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Updated: June 18, 2025
But, looking to the "present state of our knowledge," this is merely to change the teleological argument from its gross Paleyerian form, into the argument from the ubiquitous operation of general laws. And we saw that this transformation is now a rational necessity.
He follows confessedly in Lotze’s path, not so much in regard to that thinker’s insistence upon the association of the causal and the teleological modes of interpretation, as in modifying the idea of causality. The former declares that all phenomena are connected by a guiding thread of causal connection and can be causally explained.
Now if, on the one hand, our idea of God is established as a self-testimony of God to our ethical consciousness and as a result of our teleological reasoning, and if, on the other, is established the fact of the world and of its processes going on conformably to law, and likewise the fact of human freedom and its actions upon the course of things, and finally the fact of the admission of the human will and action into a higher teleology which is superior to human will, and which, in the history of mankind, of individuals, and nations, reaches its higher ends, now by affirming, now by denying, human will; then we have simply to account for all these facts as mere facts, and the scientific attempt at pursuing them into their inner connection is nothing else but a more or less successful compromise.
This charm is not only present for reasons which, in an admissible sense, we may call teleological, on account, that is, of its past utility in reproduction, but its intensity and power are due to the simultaneous stirring of profound sexual impulses.
Darwin and Lamarck became fully apparent to me, and I saw how incoherent and unworkable in practice the later view was in comparison with the earlier. Then I read Mr. After this I went through the earlier part of my book, and cut out the expressions which I had used inadvertently, and which were inconsistent with a teleological view.
After carrying the question of the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori from the knowledge of nature over to the knowledge of our duty, Kant raises it, in the third place, in regard to our judgment concerning the subjective and objective purposiveness of things, or concerning their beauty and their perfection, and adds to his critique of the intellect and the will a critique of the faculty of aesthetic and teleological judgment.
Determinism was accepted by both schools but with a difference. To the Stoic, fatum is a synonym of Providence whose popular name is Zeus. The Epicurean also accepts fatum as governing the universe, but it is not teleological, and Zeus is not identified with it but is, like man, subordinated to it. Again, the Stoic is consistently fatalistic.
The dogmas of theology, philosophy holds itself free to criticize; they are for it problems. The teleological arguments of the older theologians have had to be left behind. Further, Evoluton knows no break. We cannot believe in the doctrines of the "fall" or in "original sin," for Evolution means a progress from lower to higher forms.
The former fixes the attention upon the end, the latter upon the means by which the end was attained; the former is what we sometimes call teleological, the latter scientific; the former was the attitude of the study of animals and plants before the middle of this century, the latter the spirit which actuates modern biology.
Theoretical philosophy is divided into the philosophy of nature, which is to use the mathematical method, hence to give a purely mechanical explanation of all external phenomena, including those of organic life, and to leave the consideration of the world as a teleological realm to religious presentiment and psychology.
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