“Dangerous doctrines” On Christian Wolff’s Letter to August Hermann Francke of July 14, 1721

Abstract

On July 14th, 1721, two days after Wolff’s famous discourse on the practical philosophy of the Chinese, Wolff sent a letter to August Hermann Francke, who asked for the manuscript of his speech. Wolff refused to hand it over. Following a sketch of the academic-political context of Wolff’s discourse and an overview of the history of the discovery of Chinese culture in Europe, this paper shows that Wolff’s argument — that the hypothetical necessity of the existence of the world does not preclude the freedom of human will within the world — is unconvincing: the contingency of the world as a whole does not negate the necessity of the occurrences of the world. From this, Joachim Lange derived the accusation of fatalism. Wolff further posits that while the law of nature indeed has its reason in divine intellect, the unconditional validity of natural law guarantees its existence independently of God’s existence.