Contents:
- Philosopher Briefs: Christian Wolff
- Dear Diary and Focus of Journaling
“What is this,” asked Mr. Self-Referential.
Philosopher Briefs: Christian Wolff – Take 2
(In which I write a little bit about my previous [mis]understanding of Wolff, and lead into a discussion of his relationship with Leibniz)
Yesterday I had initiated my intention. Today I hope to overcome these first, tottering steps, whose length and form indicate vector but no displacement. One important tool towards this end will be to supersede pseudo-intellectual semantic stuffing (e.g. this), to be replaced with contextual content (e.g. see below [I hope]).
I choose to begin by establishing the context from which I set out to understand this particular philosopher. I was aware of the name Wolff, and knew of him as the founder of the philosophical environment from which Kant’s critique was to eventually outgrow. It was also my understanding that Wolff’s own influence was dominated by Leibniz, and assumed that in following Leibniz he was also carrying on his most famous ideas (e.g. monads). It seems that this is a usual platform for those initiating a study of Wolff, or at least those comprising the intended audience of the SEP entry I am reading (i.e. my source for studying Wolff).
Accordingly, after the section on his biography, the SEP article continues by disambiguating the nature of Wolff’s relationship to Leibniz.
First of all, Yes, they did have a positive relationship. Thus Wolff (for instance) shared his works with Leibniz, and the latter was a sponsor of Wolff’s professorship at the University of Halle. But although the two had many intellectual correspondences, they were focused on mathematics (which would be no surprise to anyone were it not due to the change in intellectual fashion insofar as the study of each Leibniz and Wolff are concerned) and theology. Additionally, many of the works whose contents form the philosophies for which Leibniz is most famous today, were not yet published (including those that would only be published posthumously).
Instead, what the two intellectuals did share, philosophically speaking, was a general understanding of how basic philosophy was to be conducted. Philosophical ideas should be based on demonstrative a priori principles, and their treatment (e.g. the forming of a philosophical system) should heavily involve a methodology of definitions, and rigorous use of the principle of sufficient reason.
It is thus no revelation when I write that I had misunderstood Wolff, and by consequence, misunderstood the intellectual heritage from which Kant was to break free. Nonetheless, at this very moment in time I still lack an understanding of what a Wolffian philosophy comprises, nor can I state what philosophical tools, armaments, or weights, were to become the property of Kant by virtue of studying German philosophy.
I am however capable of adding some facts of interest to that last sentence: One of Wolff’s claims to fame was his choice of language for writing. He wrote philosophy in German at a time when Latin and French were commonly considered the only options. Additionally, he was among the first to write German for university, and in doing so was a pioneer of modern German philosophy at university. For this fact to be appreciated it first needs to be noted that the German universities were much slower than their other continental centres of study in reforming their education following the demise of recent centuries of scholasticism, and thus Wolff assisted in speeding their irrelevance and modernizing philosophy’s study.
Dear Diary; or, some stuff that I can write about, that happened within the most recent day
As I walked down to the Japanese garden, a few hours ago (from the point I now call “now”) I was pondering (in a tangential manner – it was but a topic that had derived from another and another) about how I can select what to write about, including the popular (and by some evaluations, cliche) approach to journaling that is diary keeping. In considering this theme I covered such micro-thoughts as “It is not a straight-forward task to assign future-value to present-event-recording,” or, “There is a major displacement between superficial value and potential value,” among others.
As I review today, a principle that comes to mind is that, “The unusual (or, the non-everyday) may be expected to be of more interest than what isn’t,” to which I mentally link a whole host of related principles that relate interest (itself a theme for exploration) with correlative parameters (i.e. more territory to be explored).
I could write in my diary about my doctor’s appointment (nb. I went to see a doctor for a second opinion). There is undoubtedly data related to the scene itself, or related emotional content, or ideas that flowed from that particular encounter, all of which are ripe for recording. But I don’t want to. (It is incidental that it was directly from that medical visit that I went to another outing) I went also to an event called (IIRC) Access, in which mentally disabled individuals worked at a specially (micro) managed cafeteria. (Again an incidental joining of destination by a singular outing) I went to the park where mum saw a chicken as we walked around the duck pond looking for turtles. None of these events is momentous in any obvious sense, and could even be described as being mundane. But (and this is a major caveat to the aforementioned hackneyed nature of such thing) perception is reality, and to write is to create the map whose semantic contours impress themselves upon the mind’s eye as a territory.
Thus, all things can be considered as specks that float across the sky and block the passage of a star’s light. Size is nothing, and stories are beyond measure.
