Our time is characterized as a period of cultural crisis, in which man is alienated from “nature” and his own “nature”.2 This crisis has two components:
1)
a material component, which is manifested in the environmental crisis, and
2)
a moral crisis, which is expressed in the declared subjectivity of all values, norms and rules. Both components have, in my view, the same root: the change in the
... [Show full abstract] concept of nature since the Renaissance from one having a normative, teleological meaning to one having a non-normative, a non-teleological meaning.
A revaluation of a teleological philosophy of nature is necessary, because
1)
accepting teleology in nature is more in accord with the position of — teleological and creative — man as a natural product of the natural creative process of evolution and
2)
because it would serve as a prerequisite for the formulation of an adequate bio- and eco-ethics, which both stress the “intrinsic value” of natural things, in particular living ob(sub)jects.
In this lecture, it will be argued that in Western thinking there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the concept of teleology, in particular in relation to the theory of evolution. This misunderstanding is the result of a radical transformation of the original Aristotelian concept of “internal” teleology into a concept of “external” teleology by Christian theology during the Middle Ages. The original meaning of teleology — as elaborated extensively by Aristotle — is that it is a natural and internal principle (arche) that specifies “for the sake of which” natural events happen. Under the influence of Christian theology, teleology became confused with theology, with “the argument from design”. As I shall show, a revaluation of a teleological philosophy of nature is not opposed to the modern theory of evolution.