Abstract
The main goal of the paper is to argue, against the hypercritical treatment of teleology in poststructuralist writings, that the concepts of purpose and purposiveness are necessary elements in thinking about both nature and art. I begin with the examination of two contrasting views on teleology in nature and art: Immanuel Kant’s treatment of the matter in the Critique of the Power of Judgment and G. W. F. Hegel’s in his Aesthetics. The parallels and contrasts between them help delineate the problem and lead to a consideration of the role of art in modern thinking about nature, as well as in nature-transforming human activity. I end by arguing for a reexamination of teleology in the family of concepts dealing with the relation between praxis and poiesis, and for a substantive fleshing-out of its content in philosophical dialogue.
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Notes
- 1.
Aristotle, Physica II 8 199b27-31, quoted from: The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 251.
- 2.
G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 54.
- 3.
Theodor Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relation between Philosophy and Music,” Essays on Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 138.
- 4.
For the analysis of Hegel’s concept of phenomenology see Wolfgang Bonsiepen’s introduction to G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenologie des Geistes, ed. by H.-F. Wessels and H. Clairmont (Hamburg: Felix MeinerVerlag, 1988), pp. IX–LXII.
- 5.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), §75, p. 269.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Ibid., §85, p. 307.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 10.
- 9.
Plato, Republic X 597–599, in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963), 821–823.
- 10.
See Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), pp. 142–143.
- 11.
“[I]t is only as a moral being that the human being can be a final end of creation…” (Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §86, p. 309).
- 12.
This is made abundantly clear in §58 of the “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” (Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, pp. 221–225).
- 13.
I leave aside the matter of the Kantian “as if” surviving the mind’s first encounter with its object and permeating all knowledge of the objective world that derives from this encounter. The constant presence of this “as if” in the generation of modern knowledge renders the latter thoroughly hypothetical, locks it in within the domain of the hypothesis as surely as the original sin locked the medieval person within the domain of the fallen world – yet without the corresponding hope of ever breaking beyond it.
- 14.
G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. I, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 55.
- 15.
It should be noted, however, that Kant did propose that taste must set limits to genius in certain respects and at the very least is necessary for the education of genius. (Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §50, pp. 196–197).
- 16.
See my “Instead of an Afterword,” in Vladimir Marchenkov (ed.), Between Histories: Art’s Trajectories and Dilemmas (Cresskill, N. J.: Hampton Press, 2013).
- 17.
See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 3–25 (“Introduction: Rhizome”).
- 18.
Susan Buck-Morss’ argument in Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History is a recent example of advocacy for this infinitism. Inevitably its defenders find themselves forced to resort to metaphors rather than logically defensible reasoning. Buck-Morss borrows, for example, from like-minded authors the metaphor of the “motley crew” (of various marginalized “others”) to propose an allegedly new collectivity – after the embarrassment suffered by the citoyen of the French Revolution and the Marxian proletariat – as the agent of history that will push progress further (Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History [Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009], pp. 104–107 and 151). It is logically necessary, in other words, that theorists embracing modern infinitism should abandon philosophical thinking at the most crucial moment and reach for non-philosophical tools to give their cause a semblance of coherence.
- 19.
Incidentally, Buck-Morss is mistaken when she equates Hegel’s Absolute with the mystical absolutes of traditional religions (e.g., Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, p. 115). Hegel’s treatment of the concept of mystery in general is quite negative and his interpretation of the Holy Trinity is clearly intended as non-mystical (G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Plato and the Platonists, trans. E. S. Haldane [Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 418 and 440ff; and Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Medieval and Modern Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson [Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1995], pp. 4–5). When he does acknowledge mystery in a positive light, as he does in his ruminations about the religion of ancient Egypt, it is still regarded as only a phase in the evolution of spirit, a stepping stone that must eventually be left behind (Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume II Determinate Religion, trans. R. Brown et al. [Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987], pp. 365, 369–70, and 531).
- 20.
A parallel process in political life must be examined in a separate work but it is worthwhile to point out here that in politics this set of problems is present in an even more acute form than in ecology. The popularity of the cliché according to which the contemporary political process has degenerated into show business is only one symptom among many.
References
Adorno, T. W. 1973. Negative Dialectics, Trans. E. B. Ashton, New York: Seabury Press.
Adorno, T.W. 2002. Essays on music. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Aristotle. 1941. The basic works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House.
Bonsiepen, Wolfgang.1988. Einleitung. In Phenomenologie des Geistes, ed. G.W.F. Hegel., H.-F. Wessels., and H. Clairmont, IX–LVII. Hamburg: Felix MeinerVerlag.
Buck-Morss, S. 2009. Hegel, Haiti, and universal history. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1975. Aesthetics: Lectures on fine art. Trans.T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2001. Critique of the power of judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Plato. 1963. The collected dialogues of Plato, including the letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. New York: Pantheon Books.
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Marchenkov, V.L. (2014). Teleology in Nature and Life-Transforming Art. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology of Space and Time. Analecta Husserliana, vol 116. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02015-0_18
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