Christian von Wolf (1679-1754) was a rationalist philosopher of the German Enlightenment. The list of his works includes more than 26 titles, covering more than 42 volumes, relating primarily to areas such as mathematics and philosophy. He is often considered the central historical figure that links the philosophical systems of Leibniz and Kant. Although Wolf's influence was largely isolated from German schools and universities during and immediately after his life, he gained international recognition.
He was a non-resident member of all four major European academic academies: the Royal Society of London in 1709; Berlin Academy in 1711; Petersburg Academy in 1725; Academy of Paris in 1733. It should be noted that the great contribution made by the main ideas of Christian Wolf in the German philosophy of the Enlightenment. To his credit, he is the first philosopher to create a complete philosophy system in Germany in his native language.
Merits in Science
According to Kant, in the Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, he is “the greatest of all dogmatic philosophers.” Wolf’s “rigorous method” in science, Kant explains, is based on “establishing a regular principle, clearly defining concepts, attempting rigorous evidence, and preventing bold jerking inferences.”
Like many other philosophers of the New Age, such as Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, Wolf believed that the method of mathematics, if applied correctly, can be used to expand other areas of human knowledge. Perhaps more than that, than any of his contemporaries, the philosopher brought this style of presentation to the limit. Wolf’s critics, even during his lifetime, indicated that his work was long-lived and often associated with overly complex demonstrations. Probably his most direct influence on the history of Western philosophy lies not in some of his own works, but in connection with the influence he had on the German university curriculum. The most notable beneficiaries and followers of the Wolf systematization of philosophy are early Kant, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762), Samuel Formay (1711-1797), Johann Christoph Gottshead (1700-1766), Martin Knutzen (1713-1751), Georg Friedrich Meyer (1718 -1777) and Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786).
Biography
Wolf was born on January 24, 1679 in Breslau in the province of Silesia (now modern Poland) in a family with a modest income. He was a baptized Lutheran. His primary education was a hybrid of Protestant and Catholic scholasticism. At the age of 20, he entered the University of Jena and attended a course in theology, physics, and mathematics. In 1703, under the guidance of Ehrenfried Walter von Chirnhaus at the University of Leipzig, Wolf completed his doctoral dissertation entitled “The philosophy of the practice of universality,“ the method of writing mathematics ”(“ On the universal practical philosophy composed of the mathematical method ”).
Teaching and research
After working a year in Gdansk, Weimar and Giessen, Wolf got a place in 1707 at Halle University (as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy). At first he lectured in mathematics and physics, later he picked up philosophy courses and quickly earned a good reputation among students. The main ideas of Christian Wolf are incorporated in his numerous works. Over the next 15 years, he published his main works in mathematics, and also began to create his own philosophical system (primarily German logic in 1712 and German metaphysics in 1719). The body of his writings is usually divided into German and Latin works. For about the first 20 years of his career, the philosopher's main concern was the release of works in German.
Accusations
On November 8, 1723, Wolf was exiled from Prussia by King Frederick Wilhelm I. The rationalistic approach to theology and morality was sharply criticized by a group of pietists in Halle. In the early 1720s, pietists gradually gained favor from the king, which ultimately led to the expulsion of the philosopher.
Because of a lecture on Chinese moral philosophy, where Wolf defended the autonomy of moral philosophy from religion, he was unfairly accused of fatalism. It is alleged that after Frederick William I explained that the philosopher's approval of “pre-established harmony” (in another work) implicitly denied the guilt of army deserters, the militaristic king called for his expulsion. Perhaps, ironically, the king’s condemnation of the thinker is one of the main factors that contributed to his international recognition.
Emigration
During the years of emigration, Wolf worked at the University of Marburg, and his main efforts were aimed at completing the Latin presentation of his theoretical philosophy. The following is a list of what is sometimes referred to as the Latin literature of Wolf's Marburg period: “Latin logic” (1728); The Preliminary Discourse (1728); Ontology (1730); "Cosmology" (1731); Empirical Psychology (1732); "Rational Psychology" (1734); "Natural Theology" in 20 volumes (1736-37).
Return
In 1740, Frederick the Great, son of Frederick William I, invited the philosopher to return to Halle. The philosopher was first invited to chair the newly reorganized Berlin Academy. He was going to share this position with Voltaire. However, since Voltaire rejected the offer, Wolf decided to return to his former position in Halle and serve the Academy only as a non-resident member. After his return, his main energy was directed to practical philosophy in addition to the publication of an extensive 8-volume work on the law of nature, which explores the knowledge of good and evil actions, which was written from 1740 to 1748. Also from 1750 to 1754, he worked on the creation of a 5-volume work on moral philosophy.
Philosophy concept
The identification of Wolf as an academic philosopher is useful for understanding the presentation and development of his philosophical views. At the beginning of his career, shortly after his expulsion from Halle, he mainly presented his work in German. His reasons for choosing German rather than Latin or French, which were then standard for academic philosophy, can be considered both tactical and theoretical. Before him, there were very few philosophical works written in German. By providing treatises on logic and metaphysics, the philosopher was able to fill a noticeable gap in the curriculum of a German university and at the same time promote his own philosophical ideas.
But besides the tactical reasons associated with the advancement of his career, he also had deep theoretical foundations for writing philosophy in German. The thinker believed that the goals of philosophy should not only be rooted in what he calls “the pursuit of knowledge of the truth,” but also in its usefulness and practical value that it has for people in its daily life. Writing in German, he sought to turn philosophy from a discipline that was mired in formalism and centered around traditionally defined topics into a discipline that was of true practical value.
Practical philosophy
The practical aspects of philosophy are an important, albeit often overlooked, feature of his ideas. Presenting briefly the philosophy of Christian Wolf, it should be noted that for himself the goal of philosophy is determined by the very nature and structure of the human mind. He believes, in particular, that there are two different levels of knowledge that people can achieve. The first is “ordinary” or “vulgar” knowledge, or, as the philosopher sometimes says, “a natural way of thinking,” and the second is “scientific” knowledge. Scientific knowledge is divided into three main categories (historical, philosophical and mathematical), and each category is again divided into separate scientific disciplines. Moreover, both general and scientific knowledge is based on the beliefs of people who demonstrate confidence in their beliefs. And unlike his rationalistic predecessor Descartes, Christian Wolf is not worried about the problems that skeptics have about the possibility and reliability of human knowledge. For him, the knowledge system is simply an indisputable fact of human experience.
Theoretical philosophy
Philosophy is the science of possible and real reality. According to Wolf’s own taxonomy, theoretical philosophy is divided into three separate branches: ontology (or metaphysics proper), special metaphysics, and physics. Cosmology, as a branch of metaphysics, is a special or limited science, since its subject is dealing with the "world whole" and not "in general" (the subject of ontology). Just as in ontology there are certain principles and certain truths that are relevant to cosmology, in cosmology there are certain principles and certain truths that are related to the more specialized science of physics. In fact, in his system there is complete homogeneity from top to bottom, so even the principles of ontology are related to the discipline of physics.
Ontology or Metaphysics of Christian Wolf
For a philosopher, being in the most general sense is any possible thing. Possible things consist of a series of consistent definitions or predicates. The essence of any given possible thing is its principle of Being or the principle of individualization. While the essence of a simple being is determined by its essence or essential properties, the essence of a composite being is determined by how its parts are combined. In his opinion, at the nominal level of reality, simple and compound entities are the result of an epistemological difference imposed by the perceiving mind in the analysis of what “exists” (that is, in the nominal sense). Strictly speaking, the only essential things that exist at any level of reality are simple substances.
In the Christian Wolf system, random substances are properties that exist by virtue of the necessity of a thing. And, according to Wolf, there are three main classes of randomness: the right attributes, common attributes, and methods (methods).
The proper and general attributes of matter are determined by the nature of the thing. Proper attributes are the properties of a thing, which are determined by all the necessary information taken together, and common attributes are the properties of a thing, which are determined only by some, but not all, of its important elements.
Psychology (empirical and rational)
The philosopher's thoughts about the soul (or mind) have both an empirical and a rational component. In many ways, a commitment to his empirical knowledge from a rationalist point of view is embodied in his approach. Christian Wolf's contribution to psychology is of great importance. He believes in general terms that you can first establish a set of principles about the soul, based on observation and experience, and then continue to explain (through conceptual analysis) why and how the human soul is as it is. Introspection or empirical knowledge of his own consciousness is considered by him as a special case of knowledge. It gives starting points, both for proving the existence of the human soul, and for determining its basic operations, such as cognition, perception, and apperception. The empirical psychology of Christian Wolf is the science of establishing through experience principles that explain the reason for those things that happen in the human soul. Rational psychology is the science of those things whose existence is possible thanks to the human soul.
Common to both approaches to psychology is the discussion of the nature of the soul or a true definition. In the empirical approach, the content of introspective experience allows us to construct a nominal definition of the soul. A nominal definition is simply a description of what awaits further clarification. In Wolf’s methodology, experience establishes the content of nominal definitions. He defines the soul as that which is within us, that is aware of itself and other things outside of us. ”The real definition of the soul is this: the essence of the soul lies in the power of representing the world because of the ability of the soul to sense ... according to the existing position of the body in the world.
Like Leibniz, Christian Wolf believes that the main function of the soul lies in its ability to “represent” (that is, to form thoughts about things). The mind / soul represents its environment, for example, since a series of coordinated perceptions forms the basis of its conscious experience. The changes that occur in the mind, according to the philosopher, depend on the state of sensory organs, as well as on the situation or place in which a person finds himself in the world. Unlike Leibniz, who claims that the human soul is self-sufficient, he believes that the ability or power to represent is a function of the soul and the way in which the soul can interact with its reality.
The concept of force is central to this Wolf concept. He widely interprets abilities as “active potencies”, trying to explain, for example, the laws that determine sensation and reflection, imagination and memory, attention and intelligence. He also discusses the problems of the mind and body, exploring the debate between the positions of "physical influx", "randomness" and "predetermined harmony." Wolf supports proponents of pre-established harmony and argues that this is the best philosophical hypothesis that explains the appearance of the interaction between the mind and body.