally
appreciated, and accusations of atheist tendencies were made by his
pietist competitors – rather unexpected of a philosopher who had
dedicated a significant portion of his major work to God.
Slander is one thing, but the rumours
were starting to worry Friedrich Wilhelm I, the king of Prussia. King
was a collector, not of stamps or coins, but of big men, which were
conscripted by king's officers, by hook or by crook. Story goes that
king Friedrich Wilhem was rather worried about the supposed fatalism
of Wolff's philosophy. If all events followed strict necessity, the
men in king's collection would not be accountable for what they did –
especially if they happened to desert the army. Fearing of the fate of
his personal toys, if such terrible ideas would spread, king promptly decided
to dismantle Wolff's professorship. Fortunately Wolff quickly landed
on a new position at the university of Marburg.
The controversy around Wolff's
philosophy continued for a while, and it is on this context that we
have to evaluate Johann Joachim Lange's breathtakingly titled Caussa
Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum, et, quae eum gignit,
aut promovet, pseudophilosophiam veterum et recentiorum, praesertim
Stoicam et Spinozianam, e genuinis verae philosophia principiis
methodo demonstrativa adserta.
We have already met Lange's pietistically oriented philosophy and his
attitudes towards atheism should come as no surprise – atheism is
wrong, contradictory and against morality.
The dislike of Spinoza and his geometrical method was a common theme for more religious thinkers. Indeed, Lange
begins by explicitly noting that the use of mathematical method
without any guidance might lead one to atheism – if one did not
listen to the warnings of common sense, one could stubbornly follow a
train of thought leading to absurd conclusions. One can detect a
clear sarcasm in Lange's choice of presenting the book in the very
same geometrical style of definitions, axioms and propositions to be
proved – particularly as some of the axioms and postulates he
chooses are later proven as propositions. This is not a
foundationalist attempt of building the whole edifice on an
unshakable basis, but a coherentist attempt to show how all the
jigsaw pieces fit in to form a larger picture.
The structure of
the book is thus twofold. First, Lange moves from certain common
sense assumptions to the existence of God. Here the mediating link is
provided by the notorious cosmological proof. But Lange is not
satisfied to use it once, but repeats the same form over and over
again with different topics. A soul of the human being cannot be
material, thus, it must have been fashioned by God, but the same goes
for human body and the whole human race, and indeed, the whole
material universe, which just cannot be grounded in nothing.
The pivotal point
in the deductions is human liberty. Lange's cosmological proofs that
apply to material universe hinge on the results of empirical science
and the supposed finite age of the Earth, but the proofs concerning
human soul are based on the inshakeable conviction that human soul is
free and able to control matter and therefore is irreducible to mere
matter. Furthermore, the assumption of human liberty is also behind
Lange's improved Cartesian proof. While Descartes used the presence
of the idea of God in human mind as a justification of God's
existence, Lange tries to deintellectualise this argument – human
mind is primarily will and not cognition, but because in our will we
have an impulse to know God, this impulse must come from a higher
source.
Secondly,
Lange then uses the supposedly established existence of God as a
justification of further propositions, which include also the fact of
human liberty – one of the supposed axioms of Lange. Lange's proof
of human liberty hinges on God's role as a judge that will evaluate
the worth of every human being. Lange points out that such evaluation
would be meaningless, unless the evaluated persons have a liberty to
choose their own actions – thus, God must have created human beings
as free agents.
It is
obvious that human liberty is then crucial to Lange. Without it most
of the proofs for God's existence would fall down – or at least
they wouldn't lead to a sort of God that Lange is looking for, but to
a fatalistic world soul. Indeed, it appears that when Lange is
attacking atheism, his true target is the deterministic and
mechanistic worldview of new philosophy. Human liberty is the highest ground of human
existence and those who dare to deny it are miserable people, because
they contradict the natural certainty of their own freedom. The topic
of human liberty is also where Lange's grudge against Wolffian
philosophy becomes clear. Wolff's endorsement of Leibnizian
pre-established harmony breaks the required connection between the
soul and the body: soul only appears to control body, which is
actually moving according to its own laws.
One
could even say that the battle against atheism has always been a
battle for human liberty. Nowadays hardcore atheists feel great
pleasure in pointing out faults in creation science. Yet, the kernel
of a religion is not constituted by any dogmas, but by rituals and
cults. Denial of God appears to leave no room for an objective
meaning of life and hence deprives world of all magic. Even pantheism
is suspected, because it reeks of closet atheism.
So much
for Lange, next time I'll take a look at a philosophical dispute for
the first time in this blog.
