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 - Mind like a computer

Until now, Lange's criticism has touched Wolffian cosmology: Lange explicitly indicated that he would ignore ontology, because Daniel Strähler had earlier reviewed it thoroughly enough. Next in Lange's line of investigation is then psychology or the study of human soul. Lange's general line of attack is again to claim that Wolff tries to combine idealism and materialism with disastrous results. It takes no genius to guess that Lange is speaking of the topic of pre-established harmony between souls and bodies.

The idealistic feature of pre-established harmony lies in the complete independence of soul from body – bodies cannot affect soul in any manner. Lange points out some obvious incredulities in this notion: for instance, if nothing outside couldn't have affected me, I can't have learnt anything, but instead all my knowledge has mysteriously awakened within my soul.

The idealistic side of the pre-established harmony is only ridiculous in Lange's eyes, and it is the materialistic or deterministic side that Lange finds truly worrisome. Even though bodies cannot literally affect soul, the order of bodily events is mirrored in all details by the order of mental events. Now, because the bodily events occur in the deterministic material world, it appears that the changes in the soul must also be deterministic. True, soul would not be determined by external events, but it would still be internally determined by its own states.

Lange suggests that the determinism of soul is implicit already in Wolff's notion of the soul. Wolff thinks that the central element of soul is its force of representing external reality. Here Wolff clearly emphasizes the cognitive side of soul and especially mere passive cognition of the deterministic world outside human influence. What is then ignored is the volitional side of humans – there are no real choices, because human soul just follows automatically the course which has the weightiest motives. Human mind is just like a computer that has been programmed to strive for certain things, and given the situation, the mind will act in a way that will be beneficial for achieving those goals.

Similar faults Lange finds also in Wolff's notion of the infinite spirit or God, as we shall see 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 - Immaterial materialism

Wolff's deterministic view of the world is essentially a materialistic doctrine, Lange thinks: immaterial souls are free to act how they want and their existence should thus make the world indeterministic. Now, Wolff does admit the existence of souls without renouncing his determinism, and we shall see next time how Lange reacts to this strategy.

In addition to souls, Lange sees immaterialism playing a role already in Wolff's doctrine of world, particularly in latter's notion of simple substances, which Lange interprets as essentially identical with monads of Leibniz. This is yet another point where Wolff himself is truly ambiguous. On the one hand, Wolff does note the resemblance of his simple substances with Leibnizian monads and does say that the simple substances in a sense represent the world. On the other hand, Wolff prefers to speak of elements and explains that representing is here symbolizing the interconnectedness of all things, because elements are not literally conscious of anything.

Despite Wolff's skepticism of full monadology, his doctrine of elements does satisfy some of Lange's criteria for immaterialism or idealism. Material things, Lange says, should be spatial and thus should be e.g. infinitely divisible, while Wolffian elements are not spatial and definitely indivisible. Wolffian matter is thus based on immaterial things and is therefore a species of idealism, which Lange thinks is just as bad as materialism - Wolffian philosophy is then doubly bad, because it combines both idealism (in its doctrine of simple substances) and materialism (in its doctrine of deterministic world).

Lange is clearly advocating the Aristotelian idea of matter as a undifferentiated mass, which can be carved out into different shapes, but which does not consist of independently existing units. While Wolff does accept his own idea of matter without any proper justification, Lange is equally stubborn and just states the self-evidence of his views – matter just cannot consists of something that is not matter. Lange would probably have been horrified of the modern nuclear physics, which he would have had to condemn as even more immaterial – matter consists there mostly of void together with some small points without any determinate place.

Interestingly, Lange's criticism has thus far dealt with questions that were later made famous by Kantian antinomies. Lange believes that world had a specific beginning in time and thinks that Wolff supposed it to be eternal; he holds determinism to be broken by free actions of humans and God, while he assumes Wolff to deny true freedom; and he believes matter to be infinitely divisible, while Wolff supposed it to consist of indivisible substances. Strikingly, Lange's anachronistic answer to second antinomy was diametrically opposite to others, probably because the doctrine of indivisible substances was associated with notorious atomism.

So much for Lange's views on Wolffian cosmology, next time we'll see what he thinks of Wolffian psychology.

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 - Stuck in a clockwork world

While Lange's interpretation of Wolff in the question of the eternity of the world was at best questionable, his view of Wolff and determinism is spot-on. Wolff does believe that world – that is, an entity containing all complex things – is governed by strict rules where the previous states of things determine the further states of the things, just like in a clock the current state of all the bits and pieces determines their next state.

Lange's fear is that the strict determinism of Wolffian world leaves no room for human freedom, or at least it deprives from soul the possibility to control its body – it is strictly speaking not I who lift my hand, but the movement of the material objects in the vicinity of the hand. And if my hand happens to strike body of a fellow soul – well, how could I be accused, because the movement of the hand was necessary and people cannot be punished for necessary actions. The judge could, of course, retort that it is just as necessary for his mouth to utter the condemning words, but still a lingering doubt is left – were truly all these actions necessary?

Wolff's strategy would probably be to deny the necessity of the world. After all, there are many different possible worlds that God could have chosen to actualize and it is in a sense contingent that he happened to pick out this world. Thus, it is not necessary that I hit my neighbour, because in another possible world I – or someone very similar to me – would not have stricken a man in similar circumstances.

Lange would be very unsatisfied with this answer, and it all comes to how to define modalities like necessity and contingency. Necessity Wolff speaks of Lange calls geometric necessity, probably thinking of Spinoza's geometric method – we might call it logical necessity. But it doesn't matter at all to us, whether something happens in another possible world or not. It is our own world we are interested of, and here everything happens deterministically, that is, all the future states are determined once the beginning has been given, without any possibility to actually change the course of nature. This is the sense in which Lange wants to speak of necessity – as the inevitability of events in the context of the actual world. The respective contingency would then not concern possibilities in another world, but indeterminacy of the actual world.

Lange can then conclude that Wolff is in this matter no better than Spinoza, who both rank as extreme materialists. Wolff is in a sense even worse, because he is also an extreme idealist. We shall see next time how this curious combination is possible.

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.