Abstract
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) is one of the leading figures in eighteenth-century Western thought. This chapter serves as introduction to the whole volume. First, we outline his historical impact and his legacy, especially concerning his psychology. Second, we justify the need for a new book on his psychological program. Finally, we summarize the contributions to this volume.
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Notes
- 1.
Wolff was especially well received in Catholic countries in which the scholastic tradition was still alive (e.g., Italy). For the influence of the scholastic tradition on Wolff’s philosophy, see Leduc (2018).
- 2.
For more details about Wolff’s biography, see Kertscher (2018).
- 3.
The spirit of systematicity is a hallmark of Wolff’s work. It was not by accident that he wrote a specific essay to establish the difference between a systematic and an unsystematic intellect. According to him, “a systematic intellect is one that connects universal propositions to each other” (Wolff, 1729, §.2, p. 108), thus building a system of universal truths, whereas “an unsystematic intellect is one that … considers particular propositions as if they had nothing to do with the others” (§.5, p. 112). In this context, Wolff mentions Euclid’s Elements and Descartes’ Meditations as models to be followed, which betray the influence of the mathematical method on his thought. For a detailed discussion of Wolff’s concept of system, see Albrecht (2019).
- 4.
He was so influential in the development of German philosophy in the eighteenth century that Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, referred to him as “the famous Wolff, the greatest among all dogmatic philosophers” (Kant, 1787/1998, B xxxvi). Obviously, this characterization is a double-edged sword: Wolff is famous, indeed the most outstanding of all “dogmatic” philosophers, but he represented precisely those whose thought Kant wishes to destroy, and so Wolff might be the best, but only of those who have produced a “dogmatic” philosophy―clearly not a positive characterization. After Kant, it became increasingly unpopular to follow in Wolff’s footsteps, and this surely also impacted the legacy of his psychology.
- 5.
Talk of “psychology” probably originated in sources that are no longer accessible: Marko Marulič (1450–1524) is said to have used the title Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae liber I for a piece of writing in 1520. The term definitely can be found in texts by Joannes Thomas Freigius (1543–1583), and in book titles psychologia appears in works by Rudolf Göckel (1547–1628) and Otto Casmann (1562–1607), among others (e.g., Goclenius, 1590; Casmann, 1594). For more details, see Krstič (1964), Lapointe (1972), Brozek (1999), and Klempe (2020).
- 6.
Before Wolff, psychological topics appeared in discussions related to either the tradition of the scientia de anima (science of the soul), which largely consisted of commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, or medicine. It was Wolff who unified the whole field of psychological topics into a single science or discipline. For more details, see Araujo (forthcoming), Boenke (2005), and Vidal (2011).
- 7.
The volume by Rudolph and Goubet (2004) also explores dimensions of Wolff’s psychology, but among other things does not consider its reception and impact as comprehensively as we do here.
- 8.
Although the title page gives the date of publication as 1720, the book was actually published in December 1719, as Wolff himself recalls later (Wolff, 1726, §.4).
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Araujo, S.d.F., Pereira, T.C.R., Sturm, T. (2021). Introduction: Reevaluating Christian Wolff’s Psychology. 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_1
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