ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes and discusses the occasionalism of the young Christian Wolff (1679–1754), Leibniz’ famous ‘disciple’, and a student of Weigel’s successor Hamberger. In the early stages of his career, Wolff had endorsed occasionalism to ground language. Here, Wolff’s case essentially rests on the passive nature of matter, the non-transferability of modes, and the feebleness of the human mind. According to the young Wolff, the passive nature of matter excludes real body-body causation and real body-mind causation, while the feebleness of our mind excludes real mind-body causation. In contrast to Weigel and Sturm, the young Wolff also claims that the mind’s own thinking is determined by God, and he therefore endorses wholesale occasionalism. Wolff’s mind starts to change when he begins to correspond with Leibniz and when his own philosophy takes shape. In his mature career, Wolff becomes a staunch critic of occasionalism because (according to him) it violates the principle of sufficient reason and runs counter to reasonable scientific explanation and the most recent developments in dynamics.
