Natural Teleology of Good

2022 ◽  
pp. 58-118
Keyword(s):  
Natural Teleology

The Teleological Argument in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Kant-Studien ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-77
Author(s):  
Khafiz Kerimov
Keyword(s):  
Human Reason ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Natural Purpose

Abstract The first section of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals contains a teleological argument, the aim of which is to show that the natural purpose of human reason lies not in securing happiness but in morality. While the teleological argument is widely considered to be digressive and unconvincing in the secondary literature, in this article I attempt to show that the argument is neither digressive nor unconvincing. I argue that it fulfills an important synthetic task in the Groundwork (even if in a preliminary manner), that it is consistent with Kant’s views on natural teleology at the time, and that the criticism of happiness contained therein is as convincing as Kant’s criticism of happiness in the rest of the treatise.

scholarly journals Projection or encounter? Investigating Hans Jonas’ case for natural teleology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigurd Hverven ◽  
Thomas Netland
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Purposive Activity ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Living Organisms

AbstractThis article discusses Hans Jonas’ argument for teleology in living organisms, in light of recently raised concerns over enactivism’s “Jonasian turn.” Drawing on textual resources rarely discussed in contemporary enactivist literature on Jonas’ philosophy, we reconstruct five core ideas of his thinking: 1) That natural science’s rejection of teleology is methodological rather than ontological, and thus not a proof of its non-existence; 2) that denial of the reality of teleology amounts to a performative self-contradiction; 3) that the fact of evolution makes it implausible that only humans actualize purpose; 4) that the concept of metabolism delimits and gestures towards beings performing purposive activity; and 5) that concrete encounters with living organisms are indispensable for the judgment that they are purposive. Lastly, we draw attention to how Jonas’ understanding of teleology and inwardness in nonhuman life in terms of degrees of identity with human life poses a problem for his view. In this way, we hope to clarify what Jonas, as an important source of inspiration for the enactivist project, is proposing.

Everything in Nature is in Intellect: Forms and Natural Teleology in Ennead 6.2.21 (and elsewhere)

Phronesis ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Christopher Isaac Noble
Keyword(s):  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Natural Teleology

Abstract According to a straightforward reading of Enn. 6.2.21, all principles (logoi) in nature have their origin in corresponding features of a divine Intellect. But interpreters have often advocated more restricted readings of Intellect’s contents. These restricted readings are based in part on other textual evidence, and in part on the concern that a more expansive reading would require Intellect to think objects that are of trivial value (‘the value problem’) or whose purposes depend upon facts about sensible reality to which it has no access (‘the teleology problem’). I argue that restricted readings are not well supported, and that Plotinus is committed to his more expansive conception of Intellect’s contents by his understanding of Plato’s paradeigmatism.

scholarly journals On what a theory of natural law is supposed to be

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-200
Author(s):  
Michael Pakaluk
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
The Many ◽  
Locus Classicus

A theory may properly be called a theory of natural law, if either it functions as such a theory is expected to function; or it has the expected content; or it is a plausible interpretation of a theory generally acknowledged to be in the tradition of natural law. It functions as such a theory if it supports appeals to natural law intended to ‘contextualize’ human law. It has the expected content, if it adverts to providential, natural teleology as the basis for a law given to us prior to convention. It would clearly be located in the tradition, and rightly accounted as such a theory, if it were a plausible interpretation of Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, which is the locus classicus for the philosophical treatment of natural law. But the ‘New Natural Law,’ first expounded in Natural Law and Natural Rights (NLNR) of John Finnis, meets none of these criteria. NLNR seems best construed, then, as a contribution to the «law and morality » debate, not a theory of natural law. It gives merely another ‘method of ethics’ along with the many others put forward in the 20th c. If so, the philosophical work needed for a persuasive, contemporary revival of natural law still remains to be done.

scholarly journals Aristotle on Natural Slavery

Phronesis ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Heath
Keyword(s):  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Practical Deliberation ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Hypothetical Necessity

AbstractAristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in thumos (Pol. 7.7, 1327b18-31), would be sufficient to make natural slaves incapable of eudaimonia without being obtrusively implausible relative to what Aristotle is likely to have believed about non-Greeks. Since Aristotle seems to have believed that the existence of people who can be enslaved without injustice is a hypothetical necessity, if those capable of eudaimonia are to achieve it, the existence of natural slaves has implications for our understanding of Aristotle's natural teleology.

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