Abstract
Christian Wolff discusses the so-called three systems of mind–body interaction (which are actually five systems including materialist and idealist monism) at quite some length in the Psychologia rationalis, without arriving at a conclusion, however, that he himself considers satisfactory. He does support pre-established harmony eventually, but only as the lesser evil. In a similar vein, he officially endorses Leibnizian monadology but adds the caveat that it applies only to minds, thus in fact rejecting the monistic panpsychism that is characteristic at least of Leibniz’s mature metaphysics. The aim of this chapter is to disentangle some of the complexities of Wolff’s view of the mind–body problem and thus shed some light on what his view of it and of related metaphysical issues actually amounts to.
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Notes
- 1.
A preliminary version of this chapter was presented at the conference “Christian Wolffs Deutsche Metaphysik/Christan Wolff’s German Metaphysics” at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. I would like to thank the participants of this conference for their helpful comments, as well as Eric Watkins for his detailed and thorough comments on a later draft.
- 2.
- 3.
Watkins would agree thus far, I take it that the main point of disagreement here is whether this is primarily an agnostic thesis about the ultimate constituents of the world, or an actual, positive claim about them.
- 4.
Leduc (2018) argues that Wolff introduces the concept of element to designate the first constituents of bodies in the first place (i.e. without mental attributes at all) and mentions Leibniz just as one example of such a theory among others.
- 5.
Wolff (1751/1983, §.583) makes it clear that the internal power of simple things is not to be confused with an inner motion, i.e. a kind of physical motion, as that would require real parts, which a simple thing obviously does not have.
- 6.
I will analyze this peculiar argument in Sect. 7.3 in more detail.
- 7.
For an overview of the discussions of Leibniz’s “idealism” or “panpsychism”, see Smith (2011, pp. 101–105).
- 8.
I take this reference to More from Leduc (2018, p. 46).
- 9.
On this, see Reid (2012, pp. 44–51), in particular p. 51.
- 10.
Compare Leibniz’ Monadology (1714/1885, p. 609).
- 11.
Wolff discusses various empirical cases of harmony between mind and body in the section on empirical psychology in Deutsche Metaphysik (Wolff, 1751/1983, §§.527–539).
- 12.
This criticism of Malebranche is neither original (i.e. adopted from Leibniz) nor fair, because in Malebranche, God acts through natural laws and not by miraculous intervention (see Perler & Rudolph, 2000, pp. 229–234).
- 13.
On this aspect, compare Wunderlich (2016) and Wunderlich (forthcoming). On Leibniz as a potential resource for materialism see also Wolfe (2014, pp. 96–99, in particular p. 97f.) on Leibnizian influences on Diderot and Montpellier vitalism.
- 14.
A case in point would be John Toland (1670–1722) who appropriated and modified Leibnizian theorems into a partly Spinozistic, materialistic doctrine; compare, for instance, Leask (2012) and the literature quoted there.
- 15.
For a detailed reconstruction of the contents of this pamphlet and its publication history, see Mulsow (2002) and Mulsow (2018, vol. 2, pp. 11–96). Bucher apparently discussed the manuscript with his teacher Johann Baptist Roeschel (1652–1712). It was found in Roeschel’s estate and then later published by an unknown editor (see Mulsow, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 27, 37f).
- 16.
For details of the reception of Bucher’s pamphlet, see Mulsow (2018, vol. 2, pp. 73–77).
- 17.
Compare, for instance, Lennon and Stainton (2008).
- 18.
Compare Wolfe and van Esveld (2014).
- 19.
- 20.
For this use of substance concepts, see Olson (1997, pp. 27–31). Thanks to Eric Watkins for pointing me to this problem.
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Wunderlich, F. (2021). Wolff on Monadology and “Materialisterey”. In: Araujo, S.d.F., Pereira, T.C.R., Sturm, T. (eds) The Force of an Idea. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74435-9_7
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