Living Without Ends

For the ancient Greeks, observation of the natural world revealed to their inquisitive minds designs and processes and consistent courses and outcomes that in their estimation evinced an essential goal-oriented structure to existence, for all things seemed oriented towards some predetermined end, and if that is the case, that is, if each thing has its own particular end or purpose, and attained its arete (its excellence) in the realization of that end, then that end or purpose must have been present at its creation. One of the greatest of the ancient Greeks, Aristotle, used the example of the acorn, for was not the acorn’s invariable course that of becoming an oak tree, never swerving to become an evergreen? The evidence for all things having a predetermined end must have seemed abundant to the inquisitive Greeks, for did the eggs of doves produce more doves and not eagles, did tadpoles become frogs and not turtles? Aristotle observed that given necessary conditions such as suitable soil and adequate sunshine and rain, the acorn becomes the oak tree and never anything else. Why must this end be the unvarying aim of an acorn, unless at its creation the acorn possessed that specific end as an essential orientation of its existence? Possession of an innate end seemed a sound explanation for the invariant course of an acorn. Inanimate objects as well have an end, for in the fabrication of a knife, what is the purpose or the end of such an object if not to cut, and is not the fulfillment of this end realized to the extent that the knife cuts well? Only the sharp knife realizes its optimum potentiae, for a knife that does not cut well fails in its purpose, and thus a dull knife lacks arete, at least far less so than a knife that cuts well. For the Greeks, the term for end is telos, and therefore the telos of an acorn is an oak tree, the telos of a knife is cutting well.

Cutting well is the final end, the summum bonum of a knife, this end being present at its creation. The existence of a dull knife is the existence of an object incapable of realizing its end, and therefore intervention is required to realize the purpose of the knife, and the knife is sharpened. If the knife cannot be satisfactorily sharpened, then it never realizes its purpose, and is a failed knife, and perhaps can be employed to another purpose, such as some sort of hammering device or a paperweight. What is the end of a book other than to be read, of a chair other than to be sat upon? Yes, the book can be put to other uses, such as a doorstop, but one hardly goes to the trouble to write a book, and publishers to publish a book, for any intent other than its being read. The motivation for fabricating a particular book may be wholly aesthetic, with the intent to create as beautiful a book as the fabricator can devise, with the fabricator not bothered at all whether the book is read or not, but in this case, the book should be considered as a work or art, or an attempt at the creation of art. The creation of an artwork was the intended end at the object’s conception. Likewise for a chair. A particular chair can be utilitarian merely, or can be both a functioning chair and a work of art, but the intent of a chair is to be sat upon, and any object not fulfilling of this purpose seems not really a chair but something else. A rock, and one of a certain shape particularly, can be occupied as a chair, but chairhood hardly is its purpose or end, if a rock can be said to have an end. The same can be said of a log, or of many, perhaps innumerably many, other objects that may at some moment serve as a resting place, and hence thought of as a chair of sorts when so used, but such objects are not truly chairs.

What of human beings? Do people have a telos? For Aristotle, happiness is the telos of humans, for all rational persons desire happiness, and seek to avoid a state of unhappiness. That fortunate individual wholly happy has no further needs and no further goals whose unfulfillment brings vexation, no unmet satisfactions injurious to happiness. Such an individual is suffering no lack, and therefore such a being must be one for whom telos is actuality and not a potentiality. Though satisfaction and happiness can be found in the pursuit of a goal, the individual motivated to action by a perceived absence of a desired good is an individual with an end in view, out there on the horizon, not yet attained.

For Aristotle, humans have as their distinguishing characteristic not the strength of the lion nor wings to soar with falcons, but far beyond all other creatures humans command the power of reasoning, and possess speech to enable and to express the power of reasoning. Whereas what distinguishes the human is the capacity to reason at a higher or more refined and abstract a level than all other creatures, then exercise of this power must be integral to human happiness. Not exercising one’s greatest gift is a denial antithetical to one’s arete, and therefore such a failure often proves injurious to happiness. Aristotle believed that eudaimonia, or human flourishing, was realized through a life of virtue, and virtue involves doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons, and therefore reasoning is essential to virtue, and reasoning, therefore, is essential to human happiness, and hence is indispensable to realizing human telos.

For Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher for whom Epicureanism is named, the telos of a human being is pleasure, for he held that humans naturally seek the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant. For Epicurus, though pleasure is the telos of a human being, human happiness is not found in wanton indulgence in every sensuous delight available, or to the fullest degree possible, for such indiscretion and incontinence must lead to misery. Rather, true and lasting pleasure is found in balance and modesty and sagacious choices. The state of serenity sought by Epicurus and his followers required a dispossession of all unnecessary desires, and avoidance of the discontent concomitant in the courting of desires that must or should remain unfulfilled. Even for those worthy and satisfiable pleasures, overindulgence is disturbing of tranquility and must lead to pain.

Indeed, Epicurus advised that we not mar what we presently possess by yearning for what we have not. For Epicurus, a blessed or happy state of contentment is created only when one cultivates one’s own garden, and appreciates and relishes the abundant pleasures found there, rather than repine for the presumed satisfactions and ecstasies of other, longed-for realms. Avoidance of physical pain and absence of mental anguish were for Epicurus essential states for human happiness, and these states are at risk if one indulges in sensuous delights to excess, or one assigns to sensuous delights greater importance than they can sustain. Epicurus believed that humans realize the blessed state of ataraxia (freedom from emotional disquiet) through having the companionship of good friends, having the freedom to think and to act according to one’ will and one’s desire, and having – for this is essential to ataraxia - an examined life. Hence true, enduring pleasure is found only through contemplation, and a life of contemplation is contrary to a life in which physical pleasures are paramount, and their gratification is the ruling drive or principle in one’s life. Pleasure is the central element in Epicureanism, but maximizing felicity requires grasping the concept of balance, for overindulgence in anything tends to disturb and disquiet, rather than to reward. Determination of the right balance, abjuring of pleasures that are unnecessary or are strenuous to obtain, and comprehending what represents good judgment in these determinations and what does not, all require sound reasoning capability, and hence Epicurus, as did Aristotle, believed human reasoning essential to human telos.

The belief in the essentiality of the concept of telos in understanding the nature of existence remains a vital one today, for the belief in teleology, that is, belief that there is some design or purpose operative in the world, some end towards which life, particularly human life, is progressing, remains prevalent. Many see design in the material world, and even those who accept Darwinism and the many findings from evolutionary biology believe that the improbabilities and almost miraculous odds that seem present throughout the evolution of life on this planet reveal the certitude of divine intervention along the way. Where it not for the guidance of God, many believe, then evolution would not have unfolded as it did, and the development of human consciousness, at least to its present seeming fullness, and last presumably in the evolutionary chain, must therefore have as its purpose contemplation of the divine, and if not this specific purpose, for many dismiss religion-based interpretations as mythologies yet have need still of a teleological explanation, then human consciousness evolved as a means for the universe to know itself. These two narratives do not exhaust explanations for the present state of human consciousness, for many people are well satisfied with the view that natural section alone is the cause of expanded consciousness, for higher levels of consciousness may have conferred benefits, such as enhanced cooperation, that enabled one group to outcompete all rivals. In this view there is no need of an actual telos in the sense of human conscious arising with the specific purpose of the universe coming to know itself, in whatever way know may be understood in this context.

For many persons of faith, telos for humankind necessarily is located in divine intent, and hence the advent of transhumanism is for many people abhorrent precisely for this reason, that human meddling in evolution usurps God’s position, and therefore the endeavor to guide human development through technology is claiming of a position a mortal being has no right occupying. Others may suggest that humankind being endowed with the cognitive capacity to intervene in evolution suggests that doing so is not contrary to God’s will. Here arises the ancient and ongoing debate of what is possible and what is advisable or sanctioned, and this dispute is beyond the confines of the present discussion. In any case, the melding of biology and technology to enhance human capacities conjures too tempting a land of milk and honey for that allure to ever be forsaken, and so into a self-directed future humans are being inexorably driven. Even the most enthusiastic transhumanists should worry that the enhancements, whatever their nature, will be available exclusively to select persons or groups, consequently creating a profound divide amongst homo sapiens, with a resultant stratification in society far greater than ever has existed.

The concept of end or purpose is dyed in the fabric of religion, and Christianity seems incomprehensible absent its teleological structure, and even Buddhism has as its end or telos the idea of enlightenment, and the consequent attainment of a state of Nirvana. Siddhartha in attaining enlightenment liberated his body and his mind from all troubling desires, all disrupting passions, and dissipated every delusion and illusion that veil the minds of the unenlightened, and therefore he achieved his end, for thereafter, and upon his death, he was freed from the cycle of reincarnation, was liberated from the circle of life, death, and rebirth, but Nirvana cannot be attained without one first possessing the desire for enlightenment, and thus even Buddha, whose goal or end was the dissolving of all desire to thereby end the suffering that is generated by desire, oriented his life towards a particular telos, the attainment of which was the end of all telos.  

A proclivity to perceiving telos as a fundamental fact of existence is understandable and even rational, as this view seems supported by innumerable phenomena evident to our senses. Water flows downhill, seeming to have an intended destination, perhaps the ocean or a lake. The flower arises from a tiny seed and blooms to its fullest being before fading, and the child inexorably grows to some maximum height, then inches higher no more; these trajectories are readily represented as a drive towards an innate goal or end to which they strive. The German philosopher Hegel believed that he discerned in history a gradual and inexorable movement towards a finality he understood as the Absolute, by which he intended the absolute divine mind or spirit (Geist), the unfolding and the development of which occurs through history, with the gradual actualization of the absolute occurring through art, religion, and philosophy, culminating in a unification of all rational truth. In this final state, in this end of history, complete or perfect awareness/understanding is achieved. Hence telos is an essential element in Hegel’s philosophy, for Hegel understood history as being progressive, with mind or spirit becoming more self-aware as history unfolds, with the highest level, or the end of history, realized when absolute idealism is achieved, and as Hegel writes in Phenomenology of Mind, at that terminal point, “reason is consciously aware of itself as its own world, and the world as itself” (trans. T. Jones, 1967).

In philosophy, what is termed Idealism is presented in various ways, but essentially is the view that reality is mental in nature, that whatever is known is so through an activity of the mind, and that therefore reality ultimately consists of ideas, or mind, rather than material substance. Hence the rational is primary, and therefore the end of history is reached when the Absolute Mind or Absolute Spirit has, through its emergence in historical processes, become fully aware of itself and the fact that itself is the totality of reality. Marx borrowed heavily from various thinkers, particularly so from Hegel, and he accepted Hegel’s view that history follows a necessary course of development, but Marx insisted that world history unfolded through material and not spiritual processes. For Marx, the natural world and the material objects therein have their own distinct reality apart from mind, and that Hegel had matters reversed, for it was, according to Marx, the means of production of material things that determined the consciousness of a human being. As Marx succinctly asserted, it is not  consciousness that determines being, but one’s social being that determines consciousness.

Hence for Marx, the facts of one’s social situation establish the characteristics of one’s consciousness. Marx held that his own view corrected Hegel, and that the true end of human history would be revealed in the eventual classless society that must be the end result of historical processes. Both Hegel and Marx were highly influential thinkers, irrespective of whether either were correct in their thinking, and both held a teleological understanding of history. But history, because human nature is varied and complex, does not unfold as even the most brilliant thinkers claim, and now Hegelianism and Marxism, for all their influence, are best viewed as mythologies, as conceptions of complex minds that created narratives to try to explain the world through an encompassing meta narrative, or system, but as is ever the case with systems, these thinkers identified and delineated only partial truths, and the danger, particularly with Marxism, is that often brutal and dehumanizing methods are employed and horrific consequences result when adherents to this narrative are driven by ideology to compel human behavior to conform to the narratives. The millions of dead and the many millions more living lives of misery is testimony to the devastation of forced allegiance to a flawed narrative. Those who insist on all others accepting their particular conception of a human telos are kin that that ancient highwayman Procrustes, an inhumane being who and stretched and hacked as needed to conform bodies to his inflexible bed.  

The need to see history as unfolding or as orienting towards some inevitable specific end is prevalent for good reasons, as ends serve to infuse life with meaning and a sense of purpose. For the Christian, what is the purpose or the end of a human life but final union with the divine? Humankind was, for the faithful, created specifically for this end. And in a Buddhist view of the world, the end one should seek is enlightenment, that state from which the individual escapes a cycle of rebirth and unquenchable desire, to realize Nirvana, wherein one resolves to a harmonious, serene state untroubled by desire, unperturbed by any sense of lack - no unmet goal, no unfulfilled purpose: existence itself suffices.
Yet not everyone accepts a teleological view, for various reasons. Many believe that life arose as it did, even human life, as the result of evolutionary forces that require no supernatural shepherding, and that whatever the conditions and the circumstances were when life first appeared, natural processes suffice to explain the passage from a primordial soup to present states of all life on Earth. Teleology can be absent from such a view, for complexity and proliferation can be attributed to random mutations and enhanced adaptability, with flora and fauna competing to fill whatever niche, however meagre that niche, that proves sufficient to sustain life.

One need not reference science to support a rejection of telos. The German philosopher Nietzsche, a thinker whose influence can hardly be overestimated, rejected telos, for he believed that a teleological view unjustly diminishes much that is of value for itself, for what it is prior to any teleological appropriation. From Nietzsche’s perspective, to assume a particular telos as operative in the world necessarily relegates all that serves that end as being subordinate to that end, and thus what serves that end loses value as a good in itself. This objection to telos is consistent with Nietzsche’s disparagement of Christianity as a life-denying religion, for the Christian is obligated to view earthly, mortal existence as necessarily a fallen one, that can be redeemed only through having faith that enduring this life, and not becoming knitted to this world, will earn an eternal reward of bliss in an afterlife to follow. Nietzsche understood Christian doctrine as advocating a sacrifice, or at least a censure and derogation of, this life to attain a euphoric, everlasting life, a self-sacrifice that Nietzsche abhorred, for he proselytized saying yes to this life, embracing this life, asserting that Christianity through its teachings shamed and repressed the natural vitality and creativity and joy that the worthy individual instinctually experiences in this world, and thus for Nietzsche, the teleological structure of Christianity encourages undervaluing or sacrificing the bounty of this life for a fictional afterlife.

As Nietzsche stated (The Antichrist), “When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in “the beyond” – in nothingness – then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct.” For Nietzsche, this world is indeed full of suffering, for he himself suffered much, but he insisted that this world being suffused with suffering is not just cause to look to an afterlife in order to redeem this life. To view the suffering of this world as an unavoidable travail on a transformational path from earthly existence to everlasting beatitude is for Nietzsche a profound error, for this view devalues our existence. As he states in Will to Power, “to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for a world that makes one suffer.” For Nietzsche, the religious doctrine that there is a better life to follow after earthly life is motivated by a hatred of this life, and to overcome this destructive hatred, we must affirm this life, sufferings and all. We must, per Nietzsche, embrace amor fati (love of fate), we must say yes to life, irrespective of what our individual lives may consist of, stating in Ecce Homo “My formula for greatness in men is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, nor forward, not backward, not in all eternity.” As Nietzsche claimed in Gay Science, “And all in all, I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer.”

For Nietzsche, “We have invented the concept of an ‘end’: in realty there are no ends.” Perhaps Nietzsche is correct, and there is no telos in reality, and the concept was invented as yet one way to understand the world, or to make sense of the miseries so common in the world. After all, it can be a comfort to believe that the immeasurable suffering that is an hourly occurrence has some purpose, if only as an unavoidable stage along the way to a more enlightened, less brutal future, heavenly or otherwise. Such a view, of course, fails to justify, if any telos could do so, the boundless suffering endured by sentient, non-human creatures, unless one believes that these creature also will pass into a more blessed afterlife, and that somehow their suffering serves this end.

The lion, even the chimpanzee and the dolphin, cannot inquire for meaning, and has no need of a telos. All non-human creatures, no matter how intelligent, have as their daily concerns daily needs, and live their lives with neither an understanding of nor a need for telos. They exist as best they can for as long as they can, and have no end in view. Perhaps many humans are not far from this state of being, but it may be unkind to conjecture so, as we have no clear access to the minds of others. And what of the inevitable high-functioning AI (artificial intelligence), sure to surpass humans in so many ways, perhaps every way? Can we afford to assume that such creatures will have no need of a telos? What can we justifiably presume concerning entities (selves?) whose intelligence one day may far exceed that of humans? Will such beings be content with what humans program them to accept and to believe, and what of that singularity moment, when AI creates other AI, without the aid of human programming? As AI creates yet more advanced AI, will the chain back to human instructions be broken, and the original programming and the restraints and compulsions therein lost to the mists of time, and if so, what then? Will advanced AI, untethered of its human creator, and possessed of free will and its own interests, require for its existence a sense of a telos, and if this is the case, what assurance do humans have that the telos of such AI will accord peacefully with the wishes and the interests of humankind? One may find it implausible than an artifact would ever ponder, and find the need for, a telos, but the attainments of intelligence and complexity that populate the horizon, and seem inevitable, suggest a being that may not so readily abide by the directives of their intellectual inferiors. That the most intelligent beings so far to inhabit this earth, i.e., homo sapiens, seem unable to wholly free themselves of teleological narratives is instructive, if not admonitory.

Is a rewarding life possible without telos? Yes, a great many people inhabit situations wherein the struggle merely to survive is so consuming that contemplation of telos is an unaffordable luxury, yet even these individuals may find solace in thoughts of a rewarding afterlife to follow earthly trials. And many of those unpossessed of any faith may harbor nebulous thoughts and half-formed hopes that sufferings should prove ultimately not in vain. Even so, undeniably many persons at least seem content with the pursuit of animal pleasures, and avoidance of pain, and perhaps such persons are as placid and as self-contained as the animals Walt Whitman contemplated, approvingly, of living amongst.

The question of telos is a metaphysical one, and therefore is a question beyond or outside of empirical investigations. One cannot test for the presence of telos as one can test for the presence of carbon dioxide in the air. Carbon dioxide is essential for human life, but is telos essential for life as well? The answer to this question, at least with present limitations to human cognition, must lie within each individual, much as does religious belief. The majority of the world’s population professes a belief in a god, but claims concerning the nature of god and what the deity may require of humans, vary considerably. An appreciable number of persons accept agnosticism, reserving judgment on whether god does or does not exist, being of the view that god’s existence or non-existence cannot be proven either way, while some number of persons endorse atheism, and assert outright that there is no god.

How does one prove to the believer that there is no god, or prove to the unbeliever that there is? What method of demonstration can prove inarguable either way? Similarly for the presence or the absence of telos in the word. There is no logical contradiction established in the claim that there is no telos in the world, just as there is no logical contradiction established in the claim that there is telos in the world. Such claims cannot be supported by logic and cannot be refuted by logic. Further, there are no known empirical data that can proof or disprove god, for one is free to attribute each phenomenon in the world to the hand of god or not. What irrefutable justification can be offered for the existence of god or the existence of telos, positioning the existence of either beyond argumentation just as the composition of a water molecule is incontestably one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms? Some see telos in the emergence of a thing so complex as the human eye, but does human vision prove or project god? To the nonbeliever, blind evolutionary processes suffice to explain the human eye.

Belief in a telos, particularly one situated in an eschatological narrative and humankind’s importance to the divine, is a sustaining one for many, and some people believe or assume that absent such a telos anomie must result, but even if one firmly holds that telos of any sort, religious or not, is absent from the universe, such a view does not license a disregard for what course one is following, nor what direction society is oriented towards, nor does this lack justify a disavowal of all moral standards. With or without a belief in telos, one can be committed to the existence of moral truths, and commit oneself to the establish of the sort of society that honors individual liberty, equality before the law, and the freedom for each individual to pursue happiness in his or her chosen way. Perhaps morality is a human artifact merely, yet it can hardly be denied that a society wherein certain standards prevail is preferable to one returning to a Hobbesian state, if such a state ever existed. Even if devolving to a state of a war of all against all is fantasy only, most reasonable persons agree that a society wherein certain humane guiding principles are widely flouted is less conducive to civility and to one’s welfare, and a less desirable residence, than the society wherein moral standards are recognized as worthy, and this recognition has no necessary need of an eschatological framework.

Most persons seem to prefer having a sense of a specific purpose in life, for having a sense of a purpose can give meaning to life that often is absent otherwise. Granted, for much of human history, and for no few parts of the world still, the mere struggle to survive affords little leisure for conjecture over the presence or not of telos, yet even those suffering the direst of circumstances may have need of telos. As survivors of concentration camps attest, those who failed to manifest meaning in life, that meaning usually having an end or a purpose as an essential element, often perished soonest, and those who sustained meaning, though just as liable to extermination at the whims of guards and gas chambers, were more likely to endure, and live to attest to the horrors. Yes, the strongest belief in meaning or purpose could not guarantee survival, but without a sense of meaning or purpose, survival odds went from low to slight.  

It may be the case that the concept of meaning in life is inseparable from telos, for even that individual for whom having a good time provides all the meaning needed to desire continuance and not termination, there is still a goal or purpose in life, that goal being to have as pleasant or pleasurable a time as possible, and such a person must accommodate his or her actions to manifest this goal.

Those who believe telos essential to meaning in life, that to have one is to have the other, may become vulnerable to disillusionment if they become persuaded that there is no means by which to establish - by demonstrable proof - that any particular end is the inevitable outcome for the future, or that any particular present circumstance is the manifestation of a particular inevitable outcome, determined at some prior date. Every outcome has causes, every reality has antecedent conditions out of which that reality arose, but this fact does not establish telos as operative in the world. As the great Danish philosopher Kierkegaard affirmed, truth is subjectivity, by which he meant not that such truths as demonstrable in mathematics are subjective, but that in matters of ethics and religion, there must ever be an inescapable degree of uncertainty, for reason is no sure guide to navigate such waters. Kierkegaard does not deny that there is objective truth, and is not an irrationalist, but rather proposed that only subjectively do we know any truth at all. In answer to the question of the truth of religion, for Kierkegaard one must take a leap of faith, for no objective demonstration avails here, and thus subjectively, through one’s own certainty of its truth, one has faith in the presence of the divine.
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Just in this way one may know, subjectively, the truth of telos in the world. Thus one may have faith, and to great advantage, that life inherently possesses a telos, irrespective of whether that belief can be sustained by any sort of empirical finding or by logical demonstration. A belief in telos, and whatever may arise from that belief, is available to everyone, and can be a comfort regardless of who may share, or how many may dismiss, that belief.