Moral and religion in the philosophy of Wolff

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Peoples 'Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)

Moral and religion in the philosophy of Wolff

L.E. Kryshtop

Moscow, Russia

Abstract

Christian Wolff, a one of the most well-known philosophers of the first half of the 18th century, is the figure quite ambiguous. In spite of the fact, that he is usually ranged chronologically among the thinkers of Enlightenment, there are researchers which find in his philosophical views some features inherent more to the scholastic tradition. But there are also the features which demonstrate Wolff as the thinker of Enlightenment. At the first it is Wolff's striving to praise the human reason and its capacities, that comes together with the fight for its liberation and independence, among all from God. We can show it with the greatest evidence in his practical philosophy, in which he tries to deduce the natural law, which he hold for the first principle of the morality, from the human nature and to give it the justification independent from God and His will.

Key words: Wolff, morality, religion, natural law, perfection, good, evil, virtue, God, nature, reason, understanding, will

Аннотация

МОРАЛЬ И РЕЛИГИЯ В ФИЛОСОФИИ ВОЛЬФА

Российский университет дружбы народов, Москва, Россия

Христиан Вольф -- один из известнейших немецких философов первой половины XVIII в. -- является фигурой весьма неоднозначной. Несмотря на то, что его хронологически принято относить к мыслителям эпохи Просвещения, ряд исследователей усматривают в его творчестве черты, свойственные скорее предшествующей схоластической традиции. Однако немало черт сближает Вольфа и с просветительской традицией. И самой главной такой чертой является возвеличивание человеческого разума и его способностей, сопряженное с борьбой за его независимость и самостоятельность, в том числе и от Бога. Ярче всего это прослеживается в Вольфовой морали, когда Вольф пытается дать вводимому им в качестве основного правила морали естественному закону обоснование, совершенно не зависимое от Бога.

Ключевые слова: Вольф, мораль, религия, естественный закон, совершенство, благо, зло, добродетель, Бог, природа, разум, рассудок, воля

Christian Wolff (1679-1754) was both an outstanding and controversial thinker, who was highly praised by the best-known German philosophers of the first half of the 18th century, but now unfortunately hardly only interested in experts. He lived and worked in what is usually referred to as the Age of Enlightenment in Germany (1), but the question of whether we can call him an Enlightenment philosopher is still hotly debated in research literature to this day [6, Pp. 306-307; 14, pp. 3-4; 12, pp. 14-15; 8, p. 109; 4, pp. 35-37].

But there are not a few reasons to include Wolff among the philosophers of the Enlightenment (although perhaps with certain restrictions). All kinds of enlightenment (regardless of nationality) demanded the elevation of reason and purification from the various prejudices and errors in all areas of human life. What should the cleaning consist of? What should be assigned to the prejudices and errors? How was the cleaning to be carried out? We can find different answers to these questions from different thinkers in different countries. But for all enlighteners both the firm orientation to reason and the emphasis on its excellent importance for the moral development of man, as well as the attempts to cleanse it of everything misleading and false, were characteristic. That was also suitable for Wolff, which we can feel above all in his practical philosophy.

Wolff already formulated the main principles of his ethical system in "German Ethics", which was published in 1720. Already there we find two fundamental concepts of Wolff's practical philosophy, namely the concept of perfection and that of natural law. mind god ethical independence

The concept of perfection is closely related to the concept of good. The good is what every person wants to achieve. In doing so, Wolff cites the property as that “which perfectly makes our inner and outer condition” [18, p. 6], cf. [19, p. 260]. The opposite of good - evil - is on the contrary that which makes us and our conditions less perfect [18, p. 6; 19, p. 262; 17, p. 391]. Perfection thus becomes the main criterion on the basis of which we judge whether things, conditions and actions are good or bad. All of our actions which contribute to increasing the perfection of the world are good, and those which diminish it are bad in themselves [18, pp. 6-7]. Wolff does not consider perfection to be a static ideal state that belongs to a thing, but speaks about different levels of perfection, because the more harmonious the agreement of the states of a thing, the more perfect it is. As a result, a progress becomes possible for us, a striving for the increase of perfection both in ourselves and in the environment. And only this infinite progress towards an ever greater perfection is our fate, because the highest perfection can only be with God and none of his creations (precisely because it is created by God) is able to achieve it [18, P. 31; 19, p. 671]. But this enhancement of the perfection in the world (to what extent it is under our control) must be the main purpose of all of our lives. All other particular intentions in themselves and in their whole must be classified under this main purpose as the means of attaining them [18, pp. 29-30, 79-80, 84-85].

But what drives a person to make perfection his goal? A closer look at this question leads Wolff to the formulation of the main rule of his morality, which he called the law of nature. Looking for the general ontological reasons of all things in the world, he comes to the conclusion that we have to look for them nowhere else but only in the things themselves, in their essence. Because everything that happens must have the reasons of existence either in itself (in its own being) or in something external (in the being of another thing). So the reasons of everything that happens lie in the things themselves. In the case of human free actions, their reasons are to be sought in the nature of the human soul. The conclusion that Wolff draws from this is the following: all our free actions result from our own nature and from the nature of things, from their constitution. They arise from our nature because the ideas about what is good and what is bad are in our soul. They arise from the nature of things, for these things are either good or bad in themselves. If our ideas of good and evil are correct, i.e. if our ideas of things correspond to actual things, then we do good actions. If we are wrong about either what is good and what is bad, or about the nature of things, we are doing evil acts. So the nature of things and our own nature oblige us to want what is good and to avoid evil [18, p. 9-10] and also to put forward what is better [18, p. 10]. Or, in other words, to undertake what makes our internal and external states more perfect and to avoid what makes them less perfect [18, pp. 11-12; 16, p. 127]. From this Wolff concludes the general rule, which reads: "Do what makes you and your or another state more perfect: do not do what makes it less perfect" [17, p. 12], cf. [15, p. 21- 22; 16, p. 113]. This rule is at the same time a law, because a law is called “a rule according to which we are connected to arrange our fTeye actions” [18, p. 15], and the above-mentioned rule is exactly of this type. And since this law results directly from the nature of things and has its basis in the nature of our soul, Wolff calls it a natural law [18, pp. 15, 16]. This rule applies to all free human actions without exception and is therefore general, which means that all other special rules must be drawn from it: “Since this rule now extends to all human actions; so one no longer needs any other law of nature, but all special laws must be proven from it ”[18, p. 16], cf. [18, pp. 13, 19, 24-26]. So everything that is good, i.e. that which makes us more perfect, is in accordance with our nature and vice versa, what corresponds to our nature is good. The best means to achieve happiness is nothing more than constant observance of the law of nature [18, p. 32, 35]. Wolff calls the willingness to act in this way in life virtue [18, p. 41] and claims that no one can be happy but a virtuous person [18, p. 43], because only on the way can one reach the highest Well, that Wolff defines as a constant, infinite progress towards perfection.

The play about Wolff's prospects conceals the reasons for accusing Wolff of atheism and free-thinking, with the result that he was banned from Halle in 1723. Because if it is enough to only obey the law of nature to achieve happiness, which is in agreement with the will of God, but does not depend directly on it, as a result of which an atheist can also be happy, then that does not mean that Wolff Sought to order God himself under the law of nature? An action does not emerge as good because it pleases God, but quite the other way around, the action pleases God, because it is good and God cannot want anything other than the mere good [19, p . 607-608]. In this way we can make the conclusion whether an action is good or bad on the basis of our knowledge of the natural law and even before we have recognized and proven the existence of God. For the actions are good or bad in themselves and not by God's will and pleasure: “If it were immediately possible that there was no God, and the present connection of things could exist without him; so the free actions of people would still be good or bad ”[18, p. 7].

An undisputed advantage of this view is that even atheists are not allowed to behave in an amoral way, because the rules of morality can be drawn from nature and seem to be independent of God's will [18, p. 17] (2). But this conclusion also has a disadvantage. If natural law is higher than God and God's will, and if God is to be regarded as more ordered under natural law, then a reasonable person needs nothing but natural duties in order to be happy [18, pp. 18, 28-29]. In other words, a reasonable person acts according to natural law and does not need any other laws (both civil and divine), because in this case reason becomes a law for itself [18, p. 18]. And only because of that loud

Wolff can make a person similar to God, because God has no one over him who could command God, and yet he makes the good out of the perfection of his nature [18, pp. 28-29]. Every human being is destined to do this.

This conclusion by Wolff gives M. Albrecht the reason to assert that Wolff succeeded in liberating practical philosophy from the theological justification and making it the basis of autonomous human reason [1, XXXVI]. W. Schneiders also shows the independence of morality from theology in Wolff's philosophy, but he is more cautious in this regard and characterizes this independence as only very limited [11, p. 158]. And indeed, although it can appear from the first glance that the natural law offered by Wolff as the main rule of morality can be recognized completely independently of God, on closer examination it turns out that the necessity of God in the philosophical system and to justify the importance of the Christian faith does not only arise episodically when Wolff wants to investigate the special human duties towards himself and God, but has its roots much deeper, namely in the necessity of the main concepts of Wolff's practical philosophy - natural law and perfection - to be justified [14, p. 5].

Wolff regards the law of nature as absolutely necessary, because it is suitable for the human being. We humans are such creatures that the rule of morality and its observance are natural to us, whether we like it or not. Nothing depends on our knowledge of this law and on our willingness to take it for truth. In any case, man directs his actions according to this law. Such underlining of the fact that the law of nature is rooted in the nature of the human being (3) can give the misleading impression that Wolff succeeded in deducing his main rule of morality independently of God, and as if his ethics turns out to be naturalistic.

But in the background of these theses stands the other question, namely: where does human nature come from? And the answer evidently results: God created man's nature in this way. And why did God create them like that? For such a course of things is the best and the most perfect of all possible. God can only create this world in this way from the perfection of his nature. And this perfection must be both intellectual (the perfection of the intellect, which lets it know and determine what is good and perfect) as well as moral (the perfection of the will, which always makes it want only what is good). And so in Wolff God proves himself to be all-perfect, all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful and s. W. Wesen, entirely in accordance with his traditional concept. And such Supreme Being appears with Wolff as a guarantor for the nature of man and the world, from which the natural law can be drawn. So we can say that Wolff succeeded in avoiding theonomy in the justification of the special ethical precepts, because all of them are drawn by natural law from the essence of the human soul and the nature of things and not from the will of God. But amazingly, this atheonomic justification proves to be possible only thanks to God the Almighty, who is so perfect that he is able to create this world so perfectly that his further interference is more unnecessary and simply dispensable.

From this point of view, Wolff's entire system of ethics appears in a different light. Even in those cases when the thinker says directly that belief in God is not necessary in order to become a virtuous person, he does not support and justify atheists at all, but tries to prove that even people, regardless of which Causes of the true knowledge of God and his qualities are robbed, have no right to behave amoral, because all people are assigned under the same natural law regardless of their religious creed. So it is more correct to speak of Wolff as not a defender of atheists, but rather as their accuser who tried to expose inconsistent and inconsistent in principle in their use of the mind, which was among others

M. Pott in his work, which is dedicated to the Enlightenment criticism of prejudice and superstition, makes [9, pp. 184-186], cf. [7, p. 208; 10, p. 406]. Because with Wolff, true morality cannot be realized and also cannot be thought without God.

Conclusion

Remarks

References

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