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.
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