Philosophical disputes tend to be
dirty. You are allowed to misunderstand your opponent and in
ambiguous cases always choose the most ridiculous way to read the
text. In fact, you can just make a simple straw man as your punching
bag and pretend it is your opponent. Because your opponent is allowed
to act in an identical manner, philosophical disputes rarely have any
winners – or more precisely, they have two winners, at least if we
listen to the disputants.
These unwritten rules of philosophical
dispute are well exemplified by Daniel Strähler's criticism of
Wolff's German metaphysics, Prüfung der vernünftigen Gedancken
des Herrn Hoff-Rath Wolffes von Gott, der Welt, und der Seele des
Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, des Herrn Autoris Schlüsse
examiniret, die Unrichtigkeiten derselben gezeiget, dessen Irrthümer
an den Tag geleget und die Metaphysische ingleichen die damit
verknüpfte moralischen Wahrheiten in grösseres Licht gesezet werden
and Ludwig Thümmig's criticism of Strähler's criticism, Eines
Liebhabers der Weltweissheit unpartheyisches Sentiment von
M. Daniel Strählers Prüfung der Gedancken des Herrn Hoff-Rath
Wolffens von Gott, der welt und der Seeles des Menschen.
As you can see, the gentlemen hardly required any abstracts, when
even their titles were a mouthful.
Work of Thümmig we
have already met, but Strähler is a new acquaintance. Actually this
will probably be the last time when we'll hear of him, as he was more
of a mathematician than a philosopher, although he did comment on the
fashionable topic of Wolffian philosophy also after this text. In
fact, the text in hand deals only with the ontological parts of
German metaphysics, while the further parts of Wolff's book were
covered in a later publication.
As if sometimes the
case in philosophy, none of the disputants disagree about the correct
results – Wolff, Strähler and Thümmig all appear to hold e.g.
that God exists and has created the souls and the material world,
with which the soul is in some sort of contact. Instead, it is the
justification of these positions on which the disputes arise.
Many issues that
Strähler points out in his criticism concern the definitions used by
Wolff. For instance, Strähler notices that Wolff's definition of
space as the order of simultaneously existing things is far from
satisfactory. For instance, Strähler notes, if I have a shelf full
of disordered books, the books will still take space, and in fact,
even more space than if they were well ordered.
Strähler's
criticism hinges, of course, on the question of what do we mean by
order, as Thümmig also notes – it is not the common sense meaning
used in sentences like ”he kept the house in good order” that is
meant, but a more abstract idea whereby e.g. numbers are ordered
according to their size. Investigators of physics, such as Leibniz
and Huygens, had defined order in a precise mathematical manner, which
enabled them to discuss space in terms of relations between material
objects. Thümmig even suggests that Strähler is not much of a
mathematician, when he cannot follow such methodology.
If Strähler's criticism is often just nitpicking, Thümmig's countercriticism is usually no better. Thus,
Thümmig recurrently notes that Strähler's own preferred definitions are
nothing but definitions, because they merely repeat what should be
defined in synonymous terms – for instance, changeable is something
that can changed but this does not really define anything.
Sometimes such nitpicking does point
out crucial errors. For instance, when Strähler criticises Wolff for
justifying the principle of sufficient reason by deriving an
erroneous proposition from its negation, because one could as well
derive true proposions from the same negation, Thümmig is quite
right to point out that Strähler has confused a valid and an invalid
argument form – that is, while from ”not-p → q” and ”not-q”
it is valid to derive ”p”, we cannot use ”not-p → r” and
”r” to derive ”not-p”.
On the other hand, when Strähler notes
that Wolff fails to distinguish between real and ideal division of
things, he appears to note the very fault I have already commented in
the Wolffian theory of substances – i.e. that things might well be
potentially divisible into an infinite number of potential parts and
still actually undivided and simple, just like in Aristotelian
physics. Thümmig fails to comprehend Strähler's point here, because
he confuses Strähler's distinction with the related distinction of
merely thought and concrete division. Thus, Thümmig identifies
Strähler's ideal division with the case of an actually indivisible
thing that could be divided in thought – a classic physical atom
that still takes up space.
At other times, the disputes seem like
mere quibbles of words, for instance, when Strähler accuses Wolff of
not distinguishing between ideal or mathematical and real or physical
space and Thümmig retorts by noting that Wolff is doing ontology and
thus naturally is interested only of the real space. A similar
dispute over words occurs when Strähler remarks how the Wolffian
definition of substance covers only finite substances and thus
assumes either the non-existence or finity of God, and Thümmig
answers by insisting that this is only a question of presentation –
at this point of Wolff's discourse we are aware only of finite
substances, so we might as well leave them out of the definition of
substance – and furthermore, emphasises the complete disparity
between finite and infinite things – Thümmig even thinks that
Strähler himself finitises God by placing him in the same class with
finite entities.
In such questions it seems obvious that
both Strähler and Thümmig have begun from a presupposition that the
target of their criticism is wrong – and then they have just tried
to find any evidence for this presupposition. Strähler has assumed
that Wolff must be an atheist or at least a bungler, while Thümmig
has been convinced of Wolff's ingenuity and thus of Strähler's
idiocy, and these preconceptions have coloured their reading.
From a more neutral viewpoint one
clearly sees that such preconceptions are often obstacles for true
dialogue. Strähler could have admitted that at least Wolff's
intensions were not atheistic, and if Wolff's arguments appear not to
support such conclusions, then perhaps Strähler had misunderstood
Wolff's definitions. Similarly, Thümmig could have noted that
Strähler had been right at least in noting a possible way to
misunderstand Wolff – that is, in noting insufficiencies and
ambiguities in Wolff's theory.
Next time we'll continue with
philosophical disputes, and this time we are particularly interested
of the question of pre-established harmony.
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