Important points for Wolff
Biography
Christian Wolff was born on 24 January 1679 in Breslau in the province of Silesia (now part of Poland) into a modest family.
He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Jena from 1699, soon adding philosophy. He entered Leipzig University and got the PD degree in 1703. In the later 3 years, he lectured there as a professor. Then he went to the University of Halle as a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. At Halle, he lectures in the fields of mathematics, physics, and all the main philosophical disciplines. Besides, he had made the acquaintance of Gottfried Leibniz, who deeply influenced his philosophy.
Halle was the headquarters of Pietism, which, after a long struggle against Lutheran dogmatism, had assumed the characteristics of a new orthodoxy. But Wollf’s professed ideal was to base theological truths on mathematically certain evidence. The seeds of conflict were planted due to this difference. In 1721, Wolff became pro-rector, delivering a speech named “On the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese” in which he praised the purity of the moral precepts of Confucius, pointing to them as evidence of the power of human reason to reach moral truth by its own efforts. Addition with Wolff’s comparison based on books by the Flemish missionaries François Noël (1651–1729) and Philippe Couplet (1623–1693), Moses, Christ, and Mohammed with Confucius were accused by Prof. August Hermann Francke of fatalism and atheism. And Wolff was ousted in 1723 from his first chair at Halle. His successors were Joachim Lange and his son. They irritated the king Frederick William I, who deprived Wolff of his office, and ordered Wolff to leave Prussian territory within 48 hours or be hanged. At the same day, Wolff went to the University of Marburg and was welcomed by the Landgrave of Hesse. Thanks to the expulsion, his philosophy attracted broad attention, discussed by people everywhere.
In 1738, Frederick William began the hard labor of trying to read Wolff.In 1740, Frederick William died, and one of the first acts of his son and successor, Frederick the Great, was to acquire him for the Prussian Academy but was firstly refused by Wolff. Wolff accepted later in 1740 and returned to Halle on December 6, 1740, as a professorship and vice-chancellorship at his previous institution in Halle. Wolff continued to lecture and publish actively, with his later efforts devoted particularly to works on the law of peoples, natural law, and ethics.
He died in Halle on 9 April 1754. He was very wealth and prolific. He also married and had several children.