Wolf, or WOLFF, JOHANN CHRISTIAN VON, philosopher and mathematician, was born a poor tanner's son at Breslau, 24th January 1679. At Jena he studied theology, but much more mathematics and philosophy, especially the writings of Descartes and Tschirnhausen. His annotations to the Medicina mentis of the latter brought him into connection with Leibnitz. In 1703 he began to give lectures at Leipzig in mathematics and philosophy, and when the incursion of Charles XII. into Saxony drove him from Leipzig he was called to Halle, on the recommendation of Leibnitz, to the chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. His system of metaphysical and moral philosophy, worked out according to strict mathematical method, quickly spread through Germany, but Wolf was violently attacked by his pietistic colleagues in Halle, declared to be a despoiler of religion, and a teacher of error, and formally accused to the government. The immediate ground of the accusation was an oration 'On the moral philosophy of the Chinese,' in which he spoke with approval of the morality of Confucius; but moreover the basest insinuations were brought against him as an advocate of anarchy. The Prussian king, Frederick-William I., was prejudiced against him by an argument that appealed to him. 'What does this pre-established harmony mean?' asked the king in his tobacco-parliament. 'It means,' was the reply, 'that if your tallest grenadier runs away, he can, properly speaking, not be justly punished, because his running away is, indeed, merely a piece of the pre-established harmony.' By a cabinet decree of November 15,
1723, Wolf was ordered on pain of death to quit Halle in twenty-four hours, and the Prussian dominions in two days; he was warmly received in Cassel, and appointed to a chair in Marburg. The dispute about his philosophical system now became general, and all Germany took part either for or against him, the victory ever inclining more and more to Wolf. Frederick the Great recalled him on his accession (1740) to be professor of the Law of Nature and Nations, and in 1743 he became chancellor of the university, and was raised to the rank of Baron of the Empire by the Elector of Bavaria during the regency. He died at Halle, April 5, 1754. Before his death he saw his philosophy spread over the whole of Germany and a great part of Europe; but he had outlived his reputation as an academic teacher. Wolf systematised and popularised the philosophy of Leibnitz, but his great fundamental principle of inlying purpose by Wolf was vulgarised and weakened into external utility. His Theologia Naturalis treats at immense length the existence and attributes of God, and gave an impulse to that development of natural theology and rationalism which soon almost drove out revelation by rendering it unnecessary. He did not intend to question the fact of a historical revelation, but he made it impossible by the criteria of revelation which he established, and Reimarus and the thinkers of the Aufklärung made the further step. The Wolfian philosophy held the world until the rise of Kant; and an important section of Kant's work was a destructive criticism of Wolf's dogmatism.
Wolf's works on philosophy fill twenty-two quarto volumes. See Christian Wolf's eigene Lebensbeschreibung, ed. by Wuttke (1841); the 18th-century books of Ludovici; and works cited at KANT.