Aristotle on Teleology

The following is an essay I turned in for my Aristotle class. 

Teleology for Aristotle is an all permeating cause of prior causes. It is an end, termination, or consummation of previous acts. It is “that for the sake of which” a thing is done (194b30). So, suppose I want to be healthy, I will perform certain acts for the purpose of achieving health. I wake up early so that I may exercise so that I may be healthy. I put on my socks, so I can put on my shoes, so I can go on my run, so that I can be healthy. In this series of actions, the end goal of health sustains and motivates these actions, and these actions are complete and done well when health is achieved. 

Teleology being an end should not be confused with the temporally last thing in a series, however. Even though my running causes my health may be the last in a series in a temporal sense, that’s only an accidental feature of the example. More fundamentally, Aristotle means that which is best for it (195a20). For health can deteriorate and become ill, and being ill is temporally after being healthy. It wouldn’t follow, for Aristotle, that being ill is the end or the teleology of being healthy. Rather, it is the actualizing of what those things were striving for in an essential and non-accidental and non-temporal way. 

Because that for the sake of which is what drives certain actions, it must therefore be prior to those acts (195b20). Those actions are for the sake of actualizing that end. For Aristotle, act being prior is what determines the goodness of a thing. Since potencies can be potencies for contrary things, like being healthy and being ill, and one is the privation of the other, then the actuality is by definition better, since privations are bad (1051a15). In this case, it would be the actualization of health, and not the actualization of illness, since it is obviously worse to be actually ill than potentially ill and better to be actually healthy than potentially healthy. The body has an understanding that it strives towards health, and so health is more closely associated with actuality and illness more associated with potentiality or privation. So teleology is not just an explanation for why something is, but also why it is good and why it should be strived for. 

Aristotle does consider the contrary. Why must an object move towards some end or have some teleology rather than have no end or teleology at all (198b15)? The alternative theory would be called coincidence (198b25). For example, rain doesn’t fall for the sake of growing crops, but it grows them nonetheless by accident, so why not hold this for the rest of nature in general (198b20)? Aristotle argues against this view that things happen either as a result of coincidence or end (199a). If all things happen as a result of a coincidence, then there would be no patterns, like rain coming down in the winter or heat coming in the summer (199a). But we do have such patterns, so not all is coincidence, so there must be teleology. Another argument Aristotle gives is that intelligent action is prior and for the sake of an end (199a10). But intelligent actions partly complete nature and partly imitate nature (199a15). So nature then must have some end which is prior as well. Aristotle asks us to further consider non-human animals, like spiders (199a20). Due to their creations, some people wonder whether spiders do what they do due to intelligence or deliberation. But since these animals don’t have that capacity, as even plants operate in the same way as it grows leaves to protect its fruit, it must be due to their nature (199a25). But nature is a composite of form and matter (199a30). And since matter is for the sake of form, then form is a kind of teleology. So there is teleology.