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TELEOLOGY and ITS LIMITS in ARISTOTLE and KANT by Thomas TELEOLOGY AND ITS LIMITS IN ARISTOTLE AND KANT by Thomas C. Marré BA in Philosophy and Classics, University of Dallas 2005 MA in Classics, Tufts University 2007 MA in Philosophy, Tufts University 2010 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2018 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Thomas C. Marré It was defended on July 10, 2018 and approved by Andrew Chignell, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Religion, Princeton University James V. Allen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto Jessica Gelber, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Co-Director: Stephen Engstrom, Professor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Co-Director: James G. Lennox, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh !ii Copyright © by Thomas C. Marré 2018 !iii TELEOLOGY AND ITS LIMITS IN ARISTOTLE AND KANT Thomas C. Marré, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Aristotle was a realist about natural teleology, Kant an anti-realist. My dissertation explains why each accorded it the epistemic and ontological status that he did. I articulate and defend novel conceptions of the problems they were addressing and their solutions to them. Aristotle’s natural teleology constitutes an essential part of his solution to a larger problem: how is motion or change possible? Motion had been thought by some to be unlimited and, therefore, unknowable. If there is to be a science of natural motion, then, motion must have limits. The telos was one such limit. Aristotle often glosses telos with limit, and this association is consistent with prior usage. It was, in fact, one of the three standardly recognized limits, together with beginning and middle—archē and meson. All three figure in Aristotle’s account of natural motion. The archē is the efficient cause, and the meson is that by which the archē brings about some telos. So understood, the telos has a natural relation to the possibility of motion: it serves as a limit in virtue of which motion is intelligible. Kant’s teleology is intimately related to disputes about universals and our empirical classifications of things. Central to my account is the category of community. Our discursive intellects require that we approach nature as if it were ordered into a system of genera and species. In such a system, the species are parts of the genus and stand together in community !iv under it, thereby constituting a whole. Similarly, an organism or natural end possesses the form of a system and its parts stand together in community under a common or communal ground. They too constitute a whole. But as with nature’s kinds, we can only approach an organism as if its parts formed a real whole: their communal ground is simple and so not to be met with in space. They possess, in other words, a noumenal ground. Consequently, organisms can be explained neither teleologically nor mechanistically, and teleology itself can never be accorded genuinely scientific status. Natural ends can be understood only on analogy with ourselves. !v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE….………..………………………………………………..……………………………………x NOTE ON SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………xii 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………..…………………………..……………………………1 1.1 ARISTOTLE…………………………………………………….…………………………….5 1.2 KANT………………………………………………………………………………………….8 1.3 CONCLUSION….…………………………………………………….…………………….13 2. TELOS KAI PERAS………………………………..………………………..………………………..15 2.1 IN THE BEGINNING: TELOS AND PERAS IN THE PRESOCRATICS……………..24 2.2 ARISTOTLE’S CRITICISM OF HIS PREDECESSORS……………….……….………39 2.3 KINĒSIS…………………………………………………………………….…….………….44 2.4 SOME DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING GENERATION………………….……………53 2.5 DEATH AND THE DIRECTION OF MOTION……………………….…………………56 2.6 CONCLUSION……………………………………….…………………..…………………67 3. FUNCTIONS AND EFFICIENT CAUSES………………..……………………..………….………71 3.1 THE PROBLEM……………………..…………………………………..………………….76 3.2. REDUCTIONISM…………………………………………………………………………..79 3.3 ELIMINATIVISM…………………………………………………………………………..85 3.4 AN IMPASSE AND A WAY THROUGH……………………………………………..……89 3.5 NOT ANY CHANCE THING………………………………………………………………97 3.6 ARCHĒ KAI TELOS……………………………………………………………………….101 3.7 CAUSES AND ANALOGICAL TERMS…………………………………………………105 3.8 TO HOU HENEKA…………………………………………………………………………109 3.9 FUNCTIONS AND GENERICS…………………………………………………..………112 !vi 3.10 WHY IS IT THERE?……………………………………………………………………..121 3.11 PARTS, TOOLS, AND TA METAXU…………………………………………………….125 3.12 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………..…………….134 APPENDIX: TELOS AND LIMIT AFTER ARISTOTLE…………………………………………..136 4. TELEOLOGY, COMMUNITY, AND NATURAL FORM IN KANT………………………..…..144 4.1. PARTS AND WHOLES, AGGREGATES AND SYSTEMS……………………………152 4.2 SYSTEMATICITY, LOGICAL DIVISION, AND DISJUNCTION………………….…157 4.3 AN HISTORICAL INTERLUDE IN TWO PARTS 4.3.1 Unity and Community in Some Scholastics……………………….….………..164 4.3.2 Locke, Leibniz, and the Quest for Community………………..………………169 4.4 LOGICAL PURPOSIVENESS AND PROJECTED COMMUNITIES…….………….175 4.5. THE GENERATIVE CRITERION OF SPECIES AND THE COMMUNAL CAUSE.………………………………………………………………………………..180 4.6 NATURAL ENDS: NUTRITION, GENERATION, AND SUBSTANTIAL FORM……..…………………………………………………………………………..187 4.7 BIOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALITY……………………………………………………….193 4.8 KANT’S USE OF ZWECK………………………………………………………………..201 4.9 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………204 5. PERSONS, PURPOSES, AND PARALOGISMS…………………………………………………207 5.1. INDIVIDUUM EST INEFFABILE………………………………………………………216 5.2 SAMENESS, SELF, AND SUBSTANCE…………………………………………………218 5.3 PERSONS AND PARALOGISMS………………………………………………………..230 5.4 PERSONS AND PRACTICAL REASON………………………………………………..235 5.5 THE FEELING OF LIFE…………………………………………………………………240 5.6 FROM PERSONS TO PURPOSES…………………..…………………………………..246 5.7 SAMENESS, SELF, AND SUBSTANCE (RENEWED)…………………..……………..256 5.8 CONCLUSION……………..…………………………………………….………………..258 !vii 6. TO HOU HENEKA……………………………………………………………….…………………262 6.1 TELOS AND ZWECK…….………………………………………………………………..264 6.2 FUNCTIONS AND NATURAL KINDS………………………..…………………………268 6.3 PROBLEM CONTEXTS………………………………………………………………….279 6.4 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………….284 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………287 !viii How is it possible that someone with knowledge of the beginning should be ignorant of the end? —Lady Philosophy Boethius, Consolatione 1.vi.27ff Miraculously, a plant twists itself out of a rock’s cleft; clinging to the harsh bluffs, living organization maintains itself in the midst of desolation; the formative drive [Trieb der Bildung] leaps from it like the spark hidden in the stone.1 —W. von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, v. 3, p.115 1 in Reill (2005). !ix PREFACE This dissertation would not have been possible without a great many people. I would like to thank my committee—Stephen Engstrom, James Lennox, John McDowell, Jessica Gelber, James Allen, and Andrew Chignell—for their support and interest in the project from the start, which now seems so long ago. I would also like to thank Jim, Steve, and Jessica in particular for reading so many drafts and for so many conversations over the past several years about the philosophical issues involved. I shudder to imagine what the result would have been without their very generous help, for which I am very grateful. I should also like to thank the late Allan Gotthelf, requiescat in pace. Though I had always expected my dissertation would involve Aristotle (and indeed Kant) in no small measure, it was Allan who encouraged me to write on Aristotle’s teleology in particular. My thoughts on the issue first took shape in a course he co-taught with Jim Lennox in my early years in the graduate program. In response to a paper I had written, Allan said after pledging to help develop the ideas presented therein that ‘I'm not averse in the least to helping—if I can—to improve the presentation of a view I think so wrong, when it's so well-conceived as yours is.’ I hope he would think that the presentation of the view has improved, and that the quality of its conception has not diminished—even if, as I suspect, he would still think it quite wrong. I owe in addition great thanks to the friends I have made in my time at Pittsburgh. I have profited tremendously from conversations with them on any number of topics, but they are most to be thanked for their friendship, and thus for the gift of a true human good. I should mention in particular Steve Makin, Casey Doyle, Preston Stovall, Laura Tomlinson, David de Bruijn, Eric Palmer, Ben Schulz, and Brooke McLane-Higginson, without whom I can scarcely imagine my time in Pittsburgh. But I would also like to thank in a very special way Jon Buttaci, whose friendship has been invaluable. Not only have I learned from him a great deal about Aristotle, but his energy, enthusiasm, and philosophical optimism always balanced what might otherwise have been an excessive skepticism and pessimism. He has been a true friend and gadfly, a lover of justice and, in many ways, an image of it. !x Finally, I should like to thank my beloved wife, Meghan: “sed quid plura? parcamus orationi quae debet et potest esse brevis ne maxuma opera tractando parum digne peragamus quom pro maxumo documento meritorum tuorum oculis omnium praeferam titulum salutis meae.”2 I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my mother and father, who have spent their lives invested
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