Christian Wolff

For more information on Freiherr (baron) Christian von Wolff, visit Britannica.com.

(b Zürich, 23 May 1906; d Leipzig, 1 July 1988). German musicologist and composer. He studied in Berlin and Kiel and taught at Leipzig (1954-71). His numerous publications concentrate on the history of opera (particularly Baroque opera); his interest in the visual aspects of music led him to several studies of iconography, including a pictorial history of opera (1968).

The German philosopher Baron Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) systematized the doctrines of Leibniz. He is best known for his broad concept of philosophy.

Christian von Wolff was born in Breslau, Silesia, on Jan. 24, 1679. His father, a tanner, vowed that his son would enter the Lutheran ministry. At the University of Jena, Wolff studied theology but found that he was more interested in mathematics, physics, and philosophy. He took a master of arts degree at the University of Leipzig, where he taught from 1703 to 1706. He wrote a paper on universal practical philosophy, which he submitted to Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, and on the strength of Leibniz's recommendation Wolff was appointed professor of mathematics at Halle in 1706. He remained there until 1723, when Frederick William I expelled him from Prussia for anti-Pietist teachings.

Wolff then taught at the University of Marburg, where he continued to publish various sections of his unified and deductive system of all branches of human knowledge. His productivity can be gauged by the fact that the collected edition of his major works fills 26 volumes. With the accession of Fredrick II (the Great) in 1740, Wolff was recalled in triumph to Halle. He was honored as professor, vice-chancellor, and finally chancellor of the university (1743). He died at Halle on April 9, 1754.

Wolff was well acquainted with the major developments of modern science and philosophy. He met and corresponded with Leibniz, and, like his mentor, Wolff knew ancient philosophy as well as the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions of scholasticism. His aim was to systematically organize all knowledge in terms of logical deductions from first principles.

The metaphysics of this endeavor was Leibnizian in origin: the principles of identity and sufficient reason. Wolff believed that every idea or concept expresses a possibility. That some possibilities are actualized is a matter of historical fact. Thus the role of sensation and experience in general is historical. The transition from historical knowledge to philosophical knowledge is the difference between "the bare knowledge, the fact" and the reason for this fact. Philosophy is "the science of all possible things." Insofar as things are definite they have quantitive relations, and mathematics is the clearest expression of the demonstrable scientific connections between objects. Therefore the purview of all knowledge is encompassed in the disciplines of history, philosophy, and mathematics. With this plan, which Wolff presented in Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General (1728), he was able to offer a complete division of the sciences.

Further Reading

Richard J. Blackwell's translation of Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General (1963) is Wolff's only work available in English. For secondary literature in English consult John V. Burns, Dynamism in the Cosmology of Christian wolff: A Study in Pre-critical Rationalism (1966). Further information on Wolff can be found in Etienne Gilson and Thomas Langan, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant (1963).

Wolff, Christian or Christian Wolf (Breslau, 1679-1754, Halle/Saale), the most influential philosopher in the early years of the age of Enlightenment (see Aufklärung), became a professor at Halle University in 1706. Wolff's rationalistic views (though not anti-religious) aroused the antagonism of his theological colleagues. Some of these succeeded in 1723 in persuading King Friedrich Wilhelm I by a gross slander that Wolff was a subversive element, and he was thereupon dismissed, though he was immediately elected to a professorship at Marburg.

One of the first acts of Friedrich II on his accession in 1740 was to recall Wolff to Halle, and in 1745 he was raised to the peerage as Freiherr von Wolff. Wolff lucidly presented, in a clear logical order and system, views which in part took their origin from Leibniz. His principal works, which bear the generic title Vernünftige Gedanken and are all written in German, range in succession over the whole field of philosophy. Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele (1719) presents his metaphysics. Vernünftige Gedanken von der Menschen Tun und Lassen (1720) is his treatise on ethics. These were followed by Vernünftige Gedanken von dem gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschen (1721, reprinted 1971) and Von den Wirkungen der Natur (1723). His Rede von der Sittenlehre der Chinesen (1721), which first aroused the antagonism of the theologians, was published in Latin in 1726 and in German in Kleine philosophische Schriften (1740). Although Wolff's influence was for a time considerable, his views were too narrowly utilitarian to retain philosophical currency for long.

Gesammelte kleine philosophische Schriften (6 vols.), ed. G. F. Hagen, appeared 1736-40, Wolff's correspondence with Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gebhardt, was published 1860 (reissued 1963). Gesammelte Werke, ed. H. W. Arndt and J. Ecole, planned in two sections containing Wolff's German and Latin writings, began to appear in 1962.

Wolff, Christian (1679-1754) The principal follower and interpreter of Leibniz. Wolff was primarily a mathematician, but renowned as a systematic philosopher, supposing that all the necessary tenets of metaphysics are derivable from the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of identity (Leibniz's law). He was exiled from his university, Halle, in 1723 through the hostile influence of the pietists, but recalled by Frederick II in 1740. In 1743 he became Chancellor of the university. In his most important work, Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia (‘First Philosophy or Ontology’), Wolff gave a systematic ontology along scholastic lines, fusing elements from the systems of Leibniz and Descartes. His system was enormously influential in Germany until well into the 19th century. Kant's teacher Martin Knutzen was a Wolffian, and it was only after he had taught Wolff's system for many years that Kant's ‘dogmatic slumbers’ were shattered by Hume.

Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), German philosopher. Born on 24 January 1679 in predominantly Catholic Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland), the son of a Lutheran tanner who wanted him to become a minister, Wolff soon developed an interest in philosophy. After receiving a solid grounding in Scholasticism and Cartesianism under Jesuit supervision at the local Gymnasium (college preparatory school), Wolff began to study theology, mathematics, and philosophy at the University of Jena. He eventually earned his master's degree from the University of Leipzig in 1703, where his interest had shifted increasingly toward mathematics and philosophy, both of which he regarded as useful disciplines to solve religious disputes. His dissertation, De philosophia practica universali methodo mathematica conscripta (1702; Practical philosophy according to mathematical methods), drew the attention of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), whose letter of recommendation helped Wolff secure a professorship in mathematics at the University of Halle in 1706.

Although officially a professor of mathematics, Wolff lectured on experimental and theoretical physics, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and logic. At Halle, he published his most important works in philosophy including Vernünfftige Gedancken von den Kräfften des menschlichen Verstandes (1713; Rational thoughts on the powers of human understanding), Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt, und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (1720; Rational thoughts on God, the world, and the human soul, and all things in general), and Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen, zu Beförderung ihrer Glückseeligkeit, den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilet (1720; Rational thoughts on human conduct for the purpose of their happiness, told to those who love the truth), all of which were written in German. Ever since, Wolff has been regarded as the founder of a German philosophical language. His fame, however, did not save him from attacks by leading Pietist members of the theological faculty at Halle, such as Joachim Lange (1670–1744), who viewed Wolff as an advocate of a deterministic universe and as a potential danger to Christian dogma. The conflict escalated on the occasion of Wolff's public lecture, "De Sinarum philosophia practica" (1721; On the practical philosophy of the Chinese), which emphasized that revelation was not essential for arriving at sound moral principles. His opponents successfully appealed to King Frederick William I of Prussia (ruled 1713–1740), who issued an official warrant on 8 November 1723, demanding his departure from Halle within forty-eight hours under the threat of death by hanging. Wolff subsequently accepted a position as professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg until 1740, when the new King Frederick II of Prussia (ruled 1740–1786) invited him to return to Halle. At the time of his death on 9 April 1754, Wolff held the position of chancellor of the University of Halle and was privy councillor of Prussia, vice president of the Academy of St. Petersburg, and baron of the Holy Roman Empire.

Wolff's philosophical system builds on mathematical principles. He regarded the "mathematical method" as a guarantor for clarity because it connected premises and deductions into a chain of closely intertwined demonstrations. Although his philosophy was labeled as "Leibniz-Wolffian" as early as 1724—probably by one of his students, Georg Bernhard Bilfinger (1693–1750)—Wolff himself rejected this adjective without denying Leibniz's profound influence on him. He surpassed his famous predecessor by developing a more comprehensive system of philosophy, thereby linking all the individual disciplines with each other. He viewed philosophy as the science of all possible things. By possible Wolff meant anything that does not contain a logical contradiction, which is a lack of sufficient reason. In contrast to theology, which concerns itself with the supernatural, philosophy represents world wisdom. This marked a shift away from his predecessor Leibniz, who had always tried to prevent philosophy and theology from going their separate ways. Because, according to Wolff, attributes of the visible world proved God's existence, one branch of theology, the theologia naturalis ('natural theology') can, in accordance with the laws of reason, engage in determining God's qualities. Although he asserted that Christianity is based on the only true revelation, he nonetheless claimed that, at least in theory, certain standards must apply as well in order to distinguish it from false revelation. By making this suggestion, Wolff laid the foundation for a critical (rational) examination of revealed religion.

Christian Wolff was certainly the most important German philosopher between Leibniz and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781; Critique of pure reason), Kant praised him as the "founder of the spirit of thoroughness in Germany." Wolff was the first modern thinker to write extensively in German. The rigor and clarity of his methodology helped emancipate philosophy from theology as an independent discipline. Wolffian principles, such as his emphasis on sufficient reason, encouraged radical biblical critics such as Johann Lorenz Schmidt (1702–1749) and Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) to examine and reject Christian revelation by subjecting Scripture to its rational principles. Nonetheless, one should not forget that Wolff's incorporation of Scholastic elements in his system and his conservative metaphysics made his philosophy equally appealing to Protestants and Catholics alike, both of whom viewed it as a useful defense against atheism and deism.

Wolff's influence reached even beyond the German territories. The concept of philosophy, as it appears in Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, can almost be called a precise copy of his definition of philosophy from his Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere (1728; Preliminary discourse on philosophy in general).

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Wolff, Christian. Gesammelte Werke. Edited by Jean École, et al. Hildesheim and New York, 1962–.

——. Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General. Translated by R. J. Blackwell. Indianapolis, 1963.

——. "Reasonable Thoughts on the Actions of Men, for the Promotion of Their Happiness." In Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant, vol. 1, edited by J. B. Schneewind, pp. 333–350. Cambridge, Mass., 1990.

Secondary Sources

Blackwell, Richard. "The Structure of Wolffian Philosophy." Modern Schoolman 38 (1961): 203–218.

Carboncini, Sonia. Transzendentale Wahrheit und Traum: Christian Wolffs Antwort auf die Herausforderung durch den cartesianischen Zweifel. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1991.

École, Jean. "Wolff était-il un Aufklärer?" In Aufklärung als praktische Philosophie, edited by Frank Gunert, et al., pp. 31–44. Tübingen, 1998.

Frängsmyr, Tore. "Christian Wolff's Mathematical Method and Its Impact on the Eighteenth Century." Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 653–668.

Morrison, J. C. "Christian Wolff's Criticism of Spinoza." Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993): 182–213.

Saine, Thomas P. The Problem of Being Modern, or, the German Pursuit of Enlightenment from Leibniz to the French Revolution. Detroit, Mich., 1997.

Schneiders, Werner, ed. Christian Wolff, 1679–1754: Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung. Hamburg, 1983.

Wundt, Max. Die Deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Tübingen, 1945. Reprint, Hildesheim, 1964.

—ULRICH GROETSCH

Christian Wolff (philosopher)

Western Philosophy 18th-century philosophy
Full name	Christian Wolff
Born	24 January 1679
Died	9 April 1754
School/tradition	Enlightenment philosophy
Influenced by Leibniz, Confucius
Influenced Kant

Christian Wolff (less correctly Wolf; also known as Wolfius), baron, (24 January 1679 - 9 April 1754) was a German philosopher.

He was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant. His main achievement was a complete oeuvre on almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak of Enlightenment rationality in Germany.

Wolff was also the creator of German as the language of scholarly instruction and research, although he also wrote in Latin, so that an international audience could, and did, read him. A founding father of, among other fields, economics and public administration as academic disciplines, he concentrated especially in these fields, giving advice on practical matters to people in government, and stressing the professional nature of university education.

Contents 1 Life 2 Philosophy 3 Works 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Life

Plaque on building in Wrocław (Breslau) where Wolff was born and lived, 1679–99

Wolff was born in Breslau, Silesia into a modest family. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Jena, soon adding philosophy. In 1703, he qualified as Privatdozent at the University of Leipzig, where he lectured until 1706, when he was called as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy to the University of Halle. By this time he had made the acquaintance of Leibniz, of whose philosophy his own system is a modified version. At Halle, Wolff at first restricted himself to mathematics, but on the departure of a colleague, he added physics, and soon included all the main philosophical disciplines.

However, the claims Wolff advanced on behalf of philosophical reason appeared impious to his theological colleagues. Halle was the headquarters of Pietism, which, after a long struggle against Lutheran dogmatism, had itself assumed the characteristics of a new orthodoxy. Wolff's professed ideal was to base theological truths on mathematically certain evidence. Strife with the Pietists broke out openly in 1721, when Wolff, on the occasion of stepping down as pro-rector, delivered an oration "On the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese" (Eng. tr. 1750), in which he praised the purity of the moral precepts of Confucius, pointing to them as an evidence of the power of human reason to reach moral truth by its own efforts.

As a consequence, Wolff was ousted in 1723 from his first chair at Halle in one of the most celebrated academic dramas of the 18th century. His enemies had gained the ear of the king Frederick William I and told him that, if Wolff's determinism were recognized, no soldier who deserted could be punished, since he would only have acted as it was necessarily predetermined that he should. This so enraged the king that he immediately deprived Wolff of his office, and commanded him to leave Prussian territory within 48 hours or be hanged. The same day Wolff passed into Saxony, and presently proceeded to Marburg in Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), to whose university he had received a call even before this crisis, which was now renewed. The Landgrave of Hesse received him with every mark of distinction, and the circumstances of his expulsion drew universal attention to his philosophy. It was everywhere discussed, and over two hundred books and pamphlets appeared for or against it before 1737, not reckoning the systematic treatises of Wolff and his followers.

At the University of Marburg, as one of the most popular and fashionable university teachers in Europe, he increased matriculation figures within five years by about 50%. In 1740 Frederick William died, and one of the first acts of his son and successor, Frederick the Great, an admirer of Wolff, was to recall him to Halle. His entry into the town on 6 December 1740 took on the character of a triumphal procession. In 1743, he became chancellor of the university, and in 1745, he received the title of Freiherr (Baron) from the Elector of Bavaria. But his matter was no longer fashionable, he had outlived his power of attracting students, and his class-rooms remained, while not empty, then certainly emptier than they had been during his heyday in Marburg.

When Wolff died on 9 April 1754, he was a very wealthy man, almost entirely due to his income from lecture-fees, salaries, and royalties. He was also a member of many academies and probably the first scholar to have been created hereditary Baron of the Holy Roman Empire on the basis of his academic work. His school, the Wolffians, was the first school, in the philosophical sense, associated with a German philosopher. It dominated Germany until the rise of Kantianism.

The mountain Mons Wolff on the Moon got its name in his honour.

Philosophy

Leibniz

The Wolffian philosophy held almost undisputed sway in Germany until it was displaced by the Kantian revolution, due partly to his distinctive habit of writing in both Latin and German. Wolff's philosophy has, until a reevaluation set in the 1960s, often been held to be a common-sense adaptation or watering-down of the Leibnizian system; or, more charitably, Wolff was said to have methodized and "reduced" to dogmatic form the thoughts of his great predecessor.

These are mainly his comprehensive view of philosophy, as embracing in its survey the whole field of human knowledge, his insistence everywhere on clear and methodic exposition, and his confidence in the power of reason to reduce all subjects to this form. The Wolffian system retains the determinism and optimism of Leibniz, but the monadology recedes into the background, the monads falling asunder into souls or conscious beings on the one hand and mere atoms on the other. The doctrine of the pre-established harmony also loses its metaphysical significance - while remaining an important heuristic device - and the principle of sufficient reason introduced by Leibniz is once more discarded in favor of the principle of contradiction which Wolff seeks to make the fundamental principle of philosophy.

Philosophy is defined by him as the science of the possible, and divided, according to the two faculties of the human individual, into a theoretical and a practical part. Logic, sometimes called philosophia rationalis, forms the introduction or propaedeutics to both. Theoretical philosophy has for its parts ontology or philosophia prima, cosmology, rational psychology and natural theology; ontology treats of the existent in general, psychology of the soul as a simple non-extended substance, cosmology of the world as a whole, and rational theology of the existence and attributes of God. These are best known to philosophical students by Kant's treatment of them in the Critique of Pure Reason. Practical philosophy is subdivided into ethics, economics and politics. Wolff's moral principle is the realization of human perfection - seen realistically as the kind of perfection the human person actually can achieve in the world in which we live. It is perhaps the combination of Enlightenment optimism and worldly realism that made Wolff so successful and popular as a teacher of future states- and business leaders.

Works

Wolff's most important works are as follows:

• Anfangsgründe aller mathematischen Wissenschaften (1710); in Latin, Elementa matheseos universae, 1713-1715)
• Vernünftige Gedanken von den Kräften des menschlichen Verstandes (1712; Eng. trans. 1770)
• Vern. Ged. von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (1719)
• Vern. Ged. von der Menschen Thun und Lassen (1720)
• Vern. Ged. von dem gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschen (1721)
• Vern. Ged. von den Wirkungen der Natur (1723)
• Vern. Ged. von den Absichten der natürlichen Dinge (1724)
• Vern. Ged. von dem Gebräuche der Theile in Menschen, Thieren und Pflanzen (1725); the last seven may briefly be described as treatises on logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, political philosophy, theoretical physics, teleology, physiology
• Philosophia rationalis, sive logica (1728)
• Philosophia prima, sive Ontologia (1730)
• Cosmologia generalis (1731)
• Psychologia empirica (1732)
• Psychologia rationalis (1734)
• Theologia naturalis (1736-1737)
• Kleine philosophische Schriften, collected and edited by G.F. Hagen (1736-1740).
• Philosophia practica universalis (1738-1739)
• Jus naturae and Jus Gentium (1740-1749)
• Philosophia moralis (1750-1753).

Wolff's complete writings have been published since 1962 in an annotated reprint collection, and thus are easily accessible:

• Gesammelte Werke, Jean École et al. (eds.), 3 series (German, Latin, and Materials), Hildesheim-[Zürich-]New York: Olms, 1962-.

This includes a volume that unites the three most important older biographies of Wolff.

An excellent modern edition of the famous Halle speech on Chinese philosophy is

• Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica / Rede über die praktische Philosophie der Chinesen, Michael Albrecht (ed.), Hamburg: Meiner, 1985.

See also

• Wawrzyniec Mitzler de Kolof

References

• Bianco, Bruno, Libertá e fatalismo. Sulla polemica tra Joachim Lange e Christian Wolff, in: Verifiche 15 (1986), pp. 43−89, again in: Bianco, Fede et sapere. La parabola dell' Aufklärung tra pietismo e idealismo, Neapel 1992, pp. 31−84, German translation by Norbert Hinske, Freiheit gegen Fatalismus. Zu Joachim Langes Kritik an Wolff, in: Zentren der Aufklärung I. Halle. Aufklärung und Pietismus, ed. by Norbert Hinske, Heidelberg 1989, pp. 111−155.
• European Journal of Law and Economics 4(2) (Summer 1997), special issue on Christian Wolff, reprinted 1998 in the Gesammelte Werke, 3rd Ser. Note especially the essays by Jürgen G. Backhaus ("Christian Wolff on Subsidiarity, the Division of Labor, and Social Welfare"), Wolfgang Drechsler ("Christian Wolff (1679-1754): A Biographical Essay"), Erik S. Reinert and Arno Mong Daastøl ("Exploring the Genesis of Economic Innovations: The religious Gestalt-Switch and the Duty to Invent as Preconditions for Economic Growth"), and Peter R. Senn ("Christian Wolff in the Pre-History of the Social Sciences").
• Goebel, Julius, "Christian Wolff and the Declaration of Independence", in Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsblätter. Jahrbuch der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Gesellschaft von Illinois 18/19 (Jg. 1918/19), Chicago: Deutsch-Amerikanische Gesellschaft von Illinois, 1920, pp. 69-87, details Wolff's impact on the Declaration of Independence.
• Schneiders, Werner (ed.), Christian Wolff, 1697-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung. Mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, 2nd edn., Hamburg: Meiner, 1986, is a good collection of recent philosophical work on Wolff.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Matt Hettche introducing Christian Wolff in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Ontology of Christian Wolff: Existence as complement of possibility with an annotated bibliography
• WOLFF from Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy

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