Christian Wolff

In this chapter, I consider the largely overlooked influence of E. W. von Tschirnhaus' treatise on method, the Medicina mentis, on Wolff's early philosophical project (in both its conception and execution). As I argue, part of Tschirnhaus' importance for Wolff lies in the use he makes of principles gained from experience as a foundation for the scientific enterprise in the context of his broader philosophical rationalism. I will show that this lesson from Tschirnhaus runs through Wolff's earliest philosophical discussions, and (...) indeed continues to inform his major texts in logic and mathematics just before the publication of the German Metaphysics. In the end, my discussion has the effect of revealing Tschirnhaus to be an exceptionally important influence on Wolff's development, perhaps even as important (or so I suggest) as Leibniz. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the historical context and systematic importance of Kant's hypothetical use of reason. It does so by investigating the role of hypotheses in Kant's philosophy of science. We first situate Kant’s account of hypotheses in the context of eighteenth-century German philosophy of science, focusing on the works of Wolff, Meier, and Crusius. We contrast different conceptions of hypotheses of these authors and elucidate the different theories of probability informing them. We then adopt a more systematic perspective to discuss (...) Kant's idea that scientific hypotheses must articulate real possibilities. We argue that Kant's views on the intelligibility of scientific hypotheses constitute a valuable perspective on scientific understanding and the constraints it imposes on scientific rationality. (shrink)

As far as treatments of causation are concerned, the pre-Kantian 18th century German context has long been dismissed as a period of uniform and unrepentant Leibnizian dogmatism. While there is no question that discussions of issues relating to causation in this period inevitably took Leibniz as their point of departure, it is certainly not the case that the resulting positions were in most cases dogmatically, or in some cases even recognizably, Leibnizian. Instead, German theorists explored a range of positions regarding (...) the nature of causal powers, the appropriate systems to explain the observed agreement between the states of substances, and the ground of free actions, or so I will argue in this chapter. Focusing on these three issues, I will here sketch the development of the debates relating to causation and trace the evolution of positions among the philosophers within the so-called Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy as well as among its many opponents. (shrink)

In this engaging, provocative, and highly original study, Karin de Boer offers an interpretation of key parts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a preparation for an anticipated (and positive) system of metaphysics that is broadly Wolffian in character. In contrast to the lopsided scholarly focus on the negative results of Kant’s project—its “all-crushing” effect on traditional metaphysics—de Boer contends that the Critique is in fact the outgrowth of a longstanding ambition on Kant’s part to make metaphysics into a (...) science, that is, an organized body of a priori knowledge. In so doing, de Boer insists that Kant’s approach should not be taken to be that of a revolutionary overthrowing the ancien régime but instead that of a reformer who retains and works within an established (in this case Wolffian) framework by way of resolving metaphysics’ internal conflicts. In what follows, rather than offering a chapter-by-chapter summary, I will offer an overview of what I take to be the main line of argument in de Boer’s book, followed by a couple of critical remarks. (shrink)

Thorough comparison of Immanuel Kant’s and Christian Wolff’s divergent appraisals of the science of psychology reveals various ways in which Kant fundamentally altered the Wolffian philosophical apparatus that he inherited. Wolff conceived of a thoroughgoing interplay between empirical and rational psychology, of combining different sorts of cognition in psychology, and of a mathematical science of the soul, or psychometrics. Kant however rejected each of these particular theses and deemed psychology to be no natural science, “properly so-called.” This chapter details these (...) departures from Wolff, explains their basis, and concretizes an underlying contrast in Kant’s and Wolff’s respective philosophical approaches. Namely, whereas Wolff’s philosophical system is malleable, allowing for the combination of various kinds of cognition and methods, in Kant’s Critical philosophy, everything has its proper, preordained niche. At bottom, it is the unyielding rigor of Kant’s system that results in his pessimistic evaluation of the prospects for psychology. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article examines Paul Guyer’s claim that we should attempt to ground the principle of religious freedom on the basis of Kant’s arguments for religious liberty. I problematise Guyer’s suggestion by investigating a hypothetical ‘dogmatic conflict’ between a scientifically and a religiously grounded belief. I further suggest that considering Christian Wolff’s philosophy might provide us with an approach which shares the benefits that Guyer identifies in Kant, while at the same time avoiding the issues Kant might run into that result (...) from the occurrence of the dogmatic conflict. I start by providing a background to Wolff’s philosophy and explaining the notion of the dogmatic conflict. Then I present a potential contemporary case of the dogmatic conflict and try to see how it would be dealt with based on Guyer’s proposal. Finally, I consider what a Wolffian solution would look like, arguing that Guyer’s project might benefit from considering Wolff. (shrink)

This paper presents Christian Wolff’s claim that philosophy, undertaken on the basis of a proper method, cannot contradict revealed religion. The paper first provides a context of Wolff’s banishment from Halle for holding views in conflict with religious doctrines. Next, it proceeds, on the basis of Wolff’s Discursus præliminaris de philosophia in genere prefixed to his 1728 Latin Logic, to explain the principles of Wolff’s method, and to show how his conception of method enables him to disallow the possibility of (...) a genuine conflict between philosophical and religious dogmas. For Wolff, doctrinal conflicts between philosophy and revealed religion can only occur as a result of terminological disagreements, disagreements between dogmas and hypotheses, or disagreements between dogmas and theological misinterpretations. The actual conflict of dogmas, understood as religious or philosophical truths, Wolff holds to be impossible. (shrink)

The idea that virtue can be profitably conceived as a certain sort of skill has a long history. My aim is to examine a neglected episode in this history — one that focuses on the pivotal role that Moses Mendelssohn played in rehabilitating the skill model of virtue for the German rationalist tradition, and Immanuel Kant’s subsequent, yet significantly qualified, endorsement of the idea. Mendelssohn celebrates a certain automatism in the execution of skill, and takes this feature to be instrumental (...) in meeting an objection against perfectionist, agent-based ethics: namely, that a virtuous person would seem to act for the sake of realising his own perfection in everything that he does, thereby taking a morally inappropriate interest in his own character. Kant rejects the automatism featured in Mendelssohn’s account, on grounds that it would make virtue mindless and unreflective. But he does not reject the skill model of virtue wholesale. Rather, he calls for considering how reflection can be embedded in the expression of certain kinds of skill, enabling him to endorse, and arguably adopt, the model on his own terms. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played (...) by the mathematical and axiomatic model of science in the emergence of biology as a special science. We show that several major actors involved in the emergence of biology as a science in Germany were working with an axiomatic conception of science that goes back at least to Aristotle and was popular in mid-eighteenth-century German academic circles due to its endorsement by Christian Wolff. More specifically, we show that at least two major contributors to the emergence of biology in Germany—Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus—sought to provide a conception of the new science of life that satisfies the criteria of a traditional axiomatic ideal of science. Both C.F. Wolff and Treviranus took over strong commitments to the axiomatic model of science from major philosophers of their time, Christian Wolff and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, respectively. The ideal of biology as an axiomatic science with specific biological fundamental concepts and principles thus played a role in the emergence of biology as a special science. (shrink)

Early Modern German Philosophy (1690-1750) makes some of the key texts of early German thought available in English, in most cases for the first time. The translations range from texts by the most important figures of the period, including Christian Thomasius, Christian Wolff, Christian August Crusius, and Georg Friedrich Meier, as well as texts by consequential but less familiar thinkers such as Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, Theodor Ludwig Lau, Friedrich Wilhelm Stosch, and Joachim Lange. The topics covered range across a number (...) of areas of theoretical philosophy, including metaphysics (the immortality of the soul, materialism and its refutation, the pre-established harmony), epistemology (the principle of sufficient reason, the limits of reason with respect to matters of faith), and logic (the role of prejudices in cognition and the doctrine of truth). (shrink)

This essay examines Wolff’s science of teleology, which has historically been dismissed as a crude physico-theology resting on a simple confusion between uses and purposes. Focusing especially on his two German volumes (German Teleology, 1723, and German Physiology, 1725), I argue that, first, Wolff never intended teleology to be a self-standing theology; and second, that teleology, as a part of physics, is primarily an applied or practical discipline. In its theological function, teleology presupposes the ontological and cosmological arguments for the (...) being and attributes of God rendered in rational theology. As a part of physics, meanwhile, teleology presupposes the inert-mechanical view of nature which had emerged in the seventeenth century, and builds upon mechanistic physics by providing a perspective on nature as consisting of relations of benefit and advantage. The physiological part of teleology, or the study of plant and animal bodies, occupies a special place, for which Wolff deploys notions of health and sickness consistent with the mechanistic physics he accepts. With this in view, I argue that Wolff’s teleology could not be the proper target of Kant’s critique of physico-theology. Yet, there remain deeper differences between Wolff and Kant on the topic, which have to do with the sources and limits of teleological reasoning in general. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the structure of the Transcendental Logic is modeled on the Wolffian division of logic textbooks into sections on concepts, judgments, and inferences. While it is undeniable that the Transcendental Logic contains elements that are similar to the content of these sections, I believe these similarities are largely incidental to the structure of the Transcendental Logic. In this essay, I offer an alternative and, I believe, more plausible account of Wolff’s influence on the structure of the (...) Transcendental Logic, one that puts the focus on his empirical psychology rather than his logic. In particular, I argue that the structure of the Transcendental Logic is deeply indebted to a conception of purity that Wolff introduces in his empirical psychology and that this conception sheds more light on the overall structure of the Transcendental Logic than the accepted view. In section one, I outline two conceptions of purity found in Kant and trace them to similar views in Wolff. In section two, I turn to Kant’s views about logic as they are expressed in the Critique and argue that it is best to interpret Kant’s taxonomy of logic on its own terms rather than reading it through its terminological similarities to aspects of the Wolffian tradition. In section three, I argue that the second of the two conceptions of purity identified in section one is central to the structure of the Transcendental Logic. In doing so, I argue against the widespread view that this section of the Critique is modeled solely on what Kant calls pure general logic as opposed to both pure and applied general logic. I then conclude by briefly reviewing my account and considering some of its broader implications for our understanding of Kant. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Baumgarten’s views on the soul in the context of the Pietist critique of Wolff’s rational psychology. My primary aim is to account for the largely unacknowledged differences between Wolff’s and Baumgarten’s rational psychology, though I also hope to show that, in some cases, the Pietists were rather more perceptive in their reading of Wolff than they are typically given credit for as their criticisms frequently succeed in drawing attention to significant omissions in Wolff’s discussion.

Meier’s Gedancken von dem Zustande der Seele nach dem Tode (Gedancken) deserves a prominent place among treatments of the immortality of the soul in 18th century German philosophy, both within and without the Wolffian tradition of rational psychology. It does not wilt next to Mendelssohn’s Phädon in its quality of expression, and might even be compared with Kant’s discussion in the Paralogisms chapter of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft in terms of the boldness of its argument and its philosophical rigour. (...) The Gedancken contributed greatly to Meier’s growing reputation as an original thinker and helped him emerge from the shadow of his famous colleague in the philosophy faculty at the Friedrichs-Universität in Halle, Christian Wolff; moreover, it provoked detailed responses on the part of its critics and even made Meier himself the subject of official investigation as an accused aider and abettor of freethinkers. Meier’s Gedancken thus stands as a work of central importance within his own philosophical corpus and in the history of 18th century German rational psychology more generally. Accordingly, in this Introductory Essay, I will present the context and argument, as well as the reception, of the Gedancken, and then consider Meier’s subsequent defense of his controversial text. (shrink)

Both in his pre-critical writings and in his critical works, Kant criticizes the Wolffian tradition for its use of the mathematical method in philosophy. The chapter argues that the apparent unambiguousness of this opposition between Kant and Wolff notwithstanding, the problem of ascertaining the relationship between Kant’s and Wolff’s methods in philosophy cannot be dismissed so quickly. Only a close consideration of Kant’s different remarks on Wolff’s approach and a comparison of the methods that Wolff and Kant actually used in (...) philosophy can allow us to determine when Kant’s criticisms are justified and where the differences in their methodological proposals for philosophy actually lie. We see that Kant’s account of philosophical method in fact has some elements in common with the Wolffian paradigm, even though there are also relevant differences. (shrink)

much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. (...) Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

Fully in accord with the Aristotelian confidence in things that are probable (even if not really likely to happen in the near future), the essay anticipates an interplanetary critique against geocentric ways of thinking peculiar to most humans on Earth: Japanese, Chinese, English, Germans, Russians, etc. who insist on using expressions like sunset and sunrise and thus heavily offend the feelings of anyone coming from planets that do not enjoy Earth’s proximity to the Sun. As this critique would not be (...) significantly different to what currently is going on in intercultural studies (the central issue of the essay), the essay may be regarded as illuminating the ways to secure a peaceful future of interplanetary relations. (shrink)

This interview with Professor Dr Jürgen Stolzenberg, board member of the Kant-Gesellschaft and co-editor of the Kant-Lexikon (2015), explores a wide range of topics — from Leibniz and Wolff to Heidegger and Husserl. The leading idea of Stolzenberg’s philosophical research is the justification of the principle of modern subjectivity in Kant’s philosophy and its transformations until our days. He discusses the meaning and development of the concept of self-consciousness and the understanding of subjectivity in Kant’s ethics as well as in (...) Fichte’s philosophy. Stolzenberg shows the significance of Heidegger’s philosophical relations with Kant, Fichte, and the Neo-Kantians. He outlines the reasons which explain the different structures of the philosophical theories after Kant in comparison with the structure of Kant’s philosophy itself. Answering the question of Kant’s role in affirming the value of human dignity, he emphasises the non-empirical essence of this concept as it is presented in Kant’s ethics and as it should be defended against recent critics. According to Stolzenberg, the principle of modern subjectivity proves to be fruitful in understanding the development of the history of modern music, too. (shrink)

The chapter provides a brief survey of the moral views of some of the main writers advocating rationalist conceptions in philosophical ethics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Germany, prior to Reid and Kant: Samuel Clarke, William Wollaston, John Balguy, Richard Price, Christian Wolff (along with his adversary Christian August Crusius), Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.

This collection of new essays, the first of its kind in English, considers the ways in which the philosophy of Immanuel Kant engages with the views of lesser-known eighteenth-century German thinkers. Each chapter casts new light on aspects of Kant's complex relationship with these figures, particularly with respect to key aspects of his logic, metaphysics, epistemology, theory of science, and ethics. The portrait of Kant that emerges is of a major thinker thoroughly engaged with his contemporaries - drawing on their (...) ideas and approaches, targeting their arguments for criticism and responding to their concerns, and seeking to secure the legacy of his thought among them. This volume will open the door for further research on Kant and his methods of philosophical inquiry, while introducing readers to the distinctive and influential philosophical contributions of several previously neglected figures. (shrink)

Broad in its geographic scope and yet grounded in original archival research, this book situates the inception of modern aesthetic theory – the philosophical analysis of art and beauty - in theological contexts that are crucial to explaining why it arose. Simon Grote presents seminal aesthetic theories of the German and Scottish Enlightenments as outgrowths of a quintessentially Enlightenment project: the search for a natural 'foundation of morality' and a means of helping naturally self-interested human beings transcend their own self-interest. (...) This conclusion represents an important alternative to the standard history of aesthetics as a series of preludes to the achievements of Immanuel Kant, as well as a reinterpretation of several canonical figures in the German and Scottish Enlightenments. It also offers a foundation for a transnational history of the Enlightenment without the French philosophes at its centre, while solidly endorsing historians' growing reluctance to call the Enlightenment a secularising movement. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the development of ontology as a philosophical discipline in the German philosophical tradition. It starts from what can be considered the invention of ontology and proceeds to the way it was received in the philosophy of Hegel. It is separated into two parts. The first part argues that what can be called the ‘traditional’ form of ontology is developed by Christian Wolff in his 1730 monograph Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, and it traces both the history of the (...) name ‘ontology’, as well as the history of the conception which led to Wolff’s formulation of it. The history of the name tracks the use of the concept ‘ontology’ from its first occurrence in 1606 up to Wolff. The history of the conception tracks the conceptions of various philosophical disciplines, found in thinkers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, and Spinoza, that ultimately give rise to Wolff’s conception of ontology as a science of an entity qua entity. The second part traces the development of this Wolffian conception through the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel. The aim of this thesis is to argue that Wolff’s philosophy should be seen as the original formulation of the philosophical discipline of ontology and that the Wolffian conception of ontology is the one shared by subsequent German thinkers up to, and including, Hegel. I refer to this shared understanding of what ontology is as ‘the German ontological tradition’. The title of the thesis, The Possibility of Ontology, refers to the way in which this traditional understanding of what ontology is, is treated throughout the German ontological tradition. Specifically, Kant argues that the traditional conception is effectively impossible, while in Hegel one can find arguments that are intended to show that some aspects of this traditional discipline are in fact possible. Besides focusing on a fairly under-researched topic of the early history of ontology as a philosophical discipline, this thesis attempts to utilise its historical findings in order to provide novel ways in which the systems of the thinkers such as Kant and Hegel can be understood. There is a serious disregard for, or underplaying of, the Wolffian influence on the philosophical thought of Kant and Hegel, and it is my aim to contribute to the rectification of this situation by demonstrating the frequently overlooked dialogue these thinkers had with Wolff’s conception of ontology. (shrink)

I argue that the key dynamical concepts and laws of Newton's Principia never gained a solid foothold in Germany before Kant in the 1750s. I explain this absence as due to Leibniz. Thus I make a case for a robust Leibnizian legacy for Enlightenment science, and I solve what Jonathan Israel called “a meaningful historical problem on its own,” viz. the slow and hesitant reception of Newton in pre-Kantian Germany.

Christian Wolff, long regarded as a champion of dogmatic rationalism, was in fact deeply involved in empirical sciences such as physics, astronomy, meteorology, and agronomy. He also devoted a significant part of both his research and teaching to the life sciences and was especially eager to establish the theoretical foundations of medical practice. Challenging the scholarly cliché of Wolff ’s methodical apriorism, recent research has highlighted an empirical, a posteriori, or even experimental component of Wolffian science. This paper aims to (...) provide a different insight into.. (shrink)

RESUMO Neste artigo, busco identificar, por meio de algumas passagens da "Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes" e da "Crítica da Razão Prática", o debate de Kant com a Filosofia Prática Universal de Wolff. Em um primeiro momento, apresento, de forma sucinta, alguns aspectos gerais da metafísica e da ética wolffiana com o intuito de, em um segundo momento, explicitar como algumas considerações de Kant, em suas duas primeiras obras morais, incidem diretamente nas teses de seu predecessor. A crítica de Kant (...) é apresentada nas seguintes etapas. Primeiro, destaco, diante das teses de Wolff, o argumento kantiano sobre a impossibilidade de se estabelecerem os princípios da faculdade superior de apetição e da obrigação moral a partir do prazer baseado nas representações e, por conseguinte, no princípio da felicidade. Em um segundo momento, sublinho a reivindicação kantiana de uma razão prática pura como a única base da faculdade superior de apetição. A partir disso, é notável o surgimento dos novos conceitos kantianos de lei formal, de liberdade e de perfeição moral. Por último, destaco, ainda em diálogo com Wolff, como a razão prática pura, compreendida como faculdade superior de apetição, pode representar não apenas as bases da necessidade moral, mas também uma fonte adequada de motivação. ABSTRACT In this Paper, I seek to identify Kant's debate with Wolff`s Universal Practical Philosophy in some passages of the "Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals" and of the "Critique of Practical Reason". At first, I briefly present some general aspects of Wolff`s metaphysics and ethics aiming at, in a second step, stressing how some of Kant's considerations, in his first two moral works, have a direct impact on the theses of his predecessor. First, stressing the discussion with Wolff, I highlight Kant's argument about the impossibility of establishing the principles of the superior faculty of desire and of moral obligation from the pleasure on the representations and, therefore, in the principle of happiness. In a second step, I stress the Kantian claim of pure practical reason as the basis of the superior faculty of desire. Thence, I show how the new Kantian concepts of formal law, freedom and moral perfection emerge. Finally, I highlight, still in a dialogue with Wolff, how the pure practical reason may represent not only the foundations of moral necessity, but also how it may be a proper source of motivation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDiscussions of the reception of materialist thought in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century tend to focus, naturally enough, upon the homegrown freethinkers who advanced the cause of Lucretius, Hobbes, and Spinoza in clandestine publications and frequently courted the ire of the state for doing so. If the philosophers belonging to the mainstream of German intellectual life in that period are accorded a place in the story, it is only insofar as they actively set themselves against the (...) materialist threat and, in the course of working to undermine it, actually only succeeded in inadvertently drawing more popular attention to it. By contrast, in this paper I will show that it was not just insofar as the thinkers of the early eighteenth century played the role of the diligent critic and unwittingly propagated the views of their opponents that materialism can be said to have penetrated into the very mainstream of the German Enlightenment. Rather, as I will argue, there was a striking degr... (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the basis for Kant's praise of Wolff's general logic as "the best we have." I argue that Wolff's logic was highly esteemed by Kant on account of its novel analysis of the three operations of the mind (tres operationes mentis), in the course of which Wolff formulates an argument for the priority of the understanding's activity of judging.

In this paper, I attempt to trace the broader contours of a putative Leibnizian psychology by adopting the rather unusual, and perhaps historically dubious, strategy of outlining the continuities between Leibniz’s discussion of the soul and the much more detailed and systematic psychological writings of his German successor, Christian Wolff.

Wenn man bedenkt, dass Immanuel Kant die klassischen Gottesbeweise schon als schlechthin falsch zermalmte, ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass Christian Wolffs Religionsphilosophie, die diese Gottesbeweise wiederaufgenommen zu haben scheint, weniger Interesse erweckt hat als zum Beispiel seine Moralphilosophie. Tatsächlich wird Christian Wolffs Theologia naturalis in jüngster Zeit auch als Paradebeispiel für die so genannte „gemäßigte“ Aufklärungsphilosophie angesehen. Denn er suchte nicht nur die Harmonie zwischen vernünftiger Gotteserkenntnis und christlicher Offenbarung nachzuweisen, sondern auch die Vertreter der „radikalen“ Aufklärungsphilosophie zu bekämpfen. Auf (...) der anderen Seite wurde Wolff selbst damals als Feind der christlichen Religion auf die Anklagebank gesetzt, wie Spinoza und Hobbes. Sein Versuch, die Offenbarung zu rechtfertigen, scheint auch mit den aufklärerischen Anforderungen seiner Philosophie widersprüchlich zu sein. Es stellt sich die Frage, ob Wolffs affirmative Stellungnahme zur christlichen Tradition mit seinem autonomen Rationalismus inhaltlich verträglich ist. Angesichts des scheinbar widersprüchlichen Zuges der Philosophie Wolffs und der gegensätzlichen Interpretationen von seiner Philosophie sind Detailstudien vonnöten. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird versucht, Wolffs Argumentationsstrategie in der natürlichen Theologie und der natürlichen Religion genau zu prüfen, um die Frage beantworten zu können: Wie wendete Christian Wolff seine philosophische Methode auf die Theologie an, um es für möglich zu halten, dass der Gebrauch des Verstandes unbeschränkt wird und zugleich dies der Religion nicht schaden würde? In den vier Kapiteln dieser Arbeit werden der Wunderbeweis, das Verhältnis der natürlichen Religion zur Moral, die Spinozismus-Kritik und der Beweis der Offenbarungsreligion bei Christian Wolff behandelt, da ihm damals vorgeworfen wurde, dass seine Philosophie das biblische Wunder, die natürliche und geoffenbarte Religion abgeschafft und den Weg der Radikalen beschritten hätte. Als Ergebnis wird sich herausstellen, dass der Beweis der Wahrheit der Offenbarungsreligion, um die Begierde der Christen nach dem Naturgesetz zu bestimmen, den roten Faden in Christian Wolffs Lebenswerk ausmacht. Wolffs Argumente für die natürliche und geoffenbarte Religion sind einerseits durchaus vereinbar mit den Forderungen seiner philosophischen Methode. Seine Gegner haben mit Recht in diesen Argumenten das größte Risiko für die Offenbarungsreligion gesehen. Andererseits hat Christian Wolff die Offenbarungsreligion nicht mit einer bloßen apologetischen Absicht verteidigt. Er war davon sehr überzeugt, dass sein System diese minimale Anforderung erfüllen konnte. Ihm lag mehr an der Frage, wie die christlichen Glaubenssätze die Begierde der Christen bestimmen, sodass sie auch nach dem Naturgesetz handeln können. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in the sense of greatest epistemological concern for Kant, empirical cognition is “rational sensory discrimination”: the identification or differentiation of sensory objects from each other, occurring through a capacity to become aware of and express judgments. With this account of empirical cognition, I show how the transcendental deduction of the first Critique is most plausibly read as having as its fundamental assumption the thesis that we have empirical cognition, and I provide evidence that Kant (...) understood Hume as granting this assumption. (shrink)

RESUMO:O objetivo deste artigo é discutir sobre os conceitos de obrigação e lei natural, tendo como referência o polêmico debate moderno envolvendo intelectualismo e voluntarismo. Em um primeiro momento, destacaremos a rejeição de Wolff ao voluntarismo de Pufendorf e sua orientação em direção ao intelectualismo de Leibniz. Conforme essa nova orientação, uma teoria da lei natural não deve basear seu conceito de obrigação na autoridade das leis e em seu poder coercitivo, mas, por outro lado, unicamente na ideia de necessidade (...) moral, interpretada como expressão da ligação natural universal dos seres racionais com o dever. Em um segundo momento, apresentaremos os efeitos dessa discussão no pensamento inicial de Kant, que, se posicionando diante mesmo de Wolff e Baumgarten, vai empreender a superação de seus predecessores, através de uma revisão conceitual do problema, a qual culminará nos pressupostos de sua doutrina ética madura. -/- ABSTRACT:This paper highlights the debate around the concepts of obligationand natural law, with reference to the controversial modern discussion involving intellectualism and voluntarism. Firstly, we highlight Wolff’s rejection of the voluntarism of Pufendorf and Wolff’s orientation toward the intellectualism of Leibniz. For intellectualism, a theory of natural law should not ground the concept of obligation in the authority of laws and in their coercive power, but in the idea of moral necessity, understood as an expression of the universal natural connection of rational beings with duty. We then present the effects of this discussion on Kant’s early thought. Kant undertook to go beyond Wolff and Baumgarten through a conceptual review of the problem, which culminated in the assumptions of his mature ethics -/- This paper highlights the debate around the concepts of obligation and natural law , with reference to the controversial modern discussion involving intellectualism and voluntarism. Firstly, we highlight Wolff’s rejection of the voluntarism of Pufendorf and Wolff’s orientation toward the intellectualism of Leibniz. For intellectualism, a theory of natural law should not ground the concept of obligation in the authority of laws (established as an arbitrary decree of God) and in their coercive power (interpreted as fear of punishment), but in the idea of moral necessity, understood as an expression of the universal natural connection of rational beings with duty. We then present the effects of this discussion on Kant’s early thought. Kant undertook to go beyond Wolff and Baumgarten through a conceptual review of the problem, which culminated in the assumptions of his mature ethics. (shrink)

The articles contained in this collection look at the displacements, upheavals and dislocations in the traditional definition of obligation as experienced in the 18th and early 19th centuries from the perspective of the humanities and cultural studies. The works in this volume not only focus on Kantian moral philosophy, as the pinnacle of a specific modern development, but also examine the diverse other concepts of obligation and how they were formulated through literature, aesthetics, politics and pedagogy.

The article examines Kant's various criticisms of the broadly Cartesian ontological argument as they are developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that each of these criticisms is effective against its intended target, and that these targets include—in addition to Descartes himself—Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. It is argued that Kant's most famous criticism—the charge that being is not a real predicate—is directed exclusively against Leibniz. Kant's argument for this thesis—the argument proceeding from his example of a hundred (...) thalers—although it may seem to beg the question, in fact succeeds against Leibniz. It does so because the charge of begging the question can be rebutted if one makes certain Leibnizian assumptions. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the relation between Christian Wolff's philosophy and the methodological views of early modern experimental philosophers. The chapter argues for three claims. First, Wolff's system relies on experience at every step and his views on experiments, observations, hypotheses, and the a priori are in line with those of experimental philosophers. Second, the study of Wolff's views demonstrates the influence of experimental philosophy in early eighteenth-century Germany. Third, references to Wolff's empiricism and rationalism are best identified or replaced with (...) references to his endorsement of the tenets of experimental philosophers and of a mathematical demonstrative method. (shrink)

In the first Critique Kant levels two main charges against the cosmological argument. First, it commits the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi. Second, in two rather different ways, it presupposes the ontological argument. Commentators have struggled to find merit in either of these charges. The paper argues that they can nonetheless be shown to have some merit, so long as one takes care to correctly identify the version of the cosmological argument that Kant means to be attacking. That turns out to (...) be a charitably modified version of the argument run by Christian Wolff. Having described Kant’s target argument, the paper goes on to explicate his criticisms and to weigh their merits. (shrink)