Arnaud Pelletier Knihy

Published in 1713, Christian Wolff’s so-called German Logic was one of the most popular and most discussed books in eighteenth-century German philosophy. Generations of students have learned philosophy through this textbook, which played a central role in the invention of the so-called “Leibnizo-Wolffian philosophy”, and thus in the controversies that opposed Wolffians to anti-Wolffians in the first half of the century. This volume gathers studies addressing its context (particularly regarding the definition of philosophy, the notion of invention or the way how the book shaped an enduring but ill-formed picture of Leibniz), its major developments (on experience, hypothesis or error) and some aspects of its (controversial) reception by Müller, Baumgarten and Kant. These studies show how Christian Wolff’s very first book-length philosophical publication, though largely ignored today, has actually shaped the vocabulary and numerous issues of the philosophical German Enlightenment.

The philosophy of Leibniz is often considered as an intellectualism. Speculation is said to take precedence over experience in it. Against this persistent misunderstanding, Leibniz holds that experience plays a constitutive role in all areas of knowledge, even in mathematics and even in metaphysics. For metaphysics itself shall rely on common experiences and empirical observations. In this sense, one can speak of a true experimental philosophy in Leibniz, which does not reduce itself to a mere explanation of natural phenomena through deduction and induction – which was the understanding of 'experimental philosophy' when Newton coined the term. On the contrary, Leibniz's experimental philosophy seeks to overcome the vacuity of the modest empiricists and the boldness of the so-called 'experimental philosophers'. Without being exhaustive, this volume brings together contributions on the various facets of this experimental philosophy – and on the various aspects of experience itself – from considerations in metaphysics and natural philosophy to Leibniz's project of an encyclopaedia of all knowledge.