WOLFF (Wolfus), CHRISTIAN. — Philosopher, born in Breslau on 24 January 1679, died in Halle on 9 April 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 opposition 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 the Enlightenment philosophy in Germany.
His youthful works (Halle and Frankfurt 1712–23), in German and bearing the general title Vernünftige Gedanken (“Rational Thoughts”), are devoted to the principal themes of Leibnizian philosophy (On the Human Intellect, 1712; On God, the World and the Human Soul, 1719; On the Actions of Human Beings in Relation to Their Happiness, 1720; On the Social Life of Human Beings, 1721; On the Activities of Nature, 1723; On the Ends of Natural Things, 1723; On the Parts of Human Beings, Animals and Plants, 1723), and emphasize within it the methodological relations with Cartesian subjectivism, the appeal to clear and distinct ideas, and the benefits of the dissemination and universal application of philosophy.
His mature Latin works (Frankfurt and Leipzig 1728–53) constitute a gigantic exposition of the entire system of intellectualist philosophy, with an accentuation of Aristotelian-scholastic motives and of the objective values of metaphysics and science. In this second system, the so-called Leibniz-Wolffian system, the theory of the subjective incommunicability of monads is entirely abandoned, since the persecution suffered by the author was attributed to II. The system, which remained in use until the ascendancy 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 published by Wuttke (Leipzig 1841).
For W., the fundamental principle of logic is the principle of non-contradiction (A is not non-A); it alone gives immediate certainty of being, which is truth; opposed to it are 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 the principle of sufficient reason is consequently deduced from II. All forms of knowledge and 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. The former includes analysis and deduction, the latter induction and the experimental method. There is therefore 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 the truths of fact from them, a complementum possibilitatis is required. The Wolffian Encyclopedia therefore imposed a science constituted according to the model of Cartesian analysis, but grounded in 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, logically constructed upon analytical proofs: from it, through the work of W. and his followers, the classical metaphysics of God, the cosmos and the soul was deduced in a new form. Its postulate is that the idea of being, transparent insofar as possible in the non-contradictoriness of thought, is identical with absolute being, God, and with the foundation of existence of created things, in which possibility and reality coincide. As is known, Hegel (v.)
accepted this postulate, but criticized the justification entrusted to it of the three metaphysical dogmas.
Wolffian ontology also contains the theory of particular, created, or worldly substances, of which it claims to know what they intrinsically are through scientific knowledge of their inherent or independent activities, so as to eliminate their derivation from the divine substance presupposed by Spinoza. W.’s substances are not incommunicable monads, because they also have relations with one another, but “atoms of nature”: they are in themselves unextended, yet each occupies a physical point from which it exercises its mechanical and motive forces, interweaving these in relations with adjacent substances. This reciprocal relation forms space, in which bodies appear as groups of substance, along with phenomena. The pre-established harmony consequently assumes a physical significance, akin to the ordo idearum et rerum of the Cartesian rationalists and to their systems of cosmic clockwork: the world of nature is a rigorously ordered and connected system according to rational laws, from which W. excludes chance and contingency as belonging solely to divine creation. Between the soul and the body as well he posits a harmony pre-established by God, but admits a “physical influx” between the two conjoined substances. In this way, in defining the substance of the soul, he is led to attribute excessive importance to its intrinsic faculties, or powers, defined abstractly. Nevertheless, his distinction between empirical psychology (introspective, descriptive) and rational psychology (substantial), although at that time lacking experimental content, created a new science in the first of these two doctrines.
W.’s doctrine of law and morality, rigorously founded upon the rationality of duty and of perfection productive of happiness, suffers from Enlightenment abstractions (widely criticized by Kant [v.] in the Critique of Practical Reason), but achieved influence through numerous followers among disciples and contemporaries (Bilfinger, Meier, Baumeister) on account of the systematic order and completeness of its exposition. By contrast, the dissemination of Wolffian theoretical philosophy (Thümming, Knutzen, Formey), BAUMGARTEN, MICHAEL (v.), encountered numerous opponents (Rüdiger, Crusius, Darjes, Meruan, Ploucquet), supported by the Berlin Academy.