Orientalism and antivoluntarism in the history of ethics - On Christian Wolff's 'Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica'

Christian Wolff's 1721 "Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chines e" is generally read as championing the autonomy of ethics from religion. T his is too simple: Wolff's ethics was an antivoluntarist "religious" ethics . The example of the Chinese confirmed for Wolff that revelation is not nec essary for knowledge or practice of genuine virtue, though he held that the Chinese achieve only the first of three "degrees of virtue." (Most Christi ans, including the Pietists who drove Wolff from Halle shortly after he del ivered the "Discourse", did not, in his judgment, achieve even that.) China 's being perceived as outside of Western (and sacred) history made it a con genial example of the ethics and moral anthropology that, in Wolff's time, were struggling against the voluntarism of a Christian ethics premised on o riginal sin.