Gedancken von dem Einfluße der göttlichen Vorsehung in die freyen Handlungen der Menschen

During the German Enlightenment, especially in Halle, determinists, compatibilists and libertarians were already arguing about human free will. Orthodox Wolffians took a position, based on a highly tenuous and very simple interpretation of Leibniz, which we would define today as ‘compatibilist’. It can be formulated in simple terms as follows: we may be able to know that we are determined to the actions that we perform, but we cannot know in advance what those actions are. Therefore nothing remains for us but to ‘decide’ and ‘act’ as if we were not determined but free. In his "Gedancken von dem Einfluße der göttlichen Vorsehung in die freyen Handlungen der Menschen", Georg Friedrich Meier (1718–1777) attempts to justify this form of epistemic compatibalism (avant la lettre), yet demonstrates above all the principle of determinism of this model.