Wolff’s relation to Leibniz and Kant’s relation to both are notoriously vexed questions. First, this paper argues that Wolff’s most serious departure from Leibniz consists in his (so far overlooked) rejection of the latter’s infinitism. Second, it contends that the controversies that surrounded Wolff’s early acceptance of infinite causal regress and prompted his conversion to finitism played a prominent role in shaping the theses of Kant’s Antinomies. Whereas Leibniz and the early Wolff considered infinite regress to provide support for the (...) contingency of the world and the existence of God, Wolff’s enemies condemned it as Spinozistic. After Wolff, the claim that an infinite chain of causes is impossible became the standard view among both Wolffian and anti-Wolffian metaphysicians. (shrink)

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)

In the late 1720s and early 1730s, Christian Wolff writes a series of short treatises on general medical concepts such as health, disease, cause of disease, symptom, etc. The paper makes the claim that these texts should be considered as a pioneering attempt at developing a systematic philosophy of medicine based on metaphysical and epistemological investigations on medical concepts, doctrines, and practices. The main focus is on Wolff’s analysis of the concepts of health and disease in functional terms and its (...) connection to his teleological characterization of both natural and artificial machines. This also explains Wolff’s use of the normatively loaded concepts of fitness and nature to clarify the distinction between health as good functioning and disease as dysfunction. The conclusion is that Wolff’s mechanist view of living bodies and his realism about biological functions are just one side of the coin; the other is his commitment to a normative view of the human body’s nature and purposes. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow did the traditional doctrine of parts and wholes evolve into contemporary formal mereology? This paper argues that a crucial missing link may lie in the early modern and especially Wolf...

Christian Wolff’s attitude towards Leibniz’s legacy is a notoriously vexed question in the history of eighteenth-century German philosophy. In reaction against the untenable traditional depiction o...

Abstractabstract:By revisiting the Phädon's proof of the indestructibility of the soul, this paper casts light on the sources that lie in the background of Mendelssohn's dialogue. After discussing Wolff's use of the Law of Continuity against the possibility of natural annihilation as a precedent for Mendelssohn's argument, I show that the latter is also heavily indebted to Boscovich's argument against the possibility of contiguity in the continuum. I contend that Mendelssohn's appropriation of Boscovich's argument is influenced by Wolff's treatment of (...) the hypothesis of the soul's transformation. I conclude with some remarks on Kant's refutation of the Phädon's proof in light of his possible acquaintance with Boscovich's natural philosophy. (shrink)

_Review of: Karin de Boer and Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet (eds.), _The Experiential Turn in Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy_, New York and London, Routledge, 2021, xii+309 pp. ISBN: 978-1-138-60683-8__._.

With regard to Christian Wolff’s invention of a new science of final causes that he called “teleology” this article examines the relationship between teleology and the science of perfection. On the one hand, it shows how an epistolary debate between Leibniz and Wolff in 1715 sheds light on the inherent teleological nature of the Leibnizian notions of perfection and harmony. On the other hand, it analyzes how Wolff eventually inverted priority relations between structure and function as a consequence of his (...) doctrinal revision of the modal status of essences – a revision that was provoked by Leibniz. (shrink)