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.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti