Christian Wolff: Gesammelte WerkeWithin German academic philosophy Christian Wolff (1679-1754) occupies an outstanding place in the first half of the 18th century. Between 1725 and 1765 almost all university philosophers were divided into supporters and opponents of Wolff, In 1735, for example, there were 123 “Wolffians” at German universities. Wolff’s theory was for decades at the centre of general philosophical debate, which once more attained a respectable scholarly level thanks to the “strict method of the famous Wolff, the greatest of philosophers”, as Kant later described him. The spread of Wolff's theories was so great that Voltaire characterised the age as “Frederico regnante, Wolfio dozente”. The universal character of Wolff’s theory, in which philosophy was conceived as a total science, Wolff’s first presentation of it in this scope in the German language, and the objectively conditioned order of his writings, all emphasise the authority of his orientation. An emphasis on the educational character of his philosophy made him for half a century the Praeceptor Germanicus. Soon after 1730 the designation “Philosophia Leibnito-Wolffiana” came into use for Wolff’s theory, which brought many elements of Leibniz’s thought into systematic and teachable form. Wolff’s own importance as a philosopher lies not least in the fact that he applied a specific conception of scientific system and method to the whole sphere of philosophy. The now complete, great comprehensive edition of Christian Wolff’s scholarly works, which is being continued with supplementary volumes of material and documentation of Wolff’s philosophy, makes available a complete work of undisputed interest in intellectual and philosophical history. For this new edition Wolff’s writings have for the most part undergone a revision in accordance with their importance, focussed on the historic significance of sources and influence ads well as on their own systematic importance. The studies undertaken in the course of this work and the information provided to the reader in the form of introductions, commentaries and bibliographies form a major part of the full picture of Wolff’s theories in today’s scholarship. It can already be said that this edition – predominantly quoted in the scholarly literature – and its apparatus have provided important new stimuli both for historians of 18th-century philosophy and law and for the history of scholarship in general, which have found expression in an new international interest in the rationalism of the 18th-century Enlightenment, long overshadowed by the philosophy of Kant. | |
Multivolume Work | |
Gesammelte Werke | |
Wolff, Christian | |
1962 | |
Olms | |
Hildesheim [u.a.] | |
PPN519956796 | |
http://www.olmsonline.de/purl?PPN519956796 | |
Volume | |
Abt. 1, Bd. 20,2 = Abt. 1, [4], Teil 2 | |
Allerhand nützliche Versuche, dadurch zu genauer Erkäntnis der Natur und Kunst der Weg gebähnet wird | |
Wolff, Christian | |
1982 | |
Hildesheim [u.a.] | |
PPN520164482 | |
622 | |
Philosophie/Neuzeit (bis Kant) | |
http://www.olmsonline.de/purl?PPN520164482 | |