I woke up from a passing loss of conscious motor control. I had dreamt, which is one thing I have severely preferred to avoid.
Oh my, how time does pass me by as I stare off into the dreamless horizons, which promise stagnant vistas and microcosm by which one could lose themselves for sheer anonymity (viz. the anonymous nature of those who do nothing, aim for nothing, and by heaven’s grace, concern themselves upon nothing and no one).
What I would like to start, to do, to attempt, to incorporate into my list of achievement…
Beginning a Cheat Sheet on Wolff
Biography:
Christian Wolff (1679-1754) was a German academic philosopher.
He communicated with Leibniz, who endorsed his position as a professor at Halle, although Wolff was exiled by the Prussian ruler (Frederick-Wilhelm) via an ignorant argument (viz that pre-established harmony exonerated deserters; nb he was invited back by the successor, Frederick the Great).
The relationship with Leibniz has been overstated (he did not even have access to Monadology, nor its ideas), and communication was virtually limited to mathematics. What they did share was a rationalist disposition and an emphasis on the PSR for their practice.
When people, like Kant et al, spoke of a “Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy”, what they meant was something like “ Wolff’s Dogmatic Rationalism, corrected and improved through the posthumously discovered views of Leibniz”.
Epistemology:
Epistemology begins (cf Descartes) with introspection, that allows confirmation of ourselves, external matter, and existence.
Human mind divides into (1) faculty of sense/imagination, and (2) faculty of understanding/reason. These faculties produce knowledge, which is a result of the ability to perceive facts about reality. There are two levels of knowledge, (1) common/vulgar knowledge and (2) scientific knowledge, and these are joined by certitude, which is also the goal of the human mind.
The thoughts used by the mind can be copied into logic, therefore their principles are the same. Thoughts depend on the fundamental POC (principle of contradiction), and secondly on the PSR (principle of sufficient reason).
Science is the product of the mind’s ability to conceive of facts/reality in an ordered/structured way and via a hierarchy of knowledge domains. It divides into a knowledge of history (bare facts via faculty of sense), philosophy (reasons via faculty of reason), and mathematics (related to plurality, through either faculty)1.
Philosophy divides into theoretical (re sets of all existing and possible objects) and practical (human action). (Nb possible objects are understood via POC, as possible/non-contradictory predicates, contrasting with “nothing” that ultimately incoherent, since we depend on POC to form our thoughts).
Metaphysics:
Wolff is interested in the principles of things, for instance, the difference between simple and composite beings, and what it means to have essential properties (viz compatible, prime, and non-accidental). [This speaks of his scholastic heritage, nb Wolff was the first German to produce a modern, non-scholastic, textbook].
The world is a collection of mutable things that are next to each other, follow upon one another, and are entirely connected with one another. German Metaphysics, §544
Matter can be described at the atomic level as its components of simples or atomic elements that are real, indivisible, and unextended points of force that lack internal motion yet are consistently in a state of change that is necessary for their individuation. (Cf Leibniz’s monads that are windowless, Wolff’s interact and thus are not).
Post-script: Now. Is that enough? I mean, I am aware that even by its own measure it has not scaled to completion (but still to a rather respectable initiation – I’d measure it to about half). But wait (who the hell am I talk to?) what do I mean by “enough” (does that mean towards some end or purpose, or even to allow an appropriation of truth by its application to the statement, “I had done this”?… hmm, I do believe that I rather approve of this last suggestion, a feature that reminds me of the tiresome adage, namely the one that highlights the “final” nature of the place that is searched when that place is also that wherein the sought is to be found). Urgh, I know I am dragging on, writing nothing as a reflection of such thoughts that swirl around like a leaf sailing a puddle on the footpath, whose restricting diameter is following the oppressive demands of the sun and its rays, as the feather goes nowhere faster and faster (as a measure of totality as compared with itself and its variations) and the possibilities of exploration and the function of the known converge into the same depressing nothing and everything. I mean: Fin.
