On the Necessity and Nature of Simples: Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, and the Pre-Critical Kant

Abstract

Abstract Standard histories of modern philosophy suggest, at least by their practice, that the philosophical landscape in Germany between Leibniz’s death in 1716 and the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 is of little significance, either intrinsically or for our understanding of those modern philosophers that are of interest. For example, Christian Wolff, whose comprehensive series of systematic textbooks was extremely influential at the time, is typically mentioned not for his own philosophical views, but rather for popularizing Leibniz’s philosophy. Alexander Baumgarten is widely recognized for his early advocacy of aesthetics as an autonomous discipline, but not for his views in metaphysics and epistemology, since his primary contribution in theoretical philosophy was a Latin textbook whose most immediately noticeable departure from Wolff is its unusually terse mode of presentation. The pre-Critical Kant is often dismissed as well, in part owing to disparaging remarks that he later made about his early works, and in part owing to the judgement that his pre-Critical writings are an instance of precisely the kind of dogmatic metaphysics that his Critical philosophy is supposed to overcome. The same refrain is repeated with minor variations for many other figures at the time, such as Martin Knutzen, Moses Mendelssohn, and Johann Nicolas Tetens.