Martin Knutzen, the German Wolffian philosopher, studied at the University of Königsberg and became an extraordinary professor there in 1734. Because he was a Wolffian, even though an unorthodox one, he never attained a full professorship in that Pietist-dominated school. However, because he was also a Pietist, Knutzen could never attain such a position in other German universities where Wolffians held the power of appointment.

Knutzen disagreed with Christian Wolff on several significant points. His Commentatio Philosophica de commercio Mentis et Corporis (Philosophical Commentary on the Relation between Mind and Body; Königsberg, 1735) was an attempt to reconcile Wolff's theory of preestablished harmony with the Pietist doctrine of physical influence. He extended the problem beyond Wolff, from the relation of soul and body to the interrelations of simple substances in general. In this and in a panpsychistic metaphysics, he was closer to Gottfried Wilhelm...