Georg Bilfinger hasn't really struck me
thus far as an original thinker, and indeed, many of his writings
have been mere summaries of theories belonging to other philosophers.
Hence, I did not have high expectations of Bilfinger's metaphysical
work, Dilucidationes philosophicae de Deo, anima humana, mundo, et
generalibus rerum affectionibus.
In fact, the very first pages felt very familiar: the division of
metaphysics into ontology, cosmology, psychology and natural theology
has been used already by Wolff, and even many of the doctrines
readily reveal the philosophical allegiances of Bilfinger. Because
Wolff's other student, Thümmig, had already latinized Wolff's
philosophy, Bilfinger's motives for publishing his own work appeared
confusing.
Even so,
Bilfinger's work feels somewhat more substantial presentation of
Wolffian philosophy than Thümmig's summaries, and surprisingly, often
manages to round even the discussions of Wolff himself. One clear
reason is Bilfinger's habit of expounding opinions of previous
thinkers, which was something sorely lacking in Wolff's texts. This
does not make Bilfinger's work a mere redundant repetition of
familiar ideas, but allows him to engage in a fruitful philosophical
discussion. Bilfinger was a man of compromises, and Kant later
adopted in his early work Bilfinger's suggestion that one should
always try to reconcile opposing views by finding out what is good in
both of them.
Good example of
Bilfinger's abilities is his theorizing on modalities, that is,
notions of possibility, impossibility, necessity and contingency.
While Wolff was content with just one definition of e.g. possibility,
Bilfinger starts with several definitions and notices interesting
relations between them. In addition to Wolffian definition that
possibility means lack of self-contradiction, Bilfinger considers the
explication that possibilities are something inherently potential in
other things. This second notion of possibility is clearly dependent
on actuality in the sense that nothing could be possible in this
sense, if there were nothing actual: there couldn't be any potential,
if we had no source for such a potential.
Now, Bilfinger
notes rather ingeniously that if some preconditions hold, the two
notions of possibility coincide. Clearly, potentialities must also be
non-contradictory. Furthermore, if we have an entity with infinite
powers, it will obviously have the capacity to produce anything that
is not inherently contradictory: thus, the extension of the two
concepts of possibilities coincide. Bilfinger can so explain
reasonably why e.g. Wolff did not notice or at least ignored the
crucial distinction: he accepted the existence of God and did not
therefore need to consider the second form of possibility.
Just like
possibility is not a single concept for Bilfinger, similarly
impossibility isn't either. Of course, there is the absolute
impossibility of contradictions like round square, but there's also
contextual impossibility, where a certain thing or person is
incapable of doing something. Furthermore, this incapacity might be
proper or due to a lack of power, but there are also important cases
of improper incapacities. Firstly, Bilfinger thinks that the general
incapacity to change past is an improper incapacity: it's just the
nature of past to be completely determined. Secondly, an even more
important type of incapacity concerns moral issues. Thus, God could
well have created quite a horrible world, full of torture and grief,
in the sense that he has the necessary power for doing this, but
because of his infinite goodness, he doesn't have the moral
possibility for doing this – a distinction clearly influenced by
the need to defend Wolff against the suspicion of determinism.
It is in making
these clarifications and in pointing interesting problems where
Bilfinger's worth really lies. Some of these are familiar already
from Wolff, like Bilfinger's notion that a sufficient reason does not
need to necessitate an action, because of the freedom of agents, or
his idea that imperfection might be just contextual. I shall thus
proceed by picking up one important point in all of the four major
divisions in Bilfinger's work. As I've already noted an important
ontological statement of the plurality of the concepts of possibility, I shall next
time plunge in cosmology and ask what sort of validity physical laws
are supposed to have.
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