Christian Henkel

In this article, I analyze Johann Christoph Sturm’s characterization of Cartesianism and his response to Descartes’s philosophy and that of his followers. In his days, Sturm (1635–1703) was an important philosopher and professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Altdorf. Sturm has a balanced reading of Descartes, neither echoing the polemics of Descartes’s adversaries nor blindly following the Frenchman’s philosophy. However, Sturm explicitly rejects being a Cartesian. In his On the Cartesians and Cartesianism (1677), Sturm differentiates three main meanings of Cartesianism: (1) sectarianism, (2) the method of radical doubt, and (3) radical theology. (1) Sturm rejects Cartesianism on the grounds of his eclecticism. (2) He questions Descartes’s method of doubt. (3) He argues that this constitutes a misrepresentation of Descartes’s own theological position. Sturm’s differentiated position on Cartesianism adds in significant ways to our knowledge of the reception of Cartesianism in early modern Germany. What’s more, it offers further insights into how early modern philosophers themselves thought about Cartesianism as a meta-philosophical label.

In this article, I study the development of German metaphysics from Daniel Cramer's Isagoge in metaphysicam Aristotelis to Kant's Critical Philosophy. While most seventeenth-century Lutheran authors conceive of metaphysics as atheoretical or purely speculative science of being in its most general terms, later authors, especially, Wolff, Meier and Kant raise the question of how metaphysics can be reformed in more practical terms. They struggle to articulate what this practical reform should actually amount to. At least two options are on the table: (1) metaphysics as an operative discipline à la Bacon; or (2) metaphysics as the foundation of moral philosophy.

In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Immanuel Kant famously diagnoses the poor condition of metaphysics at the time. While other disciplines, such as logic, mathematics, and natural sciences have sooner or later trodden the path of science, metaphysics has not been equally successful. Rather than reaching some kind of minimal scientific consensus, metaphysics is a notorious battlefield, and no proposition seems to be established beyond doubt. Kant is not the only one to diagnose the controversial status of metaphysics and its need for reform. We can find similar ideas in Leibniz, Wolff, and Meier. If this diagnosis is correct, it raises the question how metaphysics specifically in early modern Germany developed and what has led to its need for reform. Little is known about the development of the discipline of metaphysics in early modern Germany from the late sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. This article analyses how metaphysics in early modern Germany unfolded and argues that the call for reform stems from the increasing influence of a new scientific paradigm of practical usefulness and material progress codified in the Berlin Academy on the one hand, and a strong anti-metaphysical agenda outside the universities on the other hand.

In this paper, I analyse Émilie Du Châtelet’s (1706–49) account of causation which, in turn, is crucial for understanding her philosophical main work, the Institutions de physique (1740/1742). So far, the topic of causation in Du Châtelet’s thought has received but little attention despite its importance. I will show that Du Châtelet’s account of physical causation is that of physical influx much in line with the position taken by some of the most prominent eighteenth-century German metaphysicians at the time of the publication of her Institutions: Martin Knutzen (1713–49), Johann Peter Reusch (1691–1758) and the pre-Critical Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). I will argue that physical influx takes place at the level of simple substances or physical monads, and I will defend my interpretation against the main objection to physical influx: that it conflicts with Leibniz’s non-transfer argument. The ultimate metaphysical details regarding how physical influx has to be understood remain an issue, that of understanding the causality of the cause. This, however, is an issue that other causal theories face, too (in their own way).

One of the many areas of his philosophical project that René Descartes (1596–1650) left to be developed by future generations is political theory. While Descartes took relatively little interest in the realm of the political as long as the political stability necessary to tend to quiet philosophical meditation was maintained, later Cartesian philosophers developed their understanding of political theory in more explicit and detailed terms. Among these, two philosophers stand out: Géraud de Cordemoy (1626–1684) and Antoine Le Grand (1629–1699). However, their political philosophy is little known. I first study the case of Cordemoy who emerges as a fierce defender of absolutism, especially that of Louis XIV. I will then turn to Antoine Le Grand who equally favours monarchical rule over aristocracy and democracy. Overall, this article contributes in important ways to the history of political philosophy, specifically, in seventeenth-century France.

In this paper, I argue that Johann Christoph Sturm’s eclectic scientific method reveals an unexpected indebtedness to Francis Bacon’s thought. Sturm’s reception of Bacon is particularly surprising given that the German academic context in the second half of the seventeenth century was still largely Aristotelian. Sturm is indebted to Bacon in the following respects: (1) the critique of the current state of knowledge, (2) eclecticism, (3) a fluid transition from natural history to natural philoso-phy, (4) the conception of science as hypothetical and dynamic and (5) experimental philosophy and the use of instruments. Given that Sturm mentions Francis Bacon in important places in his work, these respects should not easily be dismissed as commonplace. Bacon is one of Sturm’s salient sources and they are both deeply concerned with a thoroughgoing reform of existing scientific practices.

In this article, I investigate Johann Christoph Sturm’s (1635–1703) mechanist account of plant life. The problem of life is one of the touchstones of any early modern mechanist philosophy. Plant life, in turn, constitutes the most rudimentary form of life. Sturm’s account is functionalist: plants perform the life-function: nutrition, growth, self-preservation, and generation. Sturm makes clear that what his Aristotelian predecessors called the ‘vegetative soul’ must be reduced to (1) the possession of an organic body (i.e., a higher-order structure of matter and its modifications) and (2) the extrinsic kinetic heat of the sun. In contrast to mechanists like Descartes, Sturm accepts teleology. He deals with the origin and transfer of motion on occasionalist grounds. For Sturm, all processes associated with the life of plants can be accounted for mechanically—all but the ultimate origin of the first plant’s seed, for which Sturm relies on the theory of pre-existence.

This paper argues that mechanism, occasionalism and finality (the acceptance of final causes) can be and were de facto integrated into a coherent system of natural philosophy by Johann Christoph Sturm (1635–1703). Previous scholarship has left the relation between these three elements understudied. According to Sturm, mechanism, occasionalism and finality can count as explanatorily useful elements of natural philosophy, and they might go some way to dealing with the problem of living beings. Occasionalism, in particular, serves a unifying ground: It will be shown that occasionalism can account for the problems of the source and transmission of motion that mechanism faces, while at the same time explaining the finality of non-rational living beings as designed by God.

Sufficiently grounding the origin of sense-perceptions in the mind is an issue that has concerned philosophers for a long time, and remains an issue even today. In eighteenth-century Germany prior to the publication of Kant’s Critical philosophy, the two main competing theories to causally ground sense-perceptions were pre-established harmony and physical influx, the latter of which ultimately carried the day. A third option had been around in the seventeenth century: occasionalism. However, historians of philosophy believe this option to have entirely disappeared in the eighteenth century. I will show that this is not the case. In this paper, I focus on one influential German occasionalist: Gottfried Ploucquet (1716–90). Ploucquet not only criticizes Leibniz’s theory of pre-established harmony for providing an ultimately ungrounded, subjective, and arbitrary account of the origin of sense-perceptions, but also presents his own daring alternative: a representationalist-occasionalist theory that locates the objective ground of sense-perceptions in the divine mind.

This article studies the communication between pure minds (angels, demons, and separated souls) on occasionalist grounds, or in terms of (as I shall call it) inter-mental occasionalism. Inter-mental occasionalism has been overlooked by historians and perhaps taken for a purely logical possibility. To close this lacuna, this article presents three case studies of inter-mental occasionalism: (1) Géraud de Cordemoy (1626–1684), (2) Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), and (3) the early Christian Wolff (1679–1754). Overall, this article shows that occasionalism has been a popular account of mental causation just as much as physical causation.

In this article, I revisit Leibniz's early views on physical causation, more specifically, his relation to physical occasionalism focusing on the period from 1668 to 1676. An in-depth analysis of the Confession of Nature against the Atheists taken together with the Catholic Demonstrations, Leibniz's correspondence with Jakob Thomasius from 1668/69, and the Pacidius Philalethi (1676) serve as evidence that his position leads to physical occasionalism. This receives further confirmation by taking into account Leibniz's familiarity with Weigel's occasionalism in contrast to Leibniz's later encounter of French occasionalism à la Cordemoy, La Forge, or Malebranche. Leibniz's exposure to Weigel's occasionalism, in turn, helps us better understand Leibniz's later critical reaction to occasionalism and how occasionalism helped him develop his own distinct views on causation as expressed in his mature philosophy.

This is the first book to focus on occasionalism in early modern German philosophy. It demonstrates that occasionalism provided a strong foundation for the thought of four important yet underexamined German philosophers: Erhard Weigel, Johann Christoph Sturm, Christian Wolff, and Gottfried Ploucquet. Occasionalism is most often associated with Cartesian early modern Christian philosophers, the most famous of whom is perhaps Nicolas Malebranche. Early modern German occasionalism has received very little scholarly attention, leaving us with an incomplete picture of the German causation debate from Leibniz to Kant. This book combines a chronological investigation of four influential and historically connected cases of occasionalism in early modern Germany with a reconstruction of arguments to address specific problems in metaphysics, natural philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy of psychology. Providing a sufficient ground for nature and human beings' mental and physical existence is a pressing issue for Weigel, Sturm, Wolff, and Ploucquet. In examining the thought of these four understudied German philosophers, this book helps us rethink the relation between metaphysics of nature and science of nature and better understand the development of early modern debates about causation. Occasionalism and the Debate about Causation in Early Modern Germany is an important resource for scholars and advanced students working on the history of early modern philosophy and the history of metaphysics and causation.