Erhard Weigel: Werke II

›Arithmetische Beschreibung der Moral-Weißheit von Personen und Sachen‹ (Arithmetic description of the moral wisdom concerning persons and things) is Erhard Weigel’s most important work of social philosophy. It contains a pansophic political and social model that conceives the state as a moral space analogous to the domain of numbers. Weigel’s attempt to prove that certain numerical schemes such as the Tetractys form a basic principle in all categories of being complements his ascription of universal competence to the mathematical method as the sole way of grasping the essence of things. Weigel’s contractualist idea of the state and his approach to legal and political science with its emphasis on autonomy remain embedded in a universal concept that stresses the analogy of all categories of being and culminates in the idea of participation in the divine sapientia.