Not Dead Yet

It is often maintained that teleology was undermined in the early modern era by the scientific revolution. Hoping to correct this misperception, this essay looks at three areas in which teleology was upheld and developed by three pioneers of early modern science. The first main section argues that teleological reasoning is woven into the very fabric of William Harvey’s revolutionary work in biology. The second main section takes up Robert Boyle’s explicit and systematic defense of teleology and especially his effort to reconcile the methods and views of the new science with a deep-seated commitment to divine teleology. Finally, the last main section explores Pierre Maupertuis’s bold attempt to find a place for teleology in the heart of modern, mathematical physics.

Avicenna on Teleology: Final Causation and Goodness

This chapter examines Avicenna’s theory of final causation in light of two competing interpretations of Aristotelian teleology. According to the good-centered view, Aristotle’s claim that the end is a cause primarily conveys that some things are caused to occur by goodness. On this view, the concept of an end or goal, for Aristotle, is the concept of something good (from some perspective), and the concept of final causation is that of causation by goodness. According to the agent-centered view, Aristotle’s basic theory of the final cause says that it is the goal of the efficient cause, or the object of a power, that is, what the power is for. On this view, Aristotle’s fundamental account of what it is for something to be an end need not and should not refer to the goodness of that end. Avicenna’s portrayal of the final cause as the “cause of causes,” as well as his distinction between the end of motion and the good of motion, indicate that he adopts an agent-centered view. Though he also holds that every essential agent acts for the sake of something that is good, or apparently good, for the recipient of action, his explanation for this claim is compatible with his fundamentally value-neutral account of what it is to be a final cause.

Teleology in Aristotle

This chapter discusses Aristotle’s theory of natural teleology, especially as it features in his natural philosophy and biology. After a brief examination of Aristotle’s famous exhortation to his students about the value of studying sublunary living beings, the chapter offers a concise characterization of his conception of natural teleology in terms of the goal-directed (“crafting”) actions of immanent, internal natures, a discussion of Aristotle’s most explicit defense of teleology in the Physics, and an overview of the role teleology plays in his accounts of animal generation and sexual reproduction and in his explanations of why animals have the parts and features they have.

Hegel

Hegel defends the reality and the priority of immanent teleology. He does so by accepting Kant’s analysis of immanent teleology, but arguing against Kant’s subjectivist position. Key to Hegel’s argument is the idea that a general kind—in Hegel’s terms, a “concept” of a form of life—can be the substance or nature of the individual organism, or determine what it is to be that organism. In some ways Hegel here follows his own interpretation of Aristotle, while also trying to turn modern arguments against immanent teleology to his own opposing purposes. And we can approach in these terms the way in which Hegel tries to build his broader metaphysics around teleology.

“The Revised Method of Physico-Theology”

For Immanuel Kant, teleology was a philosophical method as well as a central topic for philosophy. As a philosophical method, teleology meant that no way of thinking that is natural for us can be in vain, as long as we understand it properly: this was the basis for Kant’s critique of traditional theoretical metaphysics but reconstruction of the central ideas of metaphysics on practical grounds. As a philosophical topic, Kant thought about teleology from his early book The Only Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763) until his late Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), eventually arriving at the position that a teleological outlook is a subjectively necessary regulative principle for our scientific inquiry into organic nature but also an indispensable part of our self-understanding as moral agents in the natural world.

Introduction

The core idea of teleology is intuitive enough: some things happen, or exist, for the sake of other things. Cats have claws for the sake of grasping their prey. Birds have wings for the sake of escaping predators. Cats stalk birds in order to catch them. Birds fly away in order to escape cats. This introduction first highlights various philosophical questions that arise as we dig deeper into the concept of teleology. Is teleology intrinsic or extrinsic? Does it involve intentionality? What is its scope? Is it explanatory? The chapter then provides brief overviews of how these and other questions are taken up by the volume’s authors as they trace the development of the concept of teleology through the ages in a wide variety of traditions and contexts.

Contemporary Teleology

Many contemporary thinkers see a challenge to teleology that accompanied Darwin’s proposal of modern evolutionary theory. This chapter articulates this challenge, and reviews the two primary contemporary approaches to teleology: etiological versus causal role accounts of biological function. Both approaches attempt to naturalize teleology—to analyze teleology in a way consistent with the natural sciences, especially biological science. While this is an enormously productive endeavor, there are some reasons to be skeptical about the ultimate success of this approach to teleology.

Teleology in Jewish Philosophy

Medieval and early modern Jewish philosophers developed their thinking in conversation with various bodies of literature. The influence of ancient Greek and Arabic sources was fundamental to the very constitution of medieval Jewish philosophical discourse. Toward the late Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers also established a critical dialogue with Christian Scholastics. In addition to these philosophical corpora, Jewish philosophers drew significantly upon rabbinic sources and the Hebrew Bible. In order to clarify the unique as well as shared elements in the thought of medieval Jewish philosophers, this chapter begins with a brief study of some early rabbinic sources on the purpose of the world. The second part of this chapter studies Maimonides’s critique of the veracity and usefulness of the belief in (anthropocentric) teleology, and the critical reception of his views by later philosophers. The third part addresses discussions of divine teleology in Kabbalistic literature. The fourth and final section elucidates Spinoza’s critique of teleology, its precise target and scope, and its debt to earlier sources discussed in this chapter.

Teleology in the Later Middle Ages

Teleological explanation is one of the legacies of antiquity that received a surprisingly muted response in the Middle Ages. Aristotle’s naturalized approach to teleology met with little enthusiasm, and grave doubts arose in the later Middle Ages over whether final causes are a legitimate kind of cause at all. This was a natural reaction to the distinctive feature of medieval teleology, which is that teleological causes are universal, intelligent, particular, forward-looking, intentional, and (in nonrational cases) extrinsic. When teleology is so understood, its explanatory role becomes limited to certain special cases. Indeed, the one place where reflection on ends plays a truly robust role in later medieval philosophy is in ethics. Even here, however, the consensus of antiquity—that human beings are and ought to be ultimately motivated by their own happiness—meets with growing resistance and eventually outright rejection.

Plato’s Teleology

This chapter analyses the basic features of Plato’s teleology. His dialogue Phaedo presents certain requirements for a proper causal account which, it is claimed, only the good can satisfy. It is particularly the demand for holism that singles out the good as the only proper cause. It is then argued that the cosmology of the Timaeus is consistent with the Phaedo’s requirements. While the Timaeus introduces “Necessity” as an additional cause, this can also be understood as a cause that contributes to good ends and to that extent as part of an overall teleological account. Hereby a notion of necessity comparable to Aristotle’s hypothetical necessity emerges, which the Timaeus’s craft model of the creation helps articulate. The chapter ends with a partial comparison of Plato’s with Aristotle’s natural teleology.