WOLFF, CHRISTIAN (1679–1754), rationalist philosopher of the German Enlightenment. Born in Breslau, Wolff was educated there and at the University of Jena. Though he had studied theology and philosophy, Wolff's main interest while at the university was in mathematics. Wolff earned his master's degree from the University of Leipzig in 1703; in 1707, with the help of a recommendation from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, he was appointed professor of mathematics and natural sciences at the relatively new University of Halle, where he taught until 1723. In that year he moved to the University of Marburg, subsequently returning in 1740 to Halle, where he remained until his death.

Wolff's education familiarized him with Lutheran, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic viewpoints in theology, with Aristotelian and Cartesian school traditions in philosophy, and with emerging empirical methods in Newtonian science. The most important single influence on Wolff's thought was Leibniz, but it is too simple to...