Abstract
The architectonic of faculties, as it was developed in Wolff’s logic and psychology, underwent some fundamental changes in later generations of Wolffian thinkers. Wolff’s approach in analysing the hierarchy of faculties had been fundamentally reductionist: the final goal was to show that each and every mental state was in the end a product of one ‘force of representation’ (vis repraesentativa). Later Wolffians weakened this programme and ascribed a more independent role to some of the Wolffian faculties, most notably sensibility and the power of judgement. This had important repercussions for philosophy as a whole, for example, the emergence of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline in its own right. My contribution investigates this nexus between faculty psychology and other branches of philosophy with regard to major representatives of later Wolffianism, notably Baumgarten, Meier, Mendelssohn and Sulzer.
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Notes
- 1.
Buchenau (2018a, p. 416) claims that it was Baumgarten’s aesthetics that motivated his psychological views.
- 2.
Since we are here concerned with the possibility of a philosophy of sensible cognition, we will discuss only the so-called ‘inferior’ faculties and leave aside the ‘higher’ faculties of understanding, reason, etc.
- 3.
So if faculties are indeed conceptually related to laws, there are for Wolff only two inferior faculties in the strict sense.
- 4.
In all quotations, internal references have been removed. All translations by the author, unless indicated otherwise.
- 5.
See Wolff (1740/1972, §.549) and Falk Wunderlich’s contribution in this volume.
- 6.
Emended by comparing to Wolff (1738/1968, §.104)
- 7.
- 8.
Baumgarten does not address the question how faculties of the soul as powers in the broad sense could make a causal contribution as necessary grounds of representations, if the power to represent the world is a power in the strict sense and therefore in itself a sufficient ground of representations.
- 9.
This interpretation relies on the fact that the Latin original uses the subjunctive in the consequent. The law of imagination will use the indicative.
- 10.
Heßbrüggen-Walter (2004, p. 109) raises this point for Crusius. It also applies to Baumgarten.
- 11.
It is thus purely sensual and differs in this respect from the poetic faculty in Gottsched. See Mirbach (2014, p. 123).
- 12.
- 13.
The translated German title of the text refers to the two main faculties as the faculty of representation (Vermögen etwas vorzustellen) and the faculty of sensation (Vermögen etwas zu empfinden). As far as I can see, it has not yet been noted that the original French title refers to the faculty of representation as apperception. The implications of the theory presented in Sulzer (1773) for his understanding of apperception have therefore not been noted either.
- 14.
This is why Heinz (2011, p. 92) refers to Sulzer’s position as a ‘doctrine of two faculties’ (Zweivermögenslehre).
- 15.
Buchenau (2018b, p. 41) reads the passage as being limited to philosophical contemplation. That would however lead to the somewhat counterintuitive consequence that non-philosophers are never engaged in the representation of objects.
- 16.
See Heinz (2011, p. 91).
- 17.
Dumouchel (2018, p. 32) shows how this thesis fits into Sulzer’s overall psychology of sensations.
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Heßbrüggen-Walter, S. (2021). Wolffians and the Emancipation of Aesthetic Faculties. 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_13
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