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Drechsler, Wolfgang --- "Christian Wolff (1679–1754)" [2005] ELECD 185; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420321

Section: Chapter 61

Section Title: Christian Wolff (1679–1754)

Author(s): Drechsler, Wolfgang

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

61 Christian Wolff (1679­1754)
Wolfgang Drechsler


Introduction
Christian Wolff is the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz
and Kant. His main achievement is a complete set of work on practically any
scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demon-
strative­deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak
of Enlightenment rationality in Germany. Wolff is also the creator of German
as the language of scholarly instruction and research, although he published
also in Latin, so that an international audience could, and did, read him. A
founding father of, inter alia, economics and public administration as aca-
demic disciplines, he concentrated especially in these fields on advice, on
practical matters for members of government, and on the professional nature
of university education. Although he was a quintessentially continental thinker,
both in form and in content, his work is said to have had a strong impact even
on the American Declaration of Independence (Goebel, 1920).

Biography1
Wolff was born on 24 January 1679 in Breslau, Silesia. Coming from a
modest background, he received his degrees from the University of Leipzig
and spent his entire life as a university professor of mathematics, sciences,
philosophy and, later, public law at the Universities of Halle, Prussia (1706­
23 and 1740­54) and Marburg, Hesse-Cassel (1723­40).
In 1723, Wolff was ousted from his first chair at Halle in one of the most
celebrated academic dramas of the eighteenth century. By decree of the King
of Prussia, initiated by the ...