The Impact of Psychologia empirica on the European Enlightenment

This chapter focuses on the effects of Wolff's philosophy in posterity. One of the most important facilitators of Wolff's thinking is his student Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. Baumgarten’s metaphysics, which relies entirely on Wolff's metaphysics, formed a crucial starting point for Immanuel Kant’s teaching of metaphysics. It also became an underlying factor in shaping Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s goal was to eliminate psychology from metaphysics, thus rejecting one of the pillars of Wolff's philosophical system. He succeeded to such an extent that Wolff later became marginalized in regard to philosophy. Baumgarten’s concept of aesthetics represented a radical turn, as it was based on Wolff's Psychologia empirica. Wolff's emphasis on empirical psychology became a direct catalyst for empirical and experimental research, although this aspect has been even more overlooked. His students became influential researchers in their home countries during the Enlightenment era. The Russian and Norwegian pioneers Mikhail Lomonosov and Johan Ernst Gunnerus may count as examples. They all place major emphasis on empirical and experimental research with a direct reference to Wolff. They were all polymaths and asserted themselves in virtually all scientific fields. This becomes an important argument for psychology not originating from a particular science, neither historically nor substantively, but that psychology instead is a type of science that contributes to almost all the other sciences.