Divine intellect, human intellect – and artificial intelligence? A reinterpreted metaphysical perspective departing from Christian Wolff

Emanuel Lanzini Stobbe

doi:10.5007/1677-2954.2026.e111223

Authors

Emanuel Lanzini Stobbe Universidade Estadual de Londrina https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2627-8475

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2026.e111223

Keywords:

divine intellect, human intellect, artificial intelligence, Christian Wolff

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the concepts of divine intellect and human intellect as a philosophical background for the discussion of artificial intelligence. We take Christian Wolff’s philosophy as our philosophical reference for the discussion, this being perhaps the last great account of the subject prior to Kantian criticism against traditional metaphysics. In the first section, we present Wolff’s definition of “intellect” [Verstand; intellectus] as the faculty to represent distinctly that which is possible, that is, which is not contradictory. In the second section, we compare the notions of the (imperfect) human intellect and of the (perfect) divine intellect. Finally, in the third section, we draw considerations about the possibility of artificial intelligence as a kind of intellect between human and divine intellect – departing from key insights from Wolff’s philosophy but reformulated for contemporary debates.

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