Georg Friedrich Meier: Thoughts on the condition of the soul after death – Heaven and hell

After pondering our physical condition in the hypothesised life after death, Meier turns to the question what is our moral condition. By this moral condition or state of the soul he means everything that is dependent on its freedom, including free actions and capabilities together with all consequences following from them, such as rewards, punishments, perfections and imperfections.

Meier begins by dividing all good and evil into two types. The first of these types consists of goods and evils that is from a closer standpoint not dependent on the freedom of the soul, but either belong to its nature in a physically necessary manner or occur in combination with external causes we are used to call luck. Meier names these physical goods and evils, while the second type consists of moral goods and evils. The latter are then dependent from a closer standpoint on the freedom of the soul. Examples of such moral goods and evils are good actions, sins, virtues and vices.

As long as a finite substance exists, Meier insists, it acts. Now, every action causes a change or an accident in the finite substance, by which the sum of its perfections either increases or decreases. As long as a finite substance exists in the world, it is in connection with all other finite substances, which affect it and thus either increase or decrease its realities. If the soul continues living after death, Meier explains, this increase or decrease will also continue. Because our immortality is uncertain, it is also uncertain whether our soul will be happy or unhappy. If it is more blessed after death than in this life, we say that the soul is in heaven; but if it is more corrupt, we say that it is in hell.

Heaven and hell require actions, virtues, sins and vices, Meier says, thus, heaven and hell can be ascribed only to substances performing free actions. If a soul goes to heaven or hell, it must then be able to use its understanding and live like a person after its death. In other words, the soul must continue living after its death, it cannot sleep eternally or live only in a sensuous manner, but it must be conscious of itself, think reasonably and perform free actions. According to Meier, none of these things can be proven from reason, therefore it is uncertain whether there is heaven and hell for humans. Still, Meier considers it certain that if the soul can use its higher capacities after death, it will become either more blessed or more corrupt than in this life and that it is necessarily either in heaven or in hell. Furthermore, he is convinced, because of the Bible, that heaven and hell exist. Meier is also quick to add that while he thinks their existence is uncertain, he doesn’t deny it, and indeed, considers that high probability of heaven and hell can be proven by reason.

Meier explains that his purpose is not to do an exegetical treatise on what the Bible says about heaven and hell. Still, he emphasises that while some theologians have declared explanations of heaven and hell, other than their own, blasphemous, interpretations of the Bible can be objected with good conscience. Even so, Meier quickly adds that he won’t use biblical expressions to declare something about the Bible, but only as shorthands.

Reason cannot give as stimulating a concept of heaven as God reveals in the Bible, Meier continues. The Bible, he thinks, says that all moral evil with its bad consequences will disappear in heaven and all its denizens will be so perfect, despite their finity, that they will not be disturbed by anything in their happiness. Reason, on the other hand, cannot ascertain that souls in heaven will not sin, since even the most virtuous have in this life a capacity to sin, so that mere divorce from the body seems not reason enough to assume that sinning will end. Such a change we could understand, if it happened gradually, while sudden disappearance of sin would be a wonder, which cannot be proven by reason.

Similarly, Meier suggests, reason cannot tell with certainty whether there will be no consequences for sin in heaven, such as guilt and punishments. Sin naturally has consequences, according to Meier, and death as such could not take away these consequences, because it shouldn't break the order of nature. Thus, by reason we should assume that punishments continue in heaven, but God could miraculously suppress the natural order. This is in line with what the Bible tells us about the Saviour, Meier says, but reason cannot prove the existence of Christ. Meier also thinks that reason cannot say souls living in happier parts of heaven will remain there eternally. In order to remain, they would have to continue living virtuously, but we cannot be certain whether they won’t sin again. The Bible, on the other hand, assures us God will strengthen the souls in heaven so that they will not sin again, but this is a miracle that reason cannot prove.

So far Meier hasn’t been able to find anything certain about heaven, but there are such things, he assures us. Souls in heaven will be more blessed than they are in current life, in other words, in heaven blessedness must be greater than the opposite imperfection. Now, blessedness is not possible without virtue, so that the blessed in heaven will do more morally good than morally bad actions. They will especially do their duties toward God, but also toward themselves and others. Thus, Meier concludes, they will have to have good understanding, and clearer, more distinct and livelier concepts than in this world. Nothing else can we say about heaven with the help of reason, Meier insists.

Meier considers the question whether heaven is a reward for virtuous actions in this world. He thinks it cannot be just that, for then there could be people in heaven who would not act virtuously anymore after death or who would sin in heaven. Thus, blessedness in heaven should be a consequence of good deeds in heaven, although it could also be a reward for virtuous deeds in this world. Reason can regard heaven with certainty only as a natural reward or consequence of good actions, although it understands the possibility of God freely choosing to share extra rewards.

Meier thinks that everything he has said of heaven could be applied analogously to hell. The Bible gives a detailed view of the hell that reason could not demonstrate. Philosophers cannot say whether the damned could still make good actions, although we can assume that people who were more vicious than virtuous during their life will probably continue in the same manner and will thus find themselves in hell. To reason it seems probable that the damned can still do good things. Indeed, since no finite thing can be completely imperfect, in Meier’s opinion, reason cannot think a damned person without any perfections, because they must still have their essence, force and actuality. Reason might even assume that the damned will receive some rewards in hell, even if the Bible says that cannot happen, because good deeds will have their natural rewards, and where is a human being who would never do any good deeds?

Eternity of hell and punishment cannot be demonstrated by reason, Meier says. If hell had no exit, there would be no improvement nor conversion and God’s mercy would be eternally deprived from the damned. Reason can prove neither of these with certainty, because the amount of vice is contingent and thus damned could become virtuous and leave hell: God might harden the hearts of the damned, but reason cannot know this.

The only thing reason can say about hell with certainty, according to Meier, is that damned are less blessed there than in this life, and indeed, their unblessedness weighs clearly more than their remaining perfections, and all their unblessedness is based on sin and vice. The damned will have to do free actions in hell, hence, they will do more and greater sins than morally good actions. Because all sins presuppose practical errors, Meier thinks, the damned will have to think about many good and bad things, and these thoughts will either be as a whole false or then be so weak that they cannot determine the will of the damned. Indeed, they will have to have some satisfaction, but just of wrong things. The damned will sleep and be awake, and this will increase their pain, since the occasional sleep will make the pain clearer. Reason cannot say that the hell would be punishment only of sins in this world, since the damned will continue sinning and these sins will lead to at least natural punishments. Just like in the case of heaven, reason cannot say whether God will decree to those in hell additional punishments beyond the natural punishments.

Are the souls of the damned in hell physically more perfect than in this life? Will they have greater and stronger forces, will their powers of cognition and understanding be greater, will they have clearer, more distinct, more correct, more certain and livelier concepts than in this life? Meier reminds us that earlier we saw that we cannot decide on the basis of mere reason whether souls in general will be physically more or less perfect, yet, he at once adds, this is a different question. If the souls of the damned would be less perfect, they would not be as conscious of what was happening to them. Therefore, if the damned are to be punished properly, they should be more perfect. The problem is how could their will still be imperfect. Meier suggests that the damned must be lacking in truth, that is, their practical cognition must be either erroneous or not lively enough.

Meier still considers the question whether a dying person can know just on the basis of reason whether they are going to heaven or hell. He denies this, since we cannot know with certainty whether we have been more virtuous than vicious. Indeed, he adds, self-love often makes us confuse our vicious actions with virtuous deeds.

Meier concludes the chapter by considering attempted proofs for the immortality of the soul that are based on the goodness, wisdom and righteousness of God. Starting from goodness, he states that to show that something is in accord with the goodness of God, we should not just show that it is good in itself, but that it belongs to the best world. Indeed, something can be good in itself, but might cause imperfections in connection with other things: perfection of a part might contradict perfection of the whole. Meier thinks that we can know that all that happens in the world must be part of the best world, but we cannot beforehand say what is in accordance with God’s goodness. Indeed, even such a surprising thing as the fall of humans must have been for the best. Thus, he concludes, we cannot know whether denying immortality from the soul might serve other things, even if it takes some perfections away from the soul.

Meier thinks that it is even more difficult to argue anything on the basis of God’s wisdom: we know that best in every case is in accordance with God’s wisdom, but what is best? The system of the divine goals in the best world is incomprehensible to finite spirits, Meier insists, and we cannot do anything, but to wait for God’s plans to unfold. We cannot therefore say with certainty that immortality of our souls is in accordance with divine wisdom. It might seem unwise to first create something and then destroy it, Meier admits, but this is actually something we cannot be certain of: maybe human souls are so insignificant to the overall good of the universe that it is best to just get rid of them. Of course, we can abstractly say that human souls play an important part in achieving God’s goal of the best world and that eternally living soul would serve this goal better than a mortal spirit, but in relation to the whole creation of God the answer might be different. As a further point Meier notes the analogy that from an abstract viewpoint a sinless soul is better than sinful, but God has still allowed millions of souls to fall to sin.

Many people want to justify the immortality of human souls from divine righteousness, Meier notes, because God must reward and punish souls proportionally. Meier admits this, but immediately adds that we couldn’t then just assume that rewards and punishments in this world were not enough. At least natural rewards and punishments in this world are always equal to their causes and thus proportionate, although not always remarkable. Thus, if a virtuous person appears to face bad luck, they are either justly punished for some sins or then we are dealing with mere apparent evil. Meier considers the final objection that the free actions at the final moment of life should also require rewards and punishments, which cannot be given anymore in this life. His answer is that humans lose the ability for free actions long before the final moment of their life.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 – The city of God

While the metaphysical compendiums in Wolffian tradition have usually ended with a look on natural theology, Darjes has left cosmology as the final chapter of his metaphysics. This makes some sort of sense, since he has already emphasised that cosmology is no proper part of metaphysics, since it does not deal with characteristics of all things or of things from one of the highest genera of things – cosmology is about world, which is a certain complex of things, consisting of many kinds of things (in Darjesian philosophy, material bodies and immaterial souls and spirits).

Another oddity is Darjes' inclusion of certain notions from natural law to his discussion. He is particularly interested of the concept of right and possession. Right to something, for Darjes, means that a person has the ability to use that something without hurting other persons or their rights. This seemingly innocuous definition allows Darjes to conclude that in fact God is the primary owner of everything – God surely can control everything that exists, and he cannot really hurt rights of others, since he made all things in the first place.

Darjesian definition has also important consequences for the rights of finite entities. Firstly, he notes that finite entities can really have rights only for complex things, because they have no power to do anything to simple entities. Secondly, since all things already belong to God originally, finite entities can have right to anything, only if God has provided them the right to use things in some manner.

In addition to owning everything, God also governs world. This means that he sets the goals toward which this ”city of God” strives. The main purpose divinity has set for everything, according to Darjes, is the happiness and perfection of all rational beings. Thus, Darjes concludes, all rational beings should strive for their own happiness and perfection and help others to find these also – and definitely not hinder others in their search.

Darjes does not go into particularities of what actions are good for happiness and perfection, but merely notes what tools God uses for guiding rational entities toward their appointed goal. Firstly, God can directly reveal some guidelines. Secondly, God might appoint further rewards and punishments and even a kind of heaven and hell, to provide further incitement for good actions. Despite these rather naive Christian notions, Darjes also supposes that all rational entities will eventually be able to perfect themselves – the purpose of punishments is also just to help personal perfection.

We are now finally finished with Darjesian metaphysics. Next up on the list is a return to the work of Martin Knutzen.

Christian Wolff: Natural theology, posterior part – The enemies of faith

Included with the second book of Natural theology is also Wolff's first complete take on worldviews that rivaled Christianity – one might suppose that it was especially atheism controversy that generated his interest in the topic. It is no wonder that Wolff rejects all these theories, but what is interesting is how he groups these various viewpoints into distinct sets.

The most important of the wrong theories is obviously atheism, which Wolff thinks is so important that it deserves a chapter of its own. We all know atheists are of the opinion that God does not exist. What is more, a consistent atheist must even deny the possibility of God, because by Wolff's a priori proof, God would exist, if he just were possible. Because God does not exist, there is no final explanation of the world, but instead, the world must be an independent entity requiring no explanation – a strange conclusion in Wolffian eyes, because nothing extended could be really independent for Wolff. The worldly events must either go on forever or form a loop in which things repeat one another. In any case, they must follow an iron necessity, since nothing outside the universe could come and change anything. This doesn't mean that there would be no freedom, since human souls might still have the freedom to do things – this freedom just probably would have no consequences on the level of material world. Still, it means that morality is difficult to combine with atheism, because the necessity of the world makes it impossible to apply values like good or bad to it.

After atheism, Wolff groups together fatalism, deism and naturalism, probably because his pietist opponents had often grouped these three together. Fatalism, or the idea that everything in the world happens necessarily, is evidently the one Wolff likes least. Wolff clearly states that atheists must inevitably be fatalists, at least if they want to accept the laws of physics. Still, all fatalists need not be atheists, but they may well be deists, that is, they may believe that God has just created the world, but does not afterwards interfere with it in any manner. Wolff also points out that deist, like atheist, cannot use the idea of divine providence as a way to booster people's behaviour, yet, deist can be more consistent with morality, because he can accept that God might have chosen another world, which might have been better or worse.

Still, it is the third idea or naturalism that is the most interesting of the three theories. By naturalism Wolff does not mean belief in natural sciences, but the idea of natural theology as the only true source of religion. Wolff might have sympathised with the view, but he clearly wanted to show also that natural theology and revealed religion need not be rivals, but could in many cases meet one another.

It is not so strange to see materialism and idealism in the same chapter, but anthropomorphism seems a stranger bedfellow. Yet, Wolff obviously has a point – if God is thought to be shaped like a human, he is obviously material or at least has a material constituent. This also shows that materialist need not necessarily be atheist, since she can just assume that God is some material things (perhaps even the world itself).

Wolff criticizes both anthropomorphists and materialists, because they make God into something very ungodlike – a material object that could be cut to pieces. Interestingly Wolff is less critical of idealism and even says that idealist need not deny physics, because she can just think it concerns an apparent world. Still, Wolff finally denies idealism, because it takes away from the glory of God, who then wouldn't have created an independent world.

The final chapter of the book gathers together various philosophical theories, but also paganism or belief in the existence of several gods, which is perhaps highlihted, because it shares similarities with Manicheanism: both theories suggest that there are several principles guiding world and thus they essentially lower the status of God. The final two systems, Spinozism and Epicureanism, are quickly dealt with. Spinoza has the disadvantage, because it clearly confuses the notion of independency and substance – God is the only independent thing and others are God's creations, but these creations surely are not parts of God. Epicureanism, on the other hand, falls from traditional reasons – emphasising mere sensual pleasure destroys values in themselves.

Finally a last page on Wolff's natural theology. Next time I'll turn to a new philosopher.

Christian Wolff: Natural theology, posterior part (1737)

The second part of Wolff's Theologia naturalis appeared just a year after the first part. While the first part had given an empirical proof of God's existence and his attributes by using a cosmological argument that moves from the existence of worldly things to the existence of their creator, the second part should begin with an a priori proof of these very same matters. Of course, it seems unclear why the first proof was required, if an a priori proof was already going to be written. Yet, one should remember that for Wolff, a priori meant simply all deduction of propositions, no matter whether the premises of the deductions contained some empirical statements. Indeed, we shall see that the second deduction is essentially based on the ideas of first deduction and cannot work without it.

What we should do, for now, is to forget all Kantian thoughts about the impossibility of ontological proof. We should ignore the idea that existence is not a true predicate, but positing of something. We should not say that e.g. possibility requires coherence with all the presuppositions of experience and generally forget all Kantian ways to understand modalities. All these concerns are anachronistic, and as we shall see, Wolffian proof has weak points, even when evaluated by its own standards.

Let us then summarise Wolff's proof. Wolff starts from the Leibnizian idea that when you just admit the possibility of God or perfect being that has all compossible realities and also accept that such a being would also have necessity as its property, then, because necessity just means something that exists, if it just is possible, then God would definitely exist. We might figuratively say that all possibilities reside in some shadowy world of potentialities, all waiting for some external push to move themselves to the actuality – all except one, that is, the being that pushes itself to actuality with its own power. Wolffian God is then like baron Münchhausen, who could get himself out of a mire just by pulling his own hair.

Wolff's proof has then three crucial points. Firstly, we may at first ask what this whole discourse of realities and their compossibilities actually means. Secondly, we may question whether such a perfect being would be possible. Finally, we should consider how we can be sure that necessity is one of these compossible realities.

Starting with the question of realities we find a bit of a problem. Although we would expect the word ”reality” to be explained in all its details in Wolff's ontology, it is actually something that Wolff just mentions briefly in passing. What little we can see from this mention is that reality is connected somehow with the concept of res or thing. Now, one should remember that for Wolff thing means something that is at least a possibility and that might well actually be a mere possibility. Reality is then that which makes something res or thing. Note that reality has nothing to do with actuality – actualities are not said to be more ”thinglike” than possibilities. Instead, by reality Wolff appears to refer to what makes something as perfect as it can be: all restrictions and limitations limit also the ”thingness” of something.

Now, each individual reality itself must be something possible, that is, it must be a feature of some possible thing. This doesn't mean that putting two realities together would make another possible thing: if squareness and circularity were both realities, they surely could not belong to a single possible thing. Thus, it makes sense to speak of compossibles, that is, realities that together can make up a possible thing. Thus, it makes some sense to ask whether there could not be several sets of compossible realities, but we may assume for the sake of argument that Wolff could somehow describe the set defining God in more detail and in such a manner that it would refer only to him and to nothing else.

Is then such a combination of realities possible? We know that the realities themselves are by definition possible. Because we are not yet trying to determine what these realities are, we need not prove individually of any of them that they are possibilities and thus realities. Combining the realities or possibilities should also produce something possible, because once again by definition, the realities are meant to be compossibilities. So, we may conclude that the notion of perfect being is always a possibility – there just isn't yet any guarantee what actual features this supposedly perfect being would have (for all we know, it might be something really mundane, like a shiny coin).

The most important part then lies in proving that necessity is one of these realities. What we should then do is to show that necessity is a possibility: because necessity would then clearly be more unlimited than contingency or impossibility, we could then suppose it is also a reality. Problem is that there seems to be no straightforward way to prove the possibility of anything – we could know something as possible, if we knew it was or at least had been actual or if we could infer the possibility of something from the actuality of something else.

Wolff solves this problem rather straightforwardly. A necessary being exists, therefore necessity is a possibility. And how do we know some necessary being is actual then? Why that is simple – it has been proven in the first part of Wolff's natural theology. We know that God exists, because world requires some final explanation, and we know that God is necessary, so surely we know that necessity is also a possibility.

The audacity of Wolff's argument cannot fail to be noticed. The supposed a priori proof of God's existence requires the assumption of God's possibility, which Wolff then sets out to do by invoking an a posteriori proof of God's existence. Firstly, it must be noted that Wolff really cannot have done otherwise. Ultimately, the only justification of possibility in Wolff's philosophy can only be through actuality – we know some actual red things, so we know redness is a possible feature of things, or we know actual things that require some other type of things for their existence, so we know that these other type of things must also be possible.

Secondly, we have to remember what a priori knowledge means in Wolffian philosophy – it is merely any type of knowledge based on proofs, no matter what the premisses of these proofs are. Thus, it matters not so much if Wolff's a priori proof of God's existence is based on some previous a posteriori proof.

It is still strange that Wolff decided to use such a circuitous reasoning – after all, if we do know God's existence, why bother proving it a second time, if we have to use God's existence as a premiss of the proof? I suspect the case is a bit similar as with the relation of rational to empirical psychology – rational psychology adds in a sense nothing new to empirical psychology about the activities of human consciousness, but merely explains the data of empirical psychology through a reasonable hypothesis. Similarly, the a priori proof of God's existence does not note anything new about its apparent topic, but it does open a new perspective by highlighting the role of God as the perfect being - no wonder then that Wolff uses many chapters to show that all of the God's attributes proved in the first book reflect actually God's absolute perfection.

Christian Wolff: Natural theology, prior part – God and the world

In the beginning, God might have created heaven and earth, but it is hard to explain what God did in this supposed creation. First there was no world and then there was one, but because we cannot do such things, these words do not convey any clear meaning. It appears that in case of creation, whether there was such thing or not, we are always incapable of truly understanding what it is all about.

Christian Wolff tries to shed some light on the topic. World is dependent on its elements, so in creating the world, God must have used the elements. Because elements, on the other hand, are dependent on the very world they should constitute, God cannot have used elements as a construction matter, but he must have begun his labourious efforts by creating the elements out of nothing. At the same time as he created elements, God ordered them to various structures constituting the world itself. On top of all this, he also created finite souls to think this world.

Now, Wolff believed that space and time are relational, that is, that there would be no space and time without any spatial and temporal things. Thus, space and time did not exist before creation, but both began to exist in the creation.

Since Wolffian God is supposed to exist beyond time, it seems hard to decide whether the world is supposed to be finite in its history or whether God created it as having existed for an infinity. Here, on the other hand, Wolff is willing to accept that there is a first state of the world. Because this beginning is not explained by anything in the world, it must be miraculous, Wolff concludes. This appears to be actually the first time when Wolff explicitly admits time has a first moment – it might be that he is trying to prove his non-Spinozism by this move.

God is then capable of doing the miracle of bringing truly new things into existence, while no other thing can do this, but is only restricted to modifying what is already given. Indeed, nothing else would even exist without God, because he is also preserving world. Of course, Wolff notes, since God is atemporal, his act of preservation is the same as his act of creation.

Wolff's God is still not just a creator and upholder of the world, but just like in Christian tradition usually, he has designed the world down to its last details. Indeed, God is a moral being who has wisely set up the machinery of the universe in such a manner that it serves some higher end, which obviously must be good – God is providential, which can be seen in the fact that all things in the world are of use to one another.

Especially in case of rational beings, like humans, God has set up some goals, which they should strive to obtain – God gives human an opportunity to perfect some part of the world. Of course, God doesn't force anyone to follows his councils, but merely creates an obligation that we should follow them. It is then up to an individual whether she wants to follow God, but in the end it would be in her best interests to follow them, since God's rules should be of benefit to anyone.

All in all, Wolff appears to know quite a lot of what God is like, what he has done, and what he wants of us. On a closer look, Wolff admits that we know not very much about this God. We know that God is the final ground of everything, but this is about as much as we can say. Many of the supposed divine attributes are mere negations – final ground of world is not material, but he isn't also any human soul. Then again, the supposed positive attributes of God are only eminent, that is, they are somehow similar as some of our own attributes, but in reality quite incomprehensible, because we do not know e.g. what an infinite understanding would be like. When people of Kantian leanings thus accuse Wolff of a philosophical arrogance and of an attempt to base substantial knowledge of God on mere concepts, these accusations do not hit the mark – our knowledge of what God is, is rather meager.

So much for the first past of Wolff's theology, onward to second!

Christian Wolff: Natural theology, prior part – Good and powerful

Wolffian God is not satisfied with mere contemplation of possibilities, but decides to actualise one of the possible worlds. In order to do this, he needs to have the capacity to actualise anyone of them. Indeed, God could make anything happen that is possible and only impossibilities are limits to his capacities – in effect, God is omnipotent, Wolff says.

What God requires for this use of his capacity is mere act of will. This is of course completely different from what human beings do – in us, decision and actualisation of a plan are two completely distinct events. In fact, there is an even further difference, Wolff says. Human beings usually start by contemplating all the possibilities and only after careful consideration make their choice. With God, these two events are connected in one act – God chooses even in contemplating possibilities.

Now, when God chose to actualise this world, he knew exactly what would happen in this world, because he knows everything that would happen in any possible world. This appears to lead to the famous problem of divine prescience – how could our choices be completely free, if God already knows what we are going to choose beforehand. The answer to this problem is also quite traditional – knowing something does not cause it, thus, even if God knows what Obama will do tomorrow, he did not choose it for Obama's sake. Of course, this line of reasoning has the striking weakness that God does choose the world that is to be actualised and seems so responsible of everything that happens in the world.

What is more important is that God must have had some reason for picking this particular world – as we know already, Wolff thinks it is because the actual world is the most perfect of all worlds. The Leibnizian story of a necessary evil which all worlds must have and which God doesn't cause, but only allows should be familiar by now. Wolff also emphasises God's wisdom and goodness. God is wise or he knows the best means for actualising his ends, thus, the world and its laws are the most efficient there can be and allow, for instance, human beings to actualise their ends. Indeed, God has given humans liberty, because he is good and hopes they will of their own choice make good decisions – and even if they don't and end up doing evil things, in the end, even this serves the final good.

God's wisdom is then for the most part incomprehensible to human beings – we simply cannot see all the strings that should turn evil actions into good effects. Yet, God can reveal us information that goes over what we can directly know through experience – Wolff's take on the idea of divine revelation. This is also a good place to stop, because in next post I will finally think of the ways God effects other things, that is, nature and spirits.

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 - Infinite computer

We might state Lange's main criticism of Wolffian theology quite simply: God has very little to do in Wolff's system. True, Wolff does admit that God exists and even proves his existence, but Lange cannot even commend Wolff's proof, which he deems to be faulty. Indeed, Lange hits on a crucial defect. Wolff's principle of sufficient reason or ground states that all things should have some ground, that is, all physical things should derive from a previous cause and all conscious actions should be somehow motivated. From this principle Wolff suddenly moves to a stronger principle that all things should have a full ground, that is, they should be based on an ultimate ground that requires no further ground for its existence. Lange notes that Wolff's original principle of sufficient ground is consistent with an infinite causal series bringing about the current event, thus, making the leap to the stronger principle unjustified.

Even if Wolff does accept God, Lange continues, Wolff's deterministic world system leaves almost no room for divine push on events. Wolff does make a halfhearted attempt to explain the possibility of miracles: God can supernaturally affect world, if he then makes another miracle that corrects the world so that it will once again return to its deterministic course. In effect, miracles of Wolffian God can make nothing new happen, because their results are erased by the second miracle of restitution.

Lange is especially opposed to Wolff's notion of what God is like. Wolff defines God as an entity that can think of all infinitely multiple possible worlds. God is then meant to choose one of these possible worlds for actualization – thus, he does not truly create the world, Lange says, meaning perhaps that God does not design the world from scratch, but accepts the world from a ready-made brochure of possible worlds. Even this choice is less of an achievement than it seems, because God is essentially a passively cognizing entity without any spontaneous volitions. God is like a computer that has been programmed to choose the best possible world – God as perfectly good cannot really choose any other option. Hence, the supposed choice becomes a mere justification of the goodness of the actual world – creation is as deterministic as the world created.

An atheist would then have no difficulties in accepting Wolffian philosophy, Lange concludes, for the assumption of God is mere play of words. Indeed, Lange thinks, Wolff even defends atheists by saying that atheism is compatible with morality. We shall see next time in more detail what Lange has to say about Wolffian ethics.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - The ultimate thing

When one for the first time hears Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason, it seems quite obvious and self-evident: of course, everything happens for a reason. But as Samuel Clarke was quick to notice, the innocent appearing principle could be used for smuggling substantial presuppositions behind our backs. For instance, Leibniz himself used the principle to justify the more uncertain principle of the identity of indiscernibles: God could not have created two exactly similar things, because God would have no ground for choosing the situations of the two things.

Wolff begins the chapter on natural theology by a similar abuse of the principle of sufficient reason. Theology itself is probably a familiar term to everyone, but what makes it natural? The answer is that natural theology is supposedly based on mere human reason, while the other type of theology – that is, revealed – is based on supposed divine revelation.

Wolff thus supposes that a sufficient reason is only such that requires no reason beyond itself. In effect, Wolff has not been demanding just an explanation, but a full explanation of everything, ending with a final term that is self-explanatory. And as we might remember from previous texts, Wolffian ground/reason is not just any explanation, but a causal agent actualising things. The principle of the sufficient reason is hence suddenly turned into a commitment for the existence of a final instigator of causal things. That is, to a commitment that while normal possible things require some external force to overcome the opposite possibility of their non-existence, there is a thing that has enough force in itself for self-actualisation.

It takes no theologian to guess that this self-actualising thing, which cannot fail to exist, is meant to be the traditional God: a transcendent being beyond both the physical world and the realm of human souls. One might still wonder why Wolff accepts only a single self-actualising thing. After all, the causal chains in the world might have more than one beginning, that is, there might well be more than one God.

Although Wolff does not directly answer this problem, he does try to argue against the identification of humans and God on the basis of the possible multiplicity of human souls. Wolff notes that when one accepts the existence of the world, it is easy to see that the human soul as dependent on the world cannot be God. Idealists, who deny the existence of the world, and even what Wolff calls egoists and what we would call solipsists, that is, philosophers admitting only their own existence, admit at least that there are many possible human souls. Yet, just this plurality of souls makes it impossible that the humans would be Gods. Plurality of possible Gods is apparently against the necessity of the supposed God: if a thing might be otherwise and still a God, it would require a further ground why the thing then is like it actually is, thus, it surely couldn't be self-actualising and self-explaining.

When it comes to God's characteristics, Wolff follows tradition: God is, for instance, capable of intuiting all things immediately, thus, requires no symbolic knowledge; he is wise, that is, capable of planning the relationships between the things in the most perfect manner possible; he also lives in the highest possible bliss, because he sees the perfection of the world. But what interests us most is the relationship between the God and the world.

Until now, the status of the possibilities or essences in Wolffian philosophy has been rather unclear: on the one hand, essences are said to be eternal and thus existing, on the other hand, they are not actualised. Wolff suggests that it is the understanding of God that sustains all the various possibilities: they exist in a sense, because God is continuously thinking all of them.

Although God thinks all the possibilities and especially all possible worlds, this does not still make them actual. Instead, actuality is received through a force, which is external, if the actualised thing is not God, and ultimately, through God’s will.

Interestingly, this characterisation is connected to Wolff’s notion of philosophy as a science of possibilities. Although the understanding of humans is not as pure as God’s – that is, it is confused or sensous – we can at least partially follow what is going on in God’s understanding, because the content of his understanding is necessary: that is, there can be no other possibilities. Then again, what is actual depends on God’s choice and the motives behind it. Thus, we can know generally that God has chosen the best possible world, but we cannot with certainty say that a particular chain of events would belong to the best possible world – in other words, there cannot be any true science of actualities.

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Because I have finally reached the end of Wolff’s German Magnum Opus, this is a great opportunity to evaluate the whole book. The historical worth of Wolff’s German metaphysics is unquestionable. Although there had been philosophical books written in German, Wolff’s book was still the most systematic treatment of all the major topics of traditional metaphysics, and as we shall most likely see in the distant future, its influence can still be felt in Kant’s writings. That said, we might still question the originality of his work in a wider perspective of the Europian philosophy in 18th century: I shall say a little bit about this topic in the next post.

Does German metaphysics then hold any interest for a modern philosopher? As we have witnessed, the book is full of gaps in argumentation, unwarranted presuppositions and plain sophisms. Still, one must appreciate at least the architectural design of the book, where in the ontology the classification into three main types of things – complex or material things and especially the world, simle, but finite things and especially souls, and the infinite thing or God – is introduced and where the final chapter ties all the knots by showing how both the material world and the souls are dependent on the God.

Wolff's German metaphysics has finally ended. I have been rather longwinded on the topic, but I have felt this has been necessary, because of the historical importance of the book. Next time, I shall make a short detour on an earlier philosopher: we shall meet the supposed predecessor of Wolff.