Wolff, Christian
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 say that Wolff merely systematized the views of his great predecessor.
Wolff began lecturing on philosophy in 1709. In 1713 he published his first major work in the field, a German logic. Later German works dealt with metaphysics (1720), ethics (1720), politics (1721), physics (1723), teleology (1724), and physiology (1725).
In 1728 Wolff turned his attention beyond the borders of Germany to the larger intellectual world. This new international audience was addressed in Latin in a series of works that are larger, more extensive in scope, and some would say more "objective" or "scholastic" in character than their German predecessors. They include treatises on logic (1728), ontology (1729), cosmology (1731), empirical and rational psychology (1732 and 1734), natural theology (2 vols., 1736–1737), universal practical philosophy (2 vols., 1738–1739), natural law (8 vols., 1740–1748), jus gentium (1749), and ethics (5 vols., 1750–1753).
Two aspects of Wolff's life and thought are perhaps most significant for the history and development of religious thought. The first of these is his clash with Pietist theologians at Halle. Wolff's commitment to rational method, the content of his metaphysics, his success with students, and an abrasive personal style soon generated criticism. Among the issues at stake were Wolff's acceptance of the Leibnizian doctrine of preestablished harmony and his emphasis on God's intellect as the controlling framework for divine freedom and power. Wolff was accused of idealism, fatalism, determinism, Spinozism, and atheism—all fairly standard charges at the time, though in this case not without some basis in fact. When their efforts to alter his views or to limit his influence within the academic world did not succeed, some of Wolff's opponents made an external appeal to political authority. The result, in 1723, was an order from King Frederick William I—issued without a hearing—that removed Wolff from his professorship and banned him from Prussia within forty-eight hours on pain of death. This was perhaps a more serious escalation than even Wolff's enemies might have desired, with ominous implications for academic freedom. In fact, another post was immediately available at Marburg in Hesse-Cassel, and exile only heightened Wolff's popularity. Moreover, upon the accession of Frederick the Great to the Prussian throne in 1740, Wolff was recalled in triumph to Halle. In the meantime, he had switched from German to Latin in his writing and had published an eloquent essay on the freedom to philosophize in his "Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General" (1728).
The second issue worth noting is Wolff's commitment to natural theology. Wolff saw his philosophy as a support rather than a hindrance to religion. His account of God's existence and attributes was meant to lay the basis for a secure theology and ethics. This is in keeping with his goal to achieve through philosophy both a science and a wisdom. In retrospect, what Wolff has given posterity is the epitome of a rationalist tradition in philosophical theology. His demonstrations of the existence of God, for example, include both a priori and a posteriori proofs, forms of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. Their exposition presented Kant with a ready-made target for his well-known critique.
In both his teaching and early writings, Wolff made a major contribution toward establishing the German language as an accepted instrument for scientific work. The common opening phrase in the titles of his central German works ("Rational thoughts on …") and the equally common subtitle of his Latin volumes ("Treated according to the scientific method") mark Wolff's abiding concerns for method, order, and system. Wolff divided human knowledge into three parts: history (knowledge of the fact), philosophy (knowledge of the reason for the fact), and mathematics (knowledge of the quantity of things). He subdivided philosophy into metaphysics, physics, and practical philosophy; further divided metaphysics into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural theology; and popularized the distinction between empirical and rational modes of knowing. These divisions are implemented in both his German and Latin writings, which themselves enjoyed a huge success, often appearing in multiple editions right up to the time of his death. Wolff's views soon dominated the academic scene in Germany; his students filled key posts in institutions of higher education, and his prestige was immense. Kant called Wolff "the greatest of all the dogmatic philosophers." Despite contemporary adversities and relative obscurity today, Wolff was undoubtedly the most influential philosopher in Germany between the death of Leibniz in 1716 and the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in 1781.
Bibliography
A new edition of Wolff's Gesammelte Werke is well under way (Hildesheim, 1962–) in three series: (1) German works, (2) Latin works, and (3) related materials and documents. The Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General is available in an English translation by Richard A. Blackwell (Indianapolis, 1963). The only comprehensive study of Wolff's thought is Mariano Campo's Cristiano Wolff e il razionalismo precritico, 2 vols. (Milan, 1939); reprinted in Gesammelte Werke, series 3, vol. 9. For historical context, see Lewis White Beck's Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass., 1969) and my article "Christian Wolff and Leibniz," Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 241–262. For his metaphysics, see Le métaphysique de Christian Wolff (1990; Gesammelte Werke, series 3, vol. 12.1 & 12.2) by Jean École, the editor of Wolff's Latin metaphysics volumes. École has also edited a collection of essays by experts on Wolff's philosophy, Christian Wolff: Autour de la philosophie Wolfienne (2001; Gesammelte Werke, series 3, vol. 65). For Wolff's philosophical theology, see James D. Collins's God in Modern Philosophy (1959; reprint, Westport, Conn., 1978), pp. 133–143; Anton Bissinger's Die Struktur der Gotteserkenntnis: Studien zur Philosophie Christian Wolffs (Bonn, 1970); my article "The Existence of God, Natural Theology, and Christian Wolff," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (1973): 105–118; and two articles by Jean École, "De la démonstration a posteriori de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, ou la Theologia naturalis, Pars I de Christian Wolff," Giornale di metafisica 28 (1973): 363–388, 537–560, and "De la démonstration a priori de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, et des erreurs sur Dieu, ou la Theologia naturalis, Pars II de Christian Wolff," Giornale di metafisica 32 (1977): 85–109, 237–272.
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