Christian Wolff (philosopher)
German philosopher
1679 CE to 1754 CE
Christian Wolff (less correctly Wolf; also known as Wolfius; ennobled as: Christian Freiherr von Wolff; 24 January 1679 – 9 April 1754) is a German philosopher.
He is the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant.
His main achievement is 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 is also the creator of German as the language of scholarly instruction and research, although he also writes in Latin, so that an international audience can, and does, read him.
A founding father of, among other fields, economics and public administration as academic disciplines, he concentrates especially in these fields, giving advice on practical matters to people in government, and stressing the professional nature of university education.
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The Great Crossroads
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The philosopher Christian Wolff is ousted from his first chair at Halle in 1723 in one of the most celebrated academic dramas of the eighteenth century.
Born in Breslau, Silesia, in modest circumstances, Wolff had studied first mathematics and physics at the University of Jena, to which he had soon added philosophy.
He had qualified in 1703, has Privatdozent in the University of Leipzig, where he lectured till 1706, when he had been called as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy to Halle.
He had earlier made the acquaintance of the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, of whose philosophy his own system is a modification.
In Halle, Wolff had limited himself at first to mathematics, but on the departure of a colleague he had added physics, and presently included all the main philosophical disciplines.
The claims that Wolff advanced on behalf of the philosophic reason, however, had appeared impious to his theological colleagues.
Halle is the headquarters of Pietism, which, after a long struggle against Lutheran dogmatism, has itself assumed the characteristics of a new orthodoxy.
Wolff's professed ideal is to base theological truths on evidence of mathematical certitude, and strife with the Pietists had broken out openly in 1721, when Wolff, on the occasion of laying down the office of pro-rector, had delivered an oration "On the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese,” in which he had praised the purity of the moral precepts of Confucius, pointing to them as an evidence of the power of human reason to attain by its own efforts to moral truth.
His enemies had gained the ear of the king Frederick William I and represented to 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 had at once deprived Wolff of his office, and commanded him to leave Prussian territory within forty-eight hours or be hanged.
Wolff passes into Saxony the same day.
Exiled from Berlin for his atheistic stance, Christian Wolff presently proceeds from Saxony to Marburg in Hesse-Kassel, to whose university he had received a call even before this crisis, which is now renewed.
Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, receives him with every mark of distinction, and the circumstances of his expulsion draw universal attention to his philosophy.
It is everywhere discussed.