Chapter Four The Place of the Good in Aristotle's Natural Teleology by Allan Gotthelf

In previous writings I have offered an interpretation of Aristotle's conception of final causality in terms of his conception of an "irreducible potential for form."1 I have argued that final causality is operative in nature, and teleological explanation thus appropriate, only when there is being actualized a potential for a complex organic outcome which is not ontologically reducible to a sum of actualizations of potentials of the organ- ism's elemental constituents. At no place in this analysis do I refer to the goodness of that complex organic outcome.2 Some recent writers have suggested that the absence of any reference to goodness in the analysis of Aristotelian ends is a mistake. Thus, one of the most influential recent discussions of teleological explanation, John Cooper's 1982 Owen Festschrift paper, "Aristotle on Natural Teleology," begins as follows: Aristotle believed that many (not, of course, all) natural events and facts need to be explained by reference to natural goals. He understands by a goal (ov evexa) whether natural or not, something good (from some point of view) that something else causes or makes possible, where this other thing exists or hap- pens (at least in part) because of that good. Copyright © 1988 Allan Gotthelf. Revised from the paper read November 19, 1987, at Clark University, as part of the Tenth Annual Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. 1. Gotthelf 1976/77, reprinted with a long "Postscript 1986" as Gotthelf 1987a. Cf. Gotthelf 1980, 19876. 2. By the "goodness" of X here and throughout I mean merely X's being good (in whatever way, and for whatever subject, if any, it is). I do not mean to restrict the term to moral virtue. In a note at this point, after citing some passages, Cooper states: That the concept of a goal is the concept of something good is a view Aristotle inherited from Plato's Phaedo (cf. e.g. 97c6-d3, el-4, 98a6-b3, 99a7-c7); unless one bears the connection between goal and good clearly in mind one will fail to under- stand much that Aristotle says about natural teleology, and many applications he makes of it.... Andrew Woodfield (1976, pp. 205-206) correctly notes that according to Aristotle all tele- ological explanations are claims that something happened because it is good, and makes this theme central to his own uni- fying account of teleological description.3 In a paper published in the 1985 Balme Festschrift, Charles Kahn makes a similar claim, and he too cites Woodfield: The following schema is borrowed from Andrew Woodfield, whose analysis seems to me the most insightful. (The formu- lation here is limited to the simpler case of natural teleology, as distinct from the intentional finality of art and choice). A is (or occurs) for the sake o B may be analyzed as: (i) B is good (for the relevant subject) (ii) A contributes to, or is necessary for, B (iii) Therefore, A occurs (the relevant subject has or does A).4 As these commentators have noted, Aristotle himself fre- quently conjoins the terms 2e홢.os ("end") and oh evExa ("that for the sake of which") with aya66v ("good").5 And there are several passages where he appears to suggest that reference to the good is fundamental to our understanding of the end or final cause. For instance, in Metaphysics A 7 he characterizes his predecessors' limited grasp of the final cause as follows: That for the sake of which actions and changes and movements take place, they assert to be a cause in a way, but not in this way, i.e. not in the way in which it is its nature to be a cause. For those who speak of reason or friendship class these causes as goods; they do not speak, however, as if anything that either existed or came into being for the sake of these, but as if movements started from these.... Therefore it turns out that in a sense they both say and do not say the good is a cause; for they do not call it a cause qua good but only incidentally (988b6-15; tr. Ross). 3. Cooper 1982, p. 197 (1987, p. 245). 4. Kahn 1985, p. 197. 5. Or peanov ("better") or eo ("well"), etc. Cooper lists several of these passages in 1982, p. 197n1 (1987, p. 245n4).