WOLFF (Wolfus), Christian. - Philosopher, b. at Breslau on 24 Jan. 1679, d. at Halle on 9 Apr. 1754.
Presented by Leibniz to the University of Halle in 1706 as a mathematical philosopher (Anfangsgründe sämtlicher mathematischer Wissenschaften, Halle 1710), he encountered, on account of his rationalism, the aversion of the Pietists, led by Francke, who brought about his exile from Prussia under Frederick William I (1723). Having taken refuge at the University of Marburg, with the accession of Frederick II (1740) he returned to Halle and became the dominant figure of Enlightenment philosophy in Germany.
The youthful works (Halle and Frankfurt 1712-23), in German, under the general title Vernünftige Gedanken ("Rational Thoughts") are devoted to the principal themes of Leibnizian philosophy (On the Human Understanding, 1712; On God, the World and the Human Soul, 1719; On the Actions of Men with regard to their Happiness, 1720; On the Social Life of Men, 1721; On the Activities of Nature, 1723; On the Ends of Natural Things, 1723; On the Parts of Man, of Animals and of Plants, 1723), and emphasize in it the methodological relations with Cartesian subjectivism, the appeal to clear and distinct ideas, and the benefits of the universal diffusion and application of philosophy.
The Latin works of his maturity (Frankfurt and Leipzig 1728-53) form a gigantic exposition of the entire system of intellectualistic philosophy, with an emphasis on Aristotelian-Scholastic motifs and on the objective values of metaphysics and science. In this second system, the so-called Leibnizian-Wolffian one, the theory of the subjective incommunicability of monads is entirely abandoned, the persecution suffered by the author having been attributed to it. The system, which remained in use until the prevalence of Hegel's Encyclopedia (v.), comprises: Philosophia rationalis, sive Logica (1728); Philosophia prima seu Ontologia (1730); Cosmologia generalis (1731); Psychologia empirica (1731); Psychologia rationalis (1734); Theologia naturalis (1736-37); Philosophia practica universalis (1738-39); Ius naturae (1740-48); Ius gentium (1750); Philosophia moralis seu Ethica (1750-53); Oeconomica (1750). W. also published a collection of minor essays (Gesammelte kleinere Schriften, 6 vols., Halle 1736-40). An autobiography of his (Eigene Lebensbeschreibung) was edited by Wuttke (Leipzig 1841).
The fundamental principle of logic is, for W., the principle of non-contradiction (A is not non-A); it alone gives an immediate certainty of being, which is truth; and to it is opposed the contradictoriness, and uncertainty, of the empirical world. In its positive meaning this principle is transformed into that of coherence or connection (identity, excluded middle), and from it the principle of sufficient reason is therefore deduced. All the forms of knowledge and of science thus come to be viewed in two ways: one purely rational, attained through the non-contradictoriness of reasoning, and a priori; the other empirical, or descriptive of the relations between ideas and between phenomena. In the first are comprised analysis and deduction, in the second induction and the experimental method. There is accordingly a higher or intellectual cognition, scientific and philosophical, and a lower or sensible cognition, historical, in every aspect of knowledge. Philosophy is the science of possibles, deduced from reason; in order to reach from them the truths of fact a complementum possibilitatis is required. The Wolffian Encyclopedia therefore imposed a science constituted according to the model of Cartesian analysis, but supported by the systematic description of phenomena according to experience.
Its cornerstone is ontology, as the doctrine of ideal and real being. Ideal being is the pure ens rationis, constructed logically on analytical proofs: from which the classical metaphysics of God, of the cosmos and of the soul was deduced in a new form, through the work of W. and his followers. Its postulate is that the idea of being, transparent as possible in the non-contradictoriness of thought, is the same as absolute being, God, and the foundation of the existence of creations, in which possibility and reality coincide. As is well known, Kant and Hegel (v.)
accepted this postulate, but criticized the justification entrusted to it of the three metaphysical dogmas.
The Wolffian ontology further contains the theory of particular substances, created, or mundane, of which it claims to know what they are intrinsically through the scientific knowledge of their inherent or independent activities, so as to eliminate their derivation from the divine substance assumed by Spinoza. W.'s substances are not incommunicable monads, because they also have a relation among themselves, but "atoms of nature": they are in themselves unextended, but each occupies a physical point from which it exercises its mechanical and motive forces, and weaves these into relations with adjacent substances: this reciprocal relation forms space, in which bodies appear, as groups of substances, and phenomena. Pre-established harmony consequently assumes a physical meaning, akin to the ordo idearum et rerum of the Cartesian rationalists and to their systems of cosmic clockwork: the world of nature is a system rigorously ordered and connected according to rational laws, from which W. excludes chance and contingency as belonging solely to divine creation. He also posits a harmony pre-established by God between the soul and the body, but admits a "physical influence" between the two conjoined substances. In this way, in order to define the substance of the soul, he is led to attribute excessive importance to its intrinsic faculties, or powers, abstractly defined. Nevertheless his distinction between empirical psychology (introspective, descriptive) and rational psychology (substantial), although at the time devoid of experimental content, created in the first of the two doctrines a new science.
W.'s doctrine of law and his ethics, rigorously founded on the rationality of duty and of the perfection that produces happiness, suffer from Enlightenment abstractions (extensively criticized by Kant [v.] in the Practical Reason), but on account of their systematic order and the completeness of their exposition they won numerous followers among his disciples and contemporaries (Bilfinger, Meier, Baumeister). On the other hand, the dissemination of Wolffian theoretical philosophy (Thumming, Knutzen, Formey) and its popularization through the work of Baumgarten (v.) encountered numerous adversaries (Rüdiger, Crusius, Darjes, Meruan, Ploucquet), supported by the Berlin Academy.
Bibliography9 works
Santino Caramella