The Wolffian Philosophy and the Quest for Grounds

In opposition to the dominant picture of Wolffianism as a monolithic system, this chapter highlights the internal development of Wolff’s philosophical ideas from his earliest contributions to some of his later followers. Its main focus is on the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the relation of grounding, presented as a cornerstone of Wolff’s metaphilosophy (the concepts of method and system), epistemology (the forms of cognition), fundamental ontology (simple and composite beings), and psychology (perception and its laws). The final sections explore some significant departures from Wolff by Bilfinger (the category of Leibnizian-Wolffianism; the definition of modalities), Darjes (the critique of the PSR; the new meaning of “transcendental”), and Hanov (phenomena vs. things in themselves; dynamics and free will).