Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality
Allan Gotthelf
In Gotthelf and Lennox, eds., Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology
Cambridge, 1987

"[I]n almost every passage in which Aristotle introduces, discusses, or argues for the existence of final causality, his attention is focused on the generation and development of a living organism. In line with this, then, we ought to direct our attention to organic development and ask our main question of this type of case: what, precisely, does Aristotle mean when he asserts that the coming-to-be (or any stage in the coming-to-be) of a living organism is *for the sake of* the mature, functioning organism which results? Secondly, in considering this question we should remember that such an assertion is intended by Aristotle to convey an explanation of the occurrence and character of the stages in the development (and thus of the development itself), since that which the development is for the sake of is one of its 'causes.'" (GOTTHELF-1976, p. 207) [PSA: in ethics, the telos is the mature activity or bios of the person (that is, completion).]

"These two concepts, 'nature' and 'potential', are *the* basic explanatory concepts for motion and change in Aristotle's scientific theories.... Every process in nature, every motion or change, according to Aristotle, *is* action in accordance with a nature *or* the actualization of a coordinate pair of active and passive potentials *or* the sum of some combination of these." (GOTTHELF-1976, p. 211) [PSA: in biology and ethics, activity (energeia) is more basic than potential or capacity.]

"In the case of development, can one give an account of the process of organic development solely in terms of element-potentials which make no reference to the overall outcome of the process, viz., the form of the mature, functioning organism? Or must at least one of the potentials involved in the account be irreducibly a potential for the development's end, for an organism of that form?" (GOTTHELF-1976, p. 212) [PSA: even further, growth toward the activation of those capacities within the bios of such an organism.]

Gotthelf argues that because "a living organism develops *for the sake of* being a mature, functioning organism", therefore "the irreducibility to element-potentials of organic development is the core of the meaning of the assertion that the development is *for the sake of* the mature organism, and thus the core of Aristotle's conception of final causality." (GOTTHELF-1976, p. 213)

With respect to "the relationship between explanations that appeal to 'the honorable' and those that appeal to advantage", Gotthelf notes that both David Balme and James Lennox "argue that appeals to 'the honorable' are a subset of appeals to advantage and do not represent a separate principle of explanation. A similar case can be made out, I believe, for appeals to 'living well' (to eu zen).... Since a naturalistic account can thus be given of the notion of the good with which Aristotle operates in his biology, it seems to me that the fundamental account of the final cause need not make use of that notion. While it is true that accounts more 'familar to us' start there, it is not the case ... that Aristotle (in effect, arbitrarily) designates as the aim of a process that stage which he independently wishes to count as good. It is rather that the capacities actually at work *are* capacities for the mature state (akme), where the mature state is identifiable in terms of the presence of maximal powers of self-maintenance without reference to independent normative criteria, *and* that for (what we would call) meta-ethical reasons the good is defined by reference to this same mature state." (GOTTHELF-1976, pp. 213-214)

"The insufficiency of explanation wholly in terms of material causes became clear fairly soon, Aristotle states: 'For it is not likely that either fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be...' (984b11ff) .... [L]ater thinkers, however, did not clearly distinguish the final from the efficient cause and thus never clearly saw the need for the former to account for 'goodness and beauty, order and all arrangement': 'For those who speak of mind or friendship class these causes as goods; they do not speak, however, as if anything that exists either existed or came into being for the sake of these...' (988b8ff) .... The phenomenon to be explained is the order, the arrangement, the beauty and goodness to be found in nature. (cf. PA I.5 644b22-645a36) .... The only reasonable account, when clearly articulated, is one which acknowledges that the process by which instances of order and beauty come to be, is essentially and inherently *to* order and beauty. But, given Aristotle's definition of 'motion' as the actualization of a potential ('as such'), a process, which is *essentially* to some end, is precisely a process which is the actualization of a potentially essentially - and thus *irreducibly - for that end." (GOTTHELF-1976, pp. 221-222)

"The 'normative analysis' of ends, then, which is perhaps 'first to us', is not 'first in nature'. 'First in nature' is an analysis in terms of potentials for complex living outcomes specifiable without references to independent normative notions.... [T]he operative notion of 'best for' in all cases here is something like 'greatest contribution to the life of', so that we do not have what I have been calling an independent notion of the good.... Both development and functioning are aimed at the realization and maintenance of an organism of maximum efficiency and capacity within what is possible to the basic nature of the organism in question.... Explanations of the form 'A is best for outcome B' are to be understood, at a deeper level, as being of the form 'A is necessary for outcome best-organized-B'..." (GOTTHELF-1976, p. 234) [PSA: the outcome might better be described as "most-complete-B", where this is connected also with the specific way of life of that kind of organism.]

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