Causa Finalis: Main Article

Causa Finalis
The causa finalis is the "final cause" or "purpose" in the traditional model of

causality; the rite of communion in the example of the chalice. Heidegger contrasts
this concept with the Greek telos.
"For centuries philosophy has taught that there are four causes":
causa efficiens: the effect that brings about the finished result.
End
Main article: Teleology
Aristotle defines the end, purpose, or final "cause" (τέλος, télos) as that for the
sake of which a thing is done. Like the form, this is a controversial type of
explanation in science; some have argued for its survival in evolutionary
biology, while Ernst Mayr denied that it continued to play a role. It is commonly
recognized that Aristotle's conception of nature is teleological in the sense
that Nature exhibits functionality in a more general sense than is exemplified in the
purposes that humans have. As discussed further below, Aristotle observed that
a telos does not necessarily involve deliberation, intention, consciousness, or
intelligence. An example of a relevant passage occurs in Physics II.8, where he
writes:
This is most obvious in the animals other than man: they make things neither by art
nor after inquiry or deliberation. That is why people wonder whether it is by
intelligence or by some other faculty that these creatures work, – spiders, ants, and
the like... It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not
observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were
in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is
present in art, it is present also in nature.
For example, according to Aristotle, a seed has the eventual adult plant as its end
(i.e., as its telos) if and only if the seed would become the adult plant under normal
circumstances. In Physics II.9, Aristotle hazards a few arguments that a
determination of the end (cause) of a phenomenon is more important than the
others. He argues that the end is that which brings it about, so for example "if one
defines the operation of sawing as being a certain kind of dividing, then this cannot
come about unless the saw has teeth of a certain kind; and these cannot be unless it
is of iron." According to Aristotle, once a final "cause" is in place, the material,
efficient and formal "causes" follow by necessity. However, he recommends that
the student of nature determine the other "causes" as well, and notes that not all
phenomena have an end, e.g., chance events.
Aristotle saw that his biological investigations provided insights into the causes of
things, especially into the final cause.
We should approach the investigation of every kind of animal without being
ashamed, since in each one of them there is something natural and something
beautiful. The absence of chance and the serving of ends are found in the works of
nature especially. And the end, for the sake of which a thing has been constructed
or has come to be, belongs to what is beautiful.
George Holmes Howison, in The Limits of Evolution (1901), highlights "final
causation" in presenting his theory of metaphysics, which he terms "personal
idealism", and to which he invites not only man, but all (ideal) life:
Here, in seeing that Final Cause – causation at the call of self-posited aim or end –
is the only full and genuine cause, we further see that Nature, the cosmic aggregate
of phenomena and the cosmic bond of their law which in the mood of vague and
inaccurate abstraction we call Force, is after all only an effect... Thus teleology, or
the Reign of Final Cause, the reign of ideality, is not only an element in the notion
of Evolution, but is the very vital cord in the notion. The conception of evolution is
founded at last and essentially in the conception of Progress: but this conception
has no meaning at all except in the light of a goal; there can be no goal unless there
is a Beyond for everything actual; and there is no such Beyond except through a
spontaneous ideal. The presupposition of Nature, as a system undergoing
evolution, is therefore the causal activity of our Pure Ideals. These are our three
organic and organizing conceptions called the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
However, Edward Feser argues, in line with the Aristotelian
and Thomistic tradition, that finality has been greatly misunderstood. Indeed,
without finality, efficient causality becomes inexplicable. Finality thus understood
is not purpose but that end towards which a thing is ordered.When a match is
rubbed against the side of a matchbox, the effect is not the appearance of an
elephant or the sounding of a drum, but fire.The effect is not arbitrary because the
match is ordered towards the end of fire[29] which is realized through efficient
causes.In their theoretical study of organism, more specifically propagating
organisation of process, Kauffman et al. (2008) remark:
Our language is teleological. We believe that autonomous agents constitute the
minimal physical system to which teleological language rightly applies.
Heidegger explains that "[w]hoever builds a house or a ship or forges a sacrificial
chalice reveals what is to be brought forth, according to the terms of the four
modes of occasioning."
The educationist David Waddington comments that although the efficient cause,
which he identifies as "the craftsman," might be thought the most significant of the
four, in his view each of Heidegger's four causes is "equally co-responsible" for
producing a craft item, in Heidegger's terms "bringing forth" the thing into
existence. Waddington cites Lovitt's description of this bringing forth as "a unified
process."
Submitted by:
Submitted to:
Nadado, Adriel Elijah R. Nadado
Ms. Aromin Mayette Lopez
STSN01A – HT122

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The causa finalis is the "final cause" or "purpose" in the traditional model of

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