Author(s):
Evers, Dirk
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Hewlett, Martinez J.
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Angehrn, Emil
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Herms, Eilert
[German Version]
I. The Concept The word
teleologia was a neologism coined in 1728 by C. Wolff (
Philosophia rationalis sive logica, 1728, §85) to denote the domain of natural philosophy that explains things on the basis of their end (Gk τέλος/
télos, “end, goal”; Ends and means); it was soon borrowed by other languages. In substance, however, the concept had an extensive prehistory. In the work of Aristotle, examination of phenomena on the basis of their “for-the-sake-of-which” (οὗ ἕνεκα/
hoú héneka) was one of the four forms of causality, which the Latin Middle Ages called
causa finalis: all natural movement is caused in part by the end or goal of its process. For Aristotle organic living creatures were also constituted by an inherent principle of instrumentality or entelechy. An ontological teleology was then developed further by Scholasticism, culminating in the teleological proof of the existence of God (see II below). The triumph of the modern natural sciences, however, with their concentration on efficient causes, resulted in the question of ends ¶ being considered scientifically unfruitful (F. Bacon) and disqualified as mere illusion. I. Kant, however, adopted Wolff ’s term; borrowing also from G.W. Leibniz (cf.
Discours de métaphysique, 1688, §§13 and 22; ET:
Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology, 1902, 21992), he employed it methodologically as an indispensible concept of reflection for judgment on the basis of the investigation of natural phenomena. Although neovitalism revived the idea of teleology with reference to living creatures (e.g. Hans Driesch [1867–1941]), …