








































D I A N O I A

The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College 
Spring 2024 - Issue XI

Featuring an Interview with Gadamer Chair Professor Jean-Luc Marion  
(page 7) 

 διάνοια 

ISSN 2476 - 1818 (print)
ISSN 2476 - 1826 (online)



διάνοιαDIANOIA
The UndergradUaTe PhilosoPhy JoUrnal of BosTon College

Spring 2024
ISSUE XI



Managing Editors: Meriel Zhao, Yitian (Sky) Lyu, Aniella Zaslavsky, Elliott Jones  
General Editors: Jacob Chapelear, Gabriel Margolies, Thomas Wilkins, Christopher Casale, Kenneth 
Goetz, Qitai Zhu
Graphic Designer: Madeline Townsend
Graduate Advisors: Sean Haefner
Faculty Advisor: Ronald Tacelli, S.J.

Cover Featuring: 
Bradford, William. Shipwreck off Nantucket (Wreck off Nantucket after a Storm). ca. 1860-1861; 
obtained via Wikimedia Commons. 
Jean-Luc Marion Photo Source:
By Aymeric De La Toune, June 7, 2016; obtained via Wikimedia Commons.

The materials herein represent the personal opinions of the individual authors and do not necessarily 
represent the views of Dianoia or Boston College.

If you have questions regarding the Journal, would like to submit your work for review, or if you’d 
be interested in joining next year’s staff, please contact the Journal at dianoia@bc.edu.

Dianoia
The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College 
Spring 2024 Issue XI
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
https://www.dianoiabc.org
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments/philosophy/undergraduate/dianoia.html
© 2024 The Trustees of Boston College



 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

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 4 Acknowledgements  

 5  A Letter From an Editor
  Elliott Jones, Boston College 

 7  Interview with Gadamer Chair Professor Jean-Luc 
Marion 

 17  The Human Synthesis: An Exploration 
of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under 
the Domain of the Will to Power                                                                        
Daniel Andrews, Boston College

 38  A Symetrical Argument for Personhood and Abortion
  Arthur deCarle, University of Central Florida

 50  Against Evolutionary Ethics 

  Roberto Ureña, SUNY New Paltz 

 67  A Natural Interpretation of Aristotelian Teleology
  Jordan Smith, Colby College 

 89 Contributors 



4

The Editorial Staff of Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of 
Boston College would like to extend our sincerest thanks to the following 
individuals for their assistance in making this issue of Dianoia possible:

Sean Haefner, Philosophy Department

Jeffrey Bloechl, Philosophy Department

Gabriel Feldstein, BC Libraries

We would also like to thank Dr. Ronald Tacelli, S.J., of the Boston College 
Philosophy Department, for his invaluable assistance as our advisor and editor 

of this issue's faculty interview.

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5Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

 

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Dear Reader,        May 5, 2024

With great pleasure I present Issue XI of Dianoia: the 
Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College. This year 

we received over 40 submissions and following a great shortage of 
editors from the editorial board of Issue X, we are proud to present this 
journal as the consistent work of the few for the enjoyment of many. 
This year, we were fortunate to be able to publish four thoughtful 
papers, all of which are examples of the excellence of undergraduate 
scholarship and philosophical inquiry from around the country.

As a short preview of the contents of the papers, we offer a work of 
anthropological and existentialist philosophy, two pieces in moral 
p i s p  ne rguing  r ug   e ni i n  pers n   
us i i n r r i n n  e se n  rguing g ins  e rise  

evolutionary ethics. Lastly, we offer a rigorously defended paper of 
Aristotle’s notion of Final Cause or teleology. We hope that these 
p pers inspire ug u  re e i n  enge ur se  e ie s  n  s  
of all spark questions.

Thanks to the support from Department Chair, Professor Jeffrey 
Bloechl, two of our General Editors were able to conduct an interview 
with the Gadamer Chair of Philosophy, Professor Jean-Luc Marion. 
This interview offers an introduction to Marion’s phenomenology as 

e  s n in ep  is ussi n  is s  in uen i  n  r i  i e s 
such as “saturated phenomena”, “the gift”, and the possible end of 
metaphysics.

The editorial board chose William Bradford’s Shipwreck off Nantucket 
for the cover art of this year’s issue. We felt this represented the initial 
struggle of the editorial board to get Issue XI into the publication 
process. It was only with the help of our faculty and graduate advisors, 
and inner department supporters-represented by Bradford’s life boats-
that we acknowledge with great gratitude that Issue XI was able to be 
published. Furthermore, we believe that as Professor Marion in our 
interview remarks, the desire of all philosophers should be to “go in the 
regions you have never visited before”, just as we see in the ambitious 
drive of Bradford’s portrayal of the 19th century whaling industry.

The chance encounter I had this spring in meeting one of the 
cofounders of Dianoia is a testament not only to the far-reaching 
in uen e  is urn  u  s   e pe p e se supp r  es 
it possible. On this note, we must offer our thanks and gratitude to 



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

δι
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οι
αthe relentless support of former Editor-In Chief Tanner Loper, our 

faculty advisor, Fr. Ronald Tacelli, S.J., and our graduate advisor, 
Sean Heafner. 
Lastly, I offer thanks to those consistent members of the editorial 
board by whose diligence and passion this issue has been able to be 
published. I hope that you, our reader, continue to offer your support 
as we prepare Issue XII next spring.

Until then, enjoy this issue.

Sincerely,
On Behalf of the Editorial Board of Dianoia

Elliott Jones, Managing Editor



7Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

An Interview with Jean-Luc Marion, Gadamer Chair at Boston College

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AN INTERVIEW WITH JEAN-LUC MARION, 
GADAMER CHAIR AT BOSTON COLLEGE

§1: INTRODUCTION ABOUT PROF. MARION'S 
TEACHING AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF 
GIVENNESS

Sky Lyu, Managing Editor Prof. Marion, you were appointed Gadam-
er chair in 2020 and during the past four years, have given lectures and 
taught courses. One of the most interesting and common comments from 
my peers about your philosophy is that it is very “healing,” since it offers 
a philosophical hope for them. So did you expect this impact to students 
and what would your mission be through your teachings here?

Jean-Luc Marion I’m sorry some students had suffered some intellec-
tual disease. But I would be glad that my philosophy may heal, because   
(bad) philosophy can harm as well as a good one may help. But this was 
not intended: I am doing philosophy, without predetermined outcomes 
or any apologetic intention. However, a clear distinction could be drawn 
between what we may call metaphysics, and what we may call phenom-
enology, that is, between a priori or closed philosophy (closed as once 
it was spoken of the “closing of the American mind”) and phenomenol-
ogy—which has a long history because it started around the beginning 
of the 19th century—which today is perhaps the opening, or reopening 
of philosophy. Perhaps, perhaps it is a positive experience for those who 
are interested in that [reopening]. That’s the difference: in the perspec-
tive of phenomenology, as Heidegger said once, higher than the effec-
tivity, stands the possibility. On the opposite, metaphysics—in analytical 
philosophy, formal philosophy, systematic idealism—the possibility is 



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left behind the effectivity, encapsulated within objectivity.

Elliott Jones, Managing Editor For our introductory readers, what is 
the role phenomenology has had in the history of philosophy?  More 
particularly: your work is frequently cited in theological discussions.  
What do you believe your work can offer theology in contemporary di-
alogue?

JLM You understand that it is impossible to answer that kind of question 
shortly. What I can tell, is that I started by asking questions about the 
questions: philosophy should proceed that way, by asking new ques-
i ns  S  in  rs  s u  e ues i n   n  The Idol and 

Distance and God without Being, I questioned the question, very wide-
spread in the seventies, whether we can truly think that “God is dead”. 
And I made the point that the death of God means that what dies was by 
e ni i n n   n  i  n    s i  I  s n i  S ing 

that, I was just repeating what Nietzsche had already said. Idols are the 
main concepts of philosophy—including the concepts of being, cause, 
consciousness, free will, and so on. And you can verify it easily provided 
you are an historian of philosophy (which is what I started out trying 
to be, studying Descartes and Aristotle). And we have to destroy idols, 
whatever they are. And curiously, in that case, God does not stand on 
the side of the idols. In fact, “God is dead” means only that what we 
thought as a dead God was simply no God at all. And so, to some extent, 

e e    re pene  e ues i n    s e rs  
paradox. 

How far this is connected with phenomenology? It may be absolutely no 
connection in so far as this is a theological argument. But phenomenolo-
gy means a kind of philosophy which allows you to ask whether concepts 
supposed to be completely beyond ordinary question within philosophy 
might not be questioned as well. Another example: even if to know is to 
know an object (limited and certain), knowledge is not only the subjec-
tive construction of the object. The opposition, subjectivity/objectivity, 
though admitted by roughly everyone, does not stand.  If you study the 
history of philosophy, you discover that the object is always connected 
with the subject and that both concepts were born at the same period. 
For the ancient Greeks, there was no object, and there was no subject. 

n   is e ern e ni i n  e e  S e ing i  n 
be perfectly well known by the subject—because, in the sciences, for 
example, it was built by the subject.  So the fact that any object is consti-



9Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

An Interview with Jean-Luc Marion, Gadamer Chair at Boston College

tuted by a subject means that nothing is more subjective than objectivity. 
S e ing is s i   e e i e i  s e e e s e e i e  

  uni   u i e  su e s  S  e i i  un s n   n 
intersubjectivity. And all philosophers today will agree to that. There-
fore the idea that science is objective means only that within science 

ere is n gree en  e een su e s   u  in er e s e is er 
other different agreements between subjects which lead to other kinds of 
intersubjectivity: in art, in morals, in politics, and in religion. So there 
is no absolute border. The question lies in understanding how we reach 
non-objective knowledge about what cannot nevertheless be constituted 
by us. And so the divide between objective science and subjective sci-
ence appears problematic.

EJ What you said about idols leads to the next question.  You spoke 
about the history of philosophy and these metaphysical constraints or 
“idols”, and how they limit our understanding—limit us from talking 
about certain phenomena. What are these metaphysical idols and why is 
phenomenology and your work a solution beyond them?

JLM  I think that metaphysics was and remains a very successful en-
deavor.  Being hard to produce intelligibility, the achievement of meta-
physics was to say: we may know in advance everything certainly by 
using the same set of concepts and of principles, categories, and deter-

in i ns  in e er e  e r  in  r ins n e  ne  e s  
us prin ip es e use  i  n r i r  e ni i ns  e prin ip e 

of identity. Or again: we should always be able to give a reason for what-
ever we claim to exist or be thought; any sentence has to be proved by 
re s ns  en e e prin ip e  su ien  re s n  ing se prin ip es 
(and all sciences use those standards), we have to stick to them and reject 
any other knowledge which could not yield to them as non-objective–a 
non-object for science. The problem is that we quite often meet with 
phenomena which contradict those standards, and does appear without 
doubt. Should we not, in those cases, modify our standards? De facto, 
from time to time, we can’t not modify those standards. So we have in 
modern fundamental physics. So the today question amounts to when 
n    i  e s n r s   s e p en en  r e er r 

 e re e   i  e p en en  i  e  n   e  
standards. And in phenomenology, we deal with the same question: are 
there phenomena which don’t yield to any previously known paradigm 
and nevertheless impose themselves beyond question. Among them, 

 r  is n e ep i n  e ni i n  u  i  n  e e se  
this “god” would not be God.  Let us consider, for instance, the impos-



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

sible. We universally admit that nothing is impossible, because, were 
something impossible to a God, then this “god” would not deserve to be 
admitted as God. 

 si i r re r  n e e presse  u  n  ere is n  e ni i n 
of man, not of man-hood, nor of the humanity of man; not only is 

ere n  e ni i n  u  ere should be n  e ni i n  n  r n  
e ni i n  n  i p se   r e p e   p i i  e er r p -
i i  regi e  is e s  i ri nis    i ri n e -

nition of man would be a threat? Not only because it will prove very  
likely wrong   e ni i n n se  r e  s i  ss  re-
igi n  n  s  n  u  e use n  e ni i n  

uld result in an exclusion by a persecution. In other 
r s  en n  i  e ni i n    n is 

s e is u i i n n  e e usi n  se 
 individuals who doesn’t apply to it, by constraint or 
even terror. Activists use the word “genocide” too  
easily; however genuine genocide means more the 
mass murder, it means suppressing human beings 
as non-human being, n e sis   e ni i n  
what is human and what is not. This is genocide, 
which kills all the more, kills the body because it  
enies rs  e s u   n in  S  r i se  is 

not yet a real genocide, though violent and mortal,  
remaining in some cases unavoidable. 

This leads to a remark about history: history is not a sci-
en e   er  seri us e   s u  u  i  is n   s ien e  
because it cannot make any prediction and prove any law by rehearsing 
any experience…And why not?  Because history means either the study 
of the past or what is going on in the present; however what is going 
on never pertains to a chain of objects occurring by strict determinism. 
There is properly no determinism in history. Not because there is no 
cause— on the opposite, there are too many of them —  but because no 
one can predict it. There was someone who made himself famous by 
predicting that we have reached the end of history, the whole humanity 
having agreed about free market, global capitalism and democracy…

SL Fukuyama? 

JLM No name dropping, please. But we are aware that this was not 
the case, for history refers only to the unexpected, the unpredictable, to 
the events in time, not to objects in determinism. And the event comes 



11Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

An Interview with Jean-Luc Marion, Gadamer Chair at Boston College

as what is not yet, afar of any strict chain of objects. I would not say it 
comes out of the blue, but dare say that it comes from elsewhere. And it 
is why we should not master the event, but only to face it and answer it. 

Another case that is central to my work: is the question of the “gift”. 
At least, provided that we do not interpret it as a mere exchange, which 
alone pertains to economy (do ut des), transferring the possession of an 
object from one owner to another through the mean of money, which is 
enough an objective interpretation of the exchange. But the gift is not an 
e nge  e use i  s n  su ien  re s n  n  g  r  re s n  
give. It needs no reason at all, and it is why it remains always possible 
always. No reason, because it is based on inequality and non-reciprocity. 
Expecting no fair return, it frees itself from any possibility of being paid 
back, and, admitting no condition of possibility, it has not condition of 
possibility, To that extent the gift appears always unequal, unfair, not 
about justice, but beyond it.  Those cases, the unknowability of man, the 
incomprehensibility of God, the gratuity of the gift, or the unpredictabil-
ity of history— all of these become intelligible, if to some they may be 
explained, only by contradicting the usual understanding of the beings, 
produced by metaphysics.

§2: PHENOMENOLOGY OF GIVENNESS AS A 
BREAKTHROUGH. WHAT DOES IT OPEN FOR US, 
AND WHAT IS THE RISK?

SL e n  ge   e gi  I in   ur p en en g  r e 
phenomenology of “givenness” is somehow a breakthrough of tradition-
al phenomenology.  So, to facilitate discussion, let’s situate ourselves in 
a context. I want to bring in here the dialogue between you and Derrida, 
conducted by Prof. Kearney. It was a fascinating dialogue of course. But 
during the dialogue Derrida made a heavy critique saying that your phe-
nomenology is without “as such”; and you responded by pushing back 
even further, stating: “A real phenomenology would be to give up the 
concept of the horizon”—which is opposed to Levinas. To this extent, 
your phenomenology of “givenness” is a radical breakthrough, depart-
ing from traditional phenomenology.  But the question remains, to what 
extent is it still a phenomenology?

JLM Because there is nothing like a phenomenology as such—I agree 
on this point with Derrida, as well as with Heidegger. There is neverthe-



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less an ongoing tradition of thinkers who each time claimed to make a 
breakthrough against their predecessors, but on the same track. So Hus-
serl made a breakthrough by enlarging the realm of intuition, and he 
made similar breakthroughs during all of his lifetime. So Heidegger ad-
mitted that he has killed the father again with a breakthrough to the ques-
tion of Being. Likewise Levinas made a breakthrough against Heidegger 
by saying that ontology is not fundamental, and ethics is.  And Derrida 
make a breakthrough with deconstruction, and so on. So each phenome-
nology is made by those who disagree with the previous phenomenolo-
gists by relying on them.  And that’s why phenomenology keeps going.  
I don’t know whether I deserve to be listed among them, but, anyway I 
kept going that way. If you dare to criticize Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, 
Levinas or Michel Henry, it is because you agree with the questions 
and only intend to go a step forward. To criticize a philosopher is not to 
contradict him, but to jump beyond his last jump. If you break a record 
in sports, you don’t erase the previous one, but improve it; in philosophy 
we do the same. Real philosophers don’t properly disagree, but try to 
use, in a better way, the result of the previous one. 

So now, let’s go to the question of horizon.  Indeed there is a horizon 
for regular phenomena: each phenomenon makes sense in the horizon 
of other related phenomena, within which a new one can be situated 
and seen. However there are cases where there is no horizon, because 
any comparison remains impossible—for instance, with the case of 
the event, the case of God. There is no horizon to the question of God 
because God is unconditioned, cannot be compared; for, if it could be 
compared, it would not mean God. Otherwise, God is incomprehensible, 
because, would it be comprehended by us, it would not mean God. And 
so on. So, in that case, we have no horizon.  And, when Derrida told 

e  e gi  is i p ssi e e use  s s n s  gi  is i en i e  
as a gift, it is cancelled as a gift, and reduced to an exchange— he was 
absolutely correct. But, nevertheless, the “gift” can be done, possible 
for us or not.  So, the impossibility of the gift means that the gift has no 
su ien  re s n  nn  e re u e   n e   n e nge  u  
provided it is reduced to givenness, includes its own impossibility. And 
Derrida and I agreed about that— the impossibility of the gift—, but we 
disagreed about its meaning: far from erasing the phenomenon of the 
gift, I acknowledge that this very impossibility enacts the “gift”. In other 
words, the intersection between the possible in the impossible cannot 
apply here.

SL  If the “gift” is possible, does it have risks?  Just as John J. Caputo 



13Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

An Interview with Jean-Luc Marion, Gadamer Chair at Boston College

remarks: “Do we not come into a universal indebted-ness to God the 
giver, even though the gift has been released from a causal economy?”. 
Would the “gift” then be dangerous?

JLM The gift is indeed dangerous, it even may be seen as the most 
dangerous, the deinotaton [of Sophocles’]. About God, if meant as the 
Christian God, indeed we are all indebted to God, if only because God 
has loved (i.e. created) us before we even were.

SL Already?

JLM  Already. It’s done, to late to be denied.  We try to deny our indebt-
ness because we are obsessed by it, and this denial appears as its con-

r i n   is si u i n    s e e en   rig ening 
and comforting, I fully agree. So, I understand quite well why so many 
people want practically to be atheists, just in order to get rid of this – this 
what? This opening of the horizon. Yes, willingly or not, we are com-
pletely in debt to God.

SL I love your analysis of the excessive, saturated phenomenon—for 
example, revelation. And it seems to me a key to solve Derrida’s impos-
sibility. Do you think this kind of excessiveness exists in other areas, for 
example, psychoanalysis, or hermeneutics, or even aesthetics?  Do you 
think the analysis of such excessiveness in other areas could open new 
possibilities?

JLM  Indeed, there is no question about that. Saturated phenomena or 
excessiveness, if you prefer, identify themselves by an excess of intu-
ition with no matching concept; this provides us with the only expla-
nation about the question of aesthetic beauty, where we all agree on the 
in ui i n  en e n  us un e  e p in  gree en   n 
concepts. And in regular psychoanalysis, many people use the word “ob-
ject”, although clearly desire has no object and “object” sounds like an 
appropriate word. So when I say “given” or “saturated” phenomenon, 
that means something, which can be better used. As indeed it can be used 
in e in eres   p i s p  In p i s p  e es    ge  n r-
mation that something you thought and you’ve discovered is right is that 
i  n e use   n n p i s p ers in eir n e  n  s  I  er  
glad to see that “saturated phenomenon” is used in theology, in aesthet-
ics, in music—for instance, “saturated sound”— as well as the distinc-
tion, say, between icon and idol is used in the theory of painting today. 
S  e i n  p i s p  is n  rs   e is usse   pr essi n  
philosophers alone (they are living doing their job, doing their trade in 



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their discussion, which looks good). But real achievement in philosophy 
consist in working out notions, concepts, arguments which can be used 
by non-philosophers.

§3: QUESTIONS FROM DIANOIA READERS 

SL I’m sure you are tired of our philosophy questions. So here is a ques-
tions from one of our readers. Janice is a freshman at Boston College in 
the philosophy department. And she learned from one of your interviews 
that in your youth, when the academy was full of big names like La-
can and Derrida, you secretly received instruction of theology, outside 
the campus. She is actually doing the same thing. She has founded a 
Lacanian psychoanalysis group called “Sinthome” outside the campus 
and they are doing lectures to teach themselves every week. So how do 
you view this kind of off-campus group—interest- or even faith-based 
study? And do you have any advice for her?

JLM I think that any serious study is self-taught study. When you go 
to the university you have tutors, but you study by yourself.  As I’ve 
told my students at the Sorbonne and elsewhere: What matters is how 

n  i u  s u e re  e s  i u  re e es  S  
my classes, the classes I and my colleagues give, are just to help you to 
read those books. If you can read them without sitting in my class, please 
don’t take my class. Read! And this is what I have done. There were 
many boring classes at my university. I skipped them. Or I was reading 
during the class.  And it is the best thing the professor could expect from 
me. 

SL Great, I will tell her the same thing!

§4: PROF. MARION’S ADVICE FOR UNDERGRADU-
ATE PHILOSOPHY STUDENTS

EJ  So our last question, which you’ve partly already answered: You say 
to your students “we should only read books we don’t understand,” be-
cause it allows us to philosophize about what we don’t understand. Now 
besides your books, of course, do you have any advice on other books or 
questions that the next generation of philosophers ought to philosophize 



15Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

An Interview with Jean-Luc Marion, Gadamer Chair at Boston College

about or read. And secondly, what about the vast history of philosophy 
n   u  u gi e i e  rising p i s p  rs r n ing 

their niche in this two-thousand-plus year history? 

JLM To study philosophy is to read—if possible in the original languag-
es—Plato, Aristotle’s Metaphysics and his treatise On the Soul, some 
Augustine, Descartes, Kant, as well as those around Kant (like Hume), 
Husserl, Heidegger and so on.

SL Not Hegel?

JLM Yes, but only after reading Kant.  Don’t start with Hegel, because 
Hegel is based on Aristotle and Kant,…and on theology. So don’t try 
r  e eginning  n   s  ni e r ur  r s e ing i e 

that.  Try to go into the regions you have never visited before.  And then 
you will see.

EJ Professor Marion, we thank you very much for your time, it has been 
a real gift.



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REFERENCES
Marion, J.-L., & Derrida, J. (2014). On the gift: A discussion 

between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion moderated by Rich-
ard Kearney. On the Gift: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and 
Jean-Luc Marion, Moderated by Richard Kearney. 66;77.

Woodward, K. (2022). Marion & Francis: Love of God & phi-
losophy. Commonweal Magazine. ‘We Are Not Yet Christians’ | Com-
monweal Magazine



17Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

The Human Synthesis

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THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS: 
AN EXPLORATION OF ANXIETY, LOVE, AND 

SELFHOOD UNDER THE DOMAIN OF THE 
WILL TO POWER

DANIEL ANDREWS

“This, my Dionysian world of the eternally self- creating, the eter-
nally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous 
delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of 
the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will 
toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all 
of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most 
intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—
and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—
and nothing besides!”1

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

§1: INTRODUCTION 
 The will to power leaves us with a fascinating question re-
garding the nature and purpose of the individual. If life is this will 
of “eternally self-creating, eternally self-destroying” force, and “[we 
ourselves] are also this will to power”, are we not destined to annihi-
late ourselves for the sake of creating beyond ourselves? Correlatively, 

1  Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, 432.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

and perhaps more importantly, why is there an individual at all? In 
er r s  i  i e is e ne  s is i pe us  se es ru i n n  

re-creation, what is the purpose of sentient life that is individuated, 
i.e., a myriad of different egos and individuals coexisting as opposed 
to a single, undifferentiated, God-like intelligence?2 There must be a 
reason as to why such a singularity3 cannot exhibit the will to pow-
er itself. In reading Nietzsche, and other philosophers whom I will 
discuss in the paper, it is never able to be expressly understood as to 
why this ever-striving will to power manifests itself in the ego, in the 
human being. In this paper, I will attempt to examine the ego through 
the Nietzschean lens. First, I will expound the concept of the will to 
power more painstakingly. Next, I will outline why a being exhibiting 
the will to power must be self-conscious and, under a Sartrean analysis 
of consciousness, examine why a singularity alone cannot do this. After 
that, I will examine the human condition in our affections of anxiety 
and love to investigate the nature of selfhood and offer a solution to the 
fundamental question of “why” under the domain of the will to power. 

§2: BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE WILL TO POWER AND 
OUR ROLE WITHIN IT  
 Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is centric around 
the idea of the “Ubermensch”. Translated into English as “overman” 
and symbolized by the main character Zarathustra, it represents what 
humans will one day evolve into: “Man is something that shall be over-
come… What is the ape to man? A laughing stock or a painful embar-
rassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughing stock 
or a painful embarrassment.”4 Crucially, becoming an overman is not 
achievable by anyone in this epoch; it is frequently misinterpreted as 
an exalted individual who stands out from a crowd in their excellence. 
Rather, Zarathustra is a symbol for the distant future of intelligent life’s 
evolution. 

 Before I analyze man’s role as a “rope tied between beast and 

2  Importantly, this is not a paper questioning the existence of a God; further, 
my investigation of why there are a multiplicity of egos isn’t denying the 
existence of a God. Rather, I am exploring why the will to power isn’t just a 
singularity and manifests in the individual as well. 

3  Throughout the rest of the paper, what I will refer to as “singularity”, 
in ni e  eing  r n  er re e  er  is  n e g in  n  re r  n  

“God”. It is simply to offer a point of comparison to an individual.  
4  Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 124.



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overman,”5 it is worth elucidating in further detail the concept of life 
as the will to power. This is best explained in Zarathustra’s recollecting 

  i gue e  i  i e  n  i e i se  n e  is se re   
me: ‘Behold’, it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself… 
where there is perishing and a falling of leaves, behold, there life sacri-

es i se   r p er   I us  e s rugg e n   e ing n  n 
end and an opposition to ends.”6 We see once again, as in the quotation 
from Will to Power,  i e is p si e  s  se s ri ing  se nni-
hilating machine. Fittingly, Nietzsche construes man in a similar vein. 
One of the central tenets of our role in begetting the overman is the 
r er r  n i n  se s ri e  e i s   is gre  in n is 
that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that is 
n er ure n   g ing un er  I e se   n  rs  see  e-
in  e s rs r  re s n  g  un er n  e  s ri e  u   s -

ri e e se es r e e r   e e r   s e  e e e 
overman’s.”7 This idea is expressed virtually everywhere in the book. 
Speaking of our inner “spirit”, he says, “Spirit is the life that itself cuts 
into life: with its own agony it increases its own knowledge. Did you 
know that? And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and 
through tears be consecrated as a sacrificial animal.”8 And, speaking 
to his disciples, Zarathustra says, “I have found you out, my disciples: 
you strive, as I do, for the gift-giving virtue. What do you have in com-
mon with cars and wolves? This is your thirst: to become sacrifices and 
gifts yourselves.”9 Only through our suffering and “going under” do we 
gi e   e er n  ur s ri e is  pr p g i n n  gi  r ur 
future. Humans, in Nietzsche’s eyes, are tools for the beautiful machine 
of life. Manifestations of life’s will to power, we act in congruence 
with it by destroying ourselves for the purpose of self-overcoming. As 
dark as this may appear, there is a purpose for our self-annihilation: 
creation. 

 Nietzsche believed that creating is the best way to give rise to 
the overman and succeed in “cutting into life”. He thought that in order 

 re e   ues us  rs  e es r e  in gi ing rise  ne  nes  
“Change of values - that is a change of creators. Whoever must be a 
creator always annihilates.”10 Novel creation requires annihilation of 

5 Id., 126.
6 Id., 227.
7 Id., 127.
8 Id., 216.
9 Id., 186.
10 Id., 171.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

the old. Just as a demolition unit is required to construct a new build-
ing, man must demolish himself in order to recreate himself; he must 

is   nsu e i se  in is  n e   u  u is   
e e ne  un ess u  rs  e e s es I e i   n s 

to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.”11

 All this to say, and this is a crucial point, that the ego appears 
to be set up for annihilation. This is done for the purpose of and as a 
manifestation of life’s will to power, which man is a piece of. Through-
out the paper, I will investigate how and why this process unfolds 
through an analysis of anxiety and love. In doing so, this conclusion 
will not seem as vague and dark as it does at this juncture. 

 Crucially, this is Nietzsche’s view of the overman, human 
beings, and their place in life’s will to power. I am not proclaiming the 
will to power to be true, nor explicitly endorsing this conception of 
the role of humans; what I will aim to do in this paper is elucidate the 
fundamental affections of anxiety and love in the context of the will to 
power.

§3: JEAN-PAUL SARTRE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUS-
NESS
 The reason for this begins with an understanding of intention-
al consciousness and nothingness, outlined by Jean-Paul Sartre in his 
book Being and Nothingness. Following Edmund Husserl, Sartre de-

nes ns i usness s eing in en i n  r about something12. Further, 
the object of consciousness must transcend consciousness itself. For 
example, if I am conscious of the computer that I am typing this paper 
on, the object of my consciousness transcends my consciousness in that 
it is posited as something other than it. This is best explained by Sartre 
himself: “Consciousness is consciousness of something. This means 
that transcendence is the constitutive structure of consciousness; that 
is, that consciousness is born supported by a being which is not itself. 
This is what we call the ontological proof.”13 This, as Sartre master-
fully examined, raises interesting questions about the notion of being. 
If a requisite to consciousness is predicated on transcendence, then 
“nothingness” becomes an integral part of being: “In our introduction 

e e ne  ns i usness s  eing su   in i s eing  i s eing 

11 Id., 176-77.
12 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, li, lxi-ii.
13 Id., lxi.



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is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.’ 
But now that we have examined the meaning of ‘the question,’ we can 
at present also write the formula thus: ‘Consciousness is a being, the 
nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.’”14

Sartre has discovered something crucial, and here is where we 
begin to examine the problem of individuality under the domain of the 
will to power. If the will to power coined by Nietzsche manifested in a 
sing e  en p ssing  in ni e in e igen e  i  would not be able to 
be conscious of the nothingness of its being and therefore would not be 
able to execute the will to power. How could the idea of a singularity 
 i  is  i se   e ns i us i  ns i usness is e ne  s  

being that is conscious of the nothingness of its being? Correlatively, 
how could this singularity execute the will to power? If will to power 
is e ne  s  se er ing i e r e  is singu ri  u  n  
be able to self-overcome; it would not be able to envisage “a being 

er n i se  e use i  is   e ni i n  en p ssing  There 
is no being that it is not. It is every being to have existed, is existing, 
and will exist. Sartre claims that we are able to transcend because time 
separates us from our future selves: “The being which is what it is must 
e e  e e eing i  is n   i  is n  u  in e rs  p e 

this negation, like all others, comes to the surface of being through hu-
man reality, as we have shown, and not through a dialectic appropriate 
just to being.”15 He is saying my point exactly: to become what it is 
not, to exhibit the will to power, a being needs to take form in humans 
and nothing else. 

To further establish this point, we must distinguish between 
what Sartre terms a “being-in-itself” and a “being-for-itself”. A be-
ing-in-itself “is what it is” in that there is no distance between its con-
sciousness of itself and itself. An example of a being-in-itself is a chair; 
i  is   ir  ere is n  re e i n r ns i usness ns i u e  
by an object-subject distance, as in intentionality. More perplexing and 
relevant to the focus of the paper, another example of a being-in-itself 

u  e n in ni e singu ri  sin e In e in i se  ere is n   
particle of being which is not wholly within itself without distance.”16 
Further, a singularity would be characterized as a being-in-itself be-

use e ensi   eing  e in i se  is in ni e  I  is  u ness 17 

14 Id., 47.
15 Id., 77
16 Id., 74.
17 Ibid.



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If all intelligent life to ever exist across all time were concentrated to 
a single being, there would not be an iota of that being which is not 
being; it wholly and unequivocally constitutes itself. Since, as I stated, 
it is every being that exists, has existed, and will exist, it is wholly and 
u  eing  I  is  ere re   eing in i se  e   S r re e ne  

consciousness as “a being such that in its being, its being is in question 
in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.”18 Further, a 
conscious being “does not coincide with itself in a full equivalence [...] 
The distinguishing characteristic of consciousness, on the other hand, 
is that it is a decompression of being.”19 Nothingness is a requisite for 
consciousness, which is a requisite for the will to power. This, a singu-
larity does not have. 

It is worth summarizing at this juncture what we have posited 
s  r  irs  e e ne  e i   p er s n e ern  se re ing  
eternally self-destroying, eternally self-overcoming force of life. Then, 
we questioned why life, in exhibiting this will to power, manifests in 
 p ur i   in i i u s s pp se    singu r  in ni e in e igen e 

 er es i se  en  using e S r re n e ni i n  ns i us-
ness, we posited the reason why a singularity would not be able to ex-
hibit the will to power. We found that since consciousness requires an 
aspect of nothingness, a singularity cannot envisage a being other than 
itself because there is no being that it is not. There is no being which 
is n   e ni i n  n in ni e singu ri  n  e use in r er  
en is ge  eing er n i se  i  re uires eing  ni e eing  is 
affected by time. Now, I will posit that life must be in anxiety to exhibit 
the will to power, which it is unable to do if it is not individuated into 
r g en s  ese r g en e  in i i u s re u n eings  I i  rs  

elucidate how human beings are unique in that they are able to exhibit 
the will to power. Then, I will offer some commentary on life’s fall into 
individuality and a multitude of self-aware egos. 

§4: ANXIETY EXCLUSIVE TO HUMANS AS A CATA-
LYST FOR THE WILL TO POWER

As Sartre claimed, and as I outlined at the end of [§3], a being 
who is able to become the being that is not what it is not is unique ex-
clusively to “human reality [...] and not through a dialectic appropriate 

18 Id., 47.
19 Id., 74. 



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to just being.”20 We now know that a being who wishes to be what it is 
not, i.e., to exhibit the will to power, must be a human. A singularity, as 
Sartre would say, is unable to be conscious of a being it is not. But how 
do humans go about becoming a being which they are not? 

The answer to this is that humans are in a state of anxiety. Also 
called angst, it is an affection felt exclusively by humans and analo-
gously has the power to elucidate our condition.

Sartre claims that in humans, “there is already a relation 
between my future being and my present being. But a nothingness has 
slipped into the heart of this relation; I am not the self which I will be. 
First I am not that self because time separates me from it. Secondly, I 
am not that self because what I am is not the foundation of what I will 
be. Finally I am not that self because no actual existent can determine 
strictly what I am going to be.”21 is rs  re s n is s r ig r r  I 
am, for example, not the self that I was in 2017 because that was seven 
years ago. Correlatively, I am not the self because my past conduct 
doesn’t determine my present self, and I can’t control or determine my 
future self with my current actions.22 Nothingness is constitutive of 
being human and analogously allows us to have an ambiguous rela-
tionship with ourselves. Our past selves are not us; they are objects for 
us. Sartre uses the example of a recovering gambler who once again 
faces the gambling table. His past resolution is not him since “it has 
become an object for [his] consciousness.”23 However, despite us not 
being our past or future selves for the aforementioned reasons, we at 
the same time are our past and future selves: “Yet as I am already what 
I will be (otherwise I would not be interested in anyone being more 
than another), I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being 
it. It is through my horror that I am carried toward the future, and the 
horror nihilates itself in that it constitutes the future as possible.”24 
There is a distance within us and between our past, present, and future 
selves rendering the human experience fragmented and ambiguous. As 
mentioned, our past is not us but an object for us. My future self is not 
me because I am not it yet; however, “Decisive conduct will emanate 

20 Id., 77. 
21 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 31-32.
22 Otherwise, we would not be free. If my future self was constituted solely 

by my current actions, my actions and character in the future would be 
determined by my present self and congruently unfree. 

23 Id., 33. 
24 Id., 32.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

from a self which I am not yet.”25 Therefore, “I am the self which I will 
be, in the mode of not being it.”26 This is precisely Sartre’s conception 
of anguish. A singularity does not have this ambiguity for the reasons 
outlined in §3. 

Because humans have this distance between ourselves - a 
concomitant of which is our anxiety - are we able to exploit the gap 
between our past self or future self and become anew, thereby exhib-
iting the will to power? Only in anguish is the ambiguity and nothing-
ness of our existence posited. Further, anguish is tightly intertwined 
with freedom: “What we should note at present is that freedom, which 
manifests itself through anguish, is characterized by a constantly re-
newed obligation to remake the Self which designates the free being.”27 
I italicized the words “remake the self” in order to stress its importance 
in relation to the will to power. Once again, the will to power is de-

ne  s  se er ing  se re ing  n  se es r ing  i e 
force. Only when there is a distance existing in the individual between 
himself and his consciousness of himself can he become something he 
is not. Nietzsche describes the will to power as self-overcoming. For 
the “self” to be a self in “self-overcoming”, it must become fragment-
ed: “The self therefore represents an ideal distance within the imma-
nence of the subject in relation to himself, a way of not being his own 
coincidence, of escaping identity while positing it as unity-in short, of 
being in a perpetually unstable equilibrium between identity as abso-
lute cohesion without a trace of diversity and unity as a synthesis of a 
multiplicity.”28 

Individuated human selves are their future selves in the mode 
of not being them. A singularity is its future self in the mode of being 
it. Therefore, it can’t create beyond itself because it is already that 
which it wants to create; it’s like a paradox. To solve it, life must be in-
dividuated in the forms of humans29. Existential philosophy has strug-
gled for decades with the notion of anxiety and a feeling of ambiguity, 

25 Id., 56.
26 Ibid.
27 Id., 34-35.
28 Id., 77.
29 Interesting similarities here can be drawn to a singularity splitting itself 

up in an act of Sartrean “bad faith”. A singularity cannot self overcome, 
r e re s ns p si e  s  r  i  i  n s i  is in ni e  ere re  i  us  

e ei e i se  in  ni u e r ug   s r   en r pi  n  r g en i n 
in  u ns   re igu us  in ni e n  ni e  is  e er  is 
presupposing there is a “life” that is doing the “splitting up”; hence, this is 
mere speculation.  



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of homelessness, within ourselves. I posit the reason for this being 
that life needs these fragmented multiplicities characterized by anxiety 
as opposed to a complete singularity in order to self-overcome. How, 
though, is anxiety born?

§5: ANXIETY BEFORE THE FALL 
For Soren Kierkegaard, this begins with a perspicuous anal-

ysis of anxiety itself in The Concept of Anxiety. Anxiety is a clue 
that is utterly crucial in elucidating the fundamental human question 
of “why” and “what”. Before diving into the text, a few preliminary 
re r s us  e es is e  s e  s s e e ni i ns  e rs  is 

 ier eg r  uses e   e ris i n i e  spe i  e 
fall of Adam, to elucidate the concept of anxiety. A concomitant of this 
is that much of the language he uses falls under the domain of Chris-
tian mythology; however, he claims that “the myth gives an outward 
expression of something that is inward.”30 In other words, the myth of 
the bible is practical and correlatively used for the purpose of illustrat-
ing a fundamental truth about humans that may otherwise be opaque. 
The myth, therefore, should not be viewed exclusively about Adam 
but interpreted as a metaphor for every human being; spe i  eir 
“fall” into a state of “spirit” from a state of “innocence”.

This leads me to my next preliminary remark: much of the lan-
guage used by Kierkegaard may feel esoteric to those unfamiliar with 
is p i s p  ere re  s e rie  e ni i ns us  rs  e u ine  

“Synthesis”: The concept of human beings as syntheses is 
arguably the most crucial tenet of Kierkegaard’s anthropology. He 
e nes  s n esis s s  e u n eing s  en   s n esis 

of soul and body, but also is a synthesis of the temporal and eternal.”31 
Humans are, in Kierkegaard’s description, intermediate beings in that 
we are not purely “physical” nor purely “psychical”. We are not purely 
body, like animals, nor purely mind. Analogously, we are a synthesis 
of the temporal and the eternal. Our predisposition to and conception 

 e in ni e s us  re i e ur ni u e  i e ise  r ug  ur 
reness  eing ni e re e e  n ei e  s e ing  is 

n  ni e  e in ni e  

“Spirit”: Kierkegaard refers to spirit as a sort of glue that 

30 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 57. 
31 Id.,104.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

makes this synthesis possible. Spirit can also be conceived of as our 
self-awareness and consciousness. He says that “the human being is a 
synthesis of the psychical and the physical, but a synthesis is unthink-
able if the two are not united in a third. This third is spirit.”32 Further, 
in his The Sickness unto Death, he claims that “A human being is spirit. 
But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is 
a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself 
to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s 
relating itself to itself.”33

“Innocence” and “the qualitative leap”: Innocence can be 
characterized as a state of immediacy, before the “qualitative leap” into 
spirit. Though he compares the state of innocence to that of Adam be-
fore his fall into sin, it can be compared to every human’s state of being 
before they are self-aware, before they are characterized by “spirit”. 
The qualitative leap is the fall into self-awareness itself. 

With this framework, we can now undergo a brief synopsis of 
Kierkegaardian anxiety. There are two main characterizations of anxi-
ety: the anxiety felt before our qualitative leap into self-awareness and 
that after; for now, the former will receive most of the analysis. Kierke-
gaard begins by describing the human experience of anxiety before we 
become self-aware:

 “Innocence is ignorance. In innocence the human being is 
not characterized as spirit but is psychically characterized in imme-
diate unity with its natural condition. Spirit is dreaming in the human 
being… In this state there is peace and repose, but at the same time 
there is something else, something that is not dissension and strife, for 
there is nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing. But 
what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety. This is the profound 
secret of innocence, that at the same time it is anxiety. Dreaming, spirit 
projects its own actuality, yet this actuality is nothing, but innocence 
always sees this nothing outside itself. Anxiety is an attribute of the 
dreaming spirit[...] The concept of anxiety is hardly ever seen treated in 
psychology, so I must point out that it differs altogether from fear and 
si i r n ep s  re er  s e ing e ni e  ere s n ie  is 
freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.”34

e rs  p r   is u i n  isse  is e   in  

32 Id., 53.
33 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 13.
34 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 50-51.



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state of innocence, humans are not yet characterized by spirit.35 Here, 
the human is not yet a self; no ego is posited. Innocence is further 
explicated later in this analysis: “In innocence, the human being is not 
merely animal, for if at any moment in his life he were merely ani-
mal, he would never become a human being. So spirit is present but 
as intermediate, as dreaming.”36 Kierkegaard asserts that in a state of 
innocence our spirit is “dreaming”. Spirit “projects its own actuality” 
to the being who feels this projection outside of itself as a nothing. 
Put ambiguously, anxiety is “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of 
possibility”. It discloses itself before itself in time. Before humans 
become free, they feel anxiety in the sense that they have an inkling 
within them that communicates that they may become free, become a 
“self” whose actions are free. The reason the being in innocence feels 
this call as a nothing is because what is pulling us (spirit) is nothing to 
us; we are not it yet. Self-awareness and spirit exists in the future but 
is a nothing now. Why, then, can humans feel what is not yet posited as 
anxiety? The answer lies in our conception of ourselves as a synthesis. 

Life, characterized by the will to power, needs to self-over-
come. Life needs to be in anxiety to self-overcome. We now know this. 
Recall the discussion in §3 of the distinction between a being-in-it-
se  n   eing r i se   ir r n ni  in pure ni u e  is  
being-in-itself insofar as it is what it is; there is no consciousness of 
the distance that exists between itself because there is no distance. 

n in ni e singu ri  is  eing in i se  r e s e re s n  ere 
is no consciousness of itself and therefore no gap to exploit in con-
sciousness. There is no intentional distance between the object and 
the subject because the singularity is wholly itself and nothing else. 

u ns  e er  re uni ue  u ns re  s n esis  e in ni e 
n  e ni e  I  e ere s ri  in ni e  e u  e eings in e -

se es  e in r u i n  in ni  in  ns i usness  si e r  e 
  i  es e p en en n n  s ures i  is n  n e p i i e 

theory expressly designed to reduce the being of consciousness to that 
of the in-itself.”37 n g us  i  e ere s ri  ni e  s ri   
we would also be beings-in-themselves. We would be no different than 
a chair or a dog, which is what it is and is incapable of self-conscious-
ness that manifests as a result of any distance within itself. Humans, 
then, need to be a Kierkegaardian synthesis constituted by ambiguity 

35 Recall that this is congruent with being characterized as self-aware and 
ing un er e e ni i n  S r re n ns i usness

36 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 53.
37 Sarte, Being and Nothingness, 76.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

- what Sartre similarly fashioned a “being-for-itself”: “The self refers, 
but it refers precisely to the subject. It indicates a relation between the 
subject and himself, and this relation is precisely a duality [...] The 
self therefore represents an ideal distance within the immanence of the 
subject in relation to himself, a way of not being his own coincidence, 
of escaping identity while positing it as unity-in short, of being in a 
perpetually unstable equilibrium between identity as absolute cohesion 
without a trace of diversity and unity as a synthesis of a multiplicity. 
This is what we shall call presence to itself. The law of being of the 
for-itself.”38 This “duality” within a human is precisely what Kierkeg-
aard calls the “synthesis”. By being an ambiguous temporal synthesis, 
we can be what we are not and not be what we are. We can be the self 
from which our past actions originated while simultaneously viewing 
our past as an object to be negated. We can be the self from which 
future conduct will emanate despite being separated from that self 
through time. Only in this ambiguity unique to being a human synthesis 
of the temporal and eternal can the will to power be achieved. 

Spirit is the glue that posits this ambiguous synthesis. Spirit, 
too, is itself ambiguous: “[spirit] is in a sense a hostile power, for it 
constantly upsets the relation between soul and body, a relation that 
does have subsistence but then doesn’t have it, because it receives it 

rs  r ug  spiri  i  is  n e er n   rien  p er  is es 
precisely to constitute the relation.”39 The relation between soul and 
body is described as hostile because through its synthesizing soul and 

 s u  n   re i e e  re n  uni e  Spiri  gi es e  e 
relation only to posit that they are separate. However, this act also is a 
friendly power since it wishes to reconcile the two. As a result of this 
ambiguity, the result of this synthesis, the human, is in a state not only 
of ambiguity but of anxiety: “What then is the human being’s relation 
to this ambiguous power; how does spirit relate to itself and to that 
which conditions it? It relates as anxiety.”40

Spirit allows life to be conscious of itself and become a being 
it is not. If spirit did not exist: one of two states would exist that would 
prevent the will to power from manifesting: one, that which seeks to 
execute the will to power would be infinite; or two, that which seeks 
to execute the will to power would be finite. Both are beings-in-them-
selves for the reasons outlined above, and both are unable to be con-

38 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 76-77.
39 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 53.
40 Ibid.



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scious under the Sartrean conception of consciousness as a being able 
to be what it is not. Spirit creates an amorphous human that is neither 
one nor the other, positing that all-crucial distance within the self 
that allows for self-overcoming. For the “self” in self-overcoming in 

ie s e s e ni i n  e i   p er  e se  us  represen  n 
ideal distance within the immanence of the subject in relation to him-
self, a way of not being his own coincidence, of escaping identity while 
positing it as unity-in short, of being in a perpetually unstable equilib-
rium between identity as absolute cohesion without a trace of diversity 
and unity as a synthesis of a multiplicity.”41 i  is e ni i n  
spirit and self, we can arrive at a crucial point:

If spirit is the conglutinating force positing the conscious syn-
thesis of temporal and eternal as a self, and humans, as this synthesis, 
relate to spirit in anxiety, this shows that anxiety can thereby be char-
acterized as a pull into ambiguous selfhood away from a being-in-itself 
in innocence. This explains the feeling of anxiety accompanying the 
all-too-human affection of homelessness, experiencing oneself as “oth-
er” and “fragmented”. As humans “fall” into selfhood, their synthesis 
renders them anxiously aware of their ambiguity and nothingness. 
We desperately want to be beings-in-themselves, whose existence is a 
given, who have no internal tension. This explains much of our other 
fundamental affection, love, which will be expounded in further detail 

er  e er  ue  ur eing s n eses  e ni e n  e in ni e  
which both constitute beings-in-themselves, our existence is a constant 
project, a constant ambiguity, and a constant striving. We are constantly 
in a state of inner homelessness, of not being at peace and whole with 
ourselves. Only in this turbulent and intermediate state as a synthesis 
of temporal and eternal, however, can we be consciously aware of and 
exploit the distance wedged between ourselves by time. This anxiety 
surrounding selfhood also explains why humans attempt to negate their 
selfhood through conformity or bad faith. 

It is worth once again summarizing the ground we have cov-
ere   is un ure  irs  e e ne  e i   p er s e eter-
nally self- creating, the eternally self-destroying” force of life. With 

is e ni i n  e re i e   in r er  se er e n  re e 
e n  i se  i e us  rs  e ns i us  i se  e er  in r er 

for a being to be conscious, it must be “a being such that in its being, 
its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than 

41 Sarte, Being and Nothingness, 77.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

itself.”42 With this, we posited that a singularity would not be able to 
be conscious of itself because there is no being other than itself. An 
in ni e singu ri  is  eing in i se  e  e re i e   u ns 
are conscious in that we are, through our ambiguous character, able to 
become beings which we are not. This stems from the conception of a 
self, which is never a “whole” whose being is a given; rather, selfhood 
implies a distance and incompleteness existing within the self which 
is made possible through its being in Sartrean consciousness. This 
ambiguous character is lent to us in tandem with our being syntheses 
held together by spirit, which we relate to in anxiety. If we relate to 
spiri  in n ie  n ie  n ere  e e ne  s  pu  in  se  
If anxiety is a pull into selfhood, and selfhood allows for creation 
through its unique condition as a being-for-itself, and the will-to-power 
requires a being-for-itself in order to envisage and self which it is not, 
then anxiety is a catalyst for the will to power. Here, we seem to have 
arrived at the answer to the question of individuality. Only through a 
fragmented ego who can become what it is not by virtue of its ambig-
uous being is the will to power manifested. Life, in order to become 
what it is not, must have a relationship to a self which it is not in the 
future, something it cannot do if it is an unindividuated singularity. 
Such a being would be all beings to exist and ever exist and in no way 
could envisage a being that it can be because it is that being. To exhibit 
the will to power, a being must take form in an ambiguous, paradoxi-
cal, individuated human form: one that is in a state of anxiety due to its 
incompleteness. In a human, selfhood and being are never a state but a 
continuous striving, a continuous consciousness of itself and transcen-
dence of itself into a new self. 

§6: SELFHOOD IS SELF-ANNIHILATION  
 eing igu us se es r ns e  in i e r ug  ns n  

negation and becoming, we are in a state of continuous self-annihila-
tion and self-creating. This means that the ego is, in every sense of the 
word, set up to be destroyed. Here we arrive at the Nietzschean notions 

 se s ri e  se nni i i n  n  g ing un er  u ine  in 2   
virtue of us being syntheses are we never a whole; we are amorphous 
in that we are beings-for-themselves who can exploit the distance 
engendered by consciousness and therefore continuously become anew. 
Nietzsche believed that “Whoever must be a creator always annihi-

42 Id., 47.



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lates.”43 The ego, in this characterization of continuous self-annihila-
tion, can be conceived of as a piece of wood making the flame burn 
brighter by being destroyed. Like fuel to an engine of the monstrous 
will to power is the ego. To execute the will to power, we must do as 
Zarathustra did: “I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own 
ashes to the mountains; I invented  rig er e r se 44 Only 
through our destruction can we become anew. Nietzsche told us that 
“And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing be-
sides”. Not only are we the will to power - and this is the crucial point 
of this paper and what Nietzsche never expressly stated - the will to 
power is nothing without us. To self-overcome and create, it needs the 
human.  

§7: SELF-ANNIHILATION AND FATAL LOVE 
 If humans are characterized as ambiguous syntheses, and con-
sequently in a state of self-annihilation, it is worth expounding in more 
e i  is i e   se s ri e  s e ing  is in eres ing  un  in 

our conception of love. 

 The Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont offers a fascinating 
commentary on the myth of Tristan and Iseult in his work Love in 
the Western World; one that, independently of the concept of the will 
to power, paints the individual in a similar fashion as Nietzsche. De 
Rougemont begins his analysis by emphasizing the prominence of love 
and death as intertwined themes through European literary history: 
“Love and death, a fatal love—in these phrases is summed up, if not 
the whole of poetry, at least whatever is popular, whatever is univer-
sally moving in European literature, alike as regards the oldest legends 
and the sweetest songs. Happy love has no history.”45 Already we can 
see overlaps with Nietzschean thought: “Love and perishing: that has 
rhymed for eternities.”46 Further, De Rougemont claims that “What 
s irs ri  p e s  eir nes  ig s is nei er e e ig   e 
senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satis-
faction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering. There we 
have the fundamental fact.”47 Here, we see the theme of annihilation 
already intertwined with - and seemingly paradoxically - love. What 

43 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 171.
44 Id.,143. 
45 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 15.
46 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 235.
47 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 15.



32

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

has moved human beings for centuries are not stories of happy endings 
and contentment in our love; rather, we crave the suffering and striving 
accompanied by the act. 

The point of departure De Rougemont takes in his analysis of 
the Tristan Myth is the mechanics of the plot; to avoid summarizing 
the entire story, he argues that the two lovers, Tristan and Iseult, do 
everything in their power not to be with each other. Every small ob-
s e  eir uni i n is e  i  u er e e i n   is p in  e 
Rougemont proclaims that “Objectively, not one of the barriers to the 
u en   eir e is insuper e  n  e  e  i e e  gi e up  

It is not too much to say that they never miss a chance of getting part-
ed. When there is no obstruction, they invent one, as in the case of the 
drawn sword and of Tristan’s marriage. They invent obstructions as if 
on purpose, notwithstanding that such barriers arc their bane. Can it be 
in order to please the author and reader?”48 The act of striving towards 
each other, the act of overcoming barriers to their love, is paramount 
to the object of their love. In short, Tristan and Iseult love the act of 
loving more than the object of their love; they love striving toward 
one another. The same can be said of the reader following along. What 

es e s r  in eres ing n  igni es e e i in us is i gining 
the lovers overcoming the obstacles to their love, not their union.

With this established, De Rougemont proceeds to make a 
larger claim about what this reveals about human nature; after all, “It is 
only ‘silly’ questions that can enlighten us; for behind whatever seems 
obvious lurs something that is not.”4950 A myth, he says, discloses a 
secret. This secret is that we “love love more than the object of love, to 
love passion for its own sake, has been to love to suffer[…] passionate 
love, the longing for what sears us and annihilates us in its triumph - 
there is the secret which Europe has never allowed to be given away.”51 

e ues i n en re ins    u ns  r s s ries  
passionate suffering? Why do we crave this suffering, this love whose 
“effulgence culminates in [our] self-destruction?”52 The answer, and if 
the similarities with Nietzsche are not already apparent, is that “Both 
passion and the longing for death which passion disguises are connect-
ed with, and fostered by, a particular notion of how to reach under-

48 Id., 37.
49 Id., 38.
50 Interestingly, Nietzsche had a strikingly similar quote on page 144 in Thus 

Spoke Zarathustra: “Is not the strangest of all things proved most nearly?”.
51 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 50.
52 Id., 51.



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An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

standing [...] man reaches self-awareness and tests himself only by 
risking his life.”53

Here, we see the will to power in the individual not only in 
anxiety but in love54 as well. The reason why we love loving more 
than the object of our love is that “Whatever I create and however 
much I love it - soon I must oppose it and my love; thus my will wills 
it.”55 In eing e ne  s rp us n  rre i e  se nni i ing 
creatures substantiating the will to power, we must be in a continual 
state of striving towards, becoming and overcoming. This tendency of 
creation in self-destruction is so fundamental that it takes root in - at 
least a part of - our conception of love. In passionate love, we cannot 
e s is e  i  i s uni  e need the constant opposition, the inces-

sant overcoming of barriers to love. This is precisely the reason the 
myth of Tristan and Iseult has gripped us for centuries: because we 
ourselves are characterized by the will to power’s continuous striving. 
We are drawn to stories such as Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers 
“can never be united till, bereft of all hope and of all possible love, 
they reach the heart of utter obstruction and experience the supreme 
e i n i  is es r e  in eing u e 56 De Rougemont is, of 
course, referring to death as the “heart of utter obstruction”. The lovers 
in such stories, whether Tristan and Iseult or Romeo and Juliet, much 
to our enthrallment, obsess in the ecstasy of what it means to be a 
human - to constantly overcome obstacles - to the point that they reach 
unity in the ultimate obstacle of death. This craving for death is indic-
ative of the point proved in §8, that the self is set up, by its ambiguous 
e ni i n   e ns n  nni i e  ris n n  Iseu  r e e  

just as Nietzsche proclaims we do: “Spirit is the life that itself cuts into 
life: with its own agony it increases its own knowledge. Did you know 
that? And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and through 
tears be consecrated as a sacrificial animal.”57 Just as the will to power 
is  ns n  su ering n  se s ri e  p ssi n e e is su ering  
something undergone [...] To love love more than the object of love, to 
love passion for its own sake, has been to love to suffer [...] passionate 
love, the longing for what sears us and annihilates us in its triumph - 

53 Ibid.
4 I p r n  in p ssi n e  e  ere re n  pes n  ssi i ns 
of love, and at this juncture I am only analyzing this one (not to say that the 

i   p er is n  presen  in er ssi i ns  e  
55 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 227.
56 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 53.
57 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 216.



34

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

there is the secret which Europe has never allowed to be given away.”58 

§8: SYMPOSIUM LOVE 
 Passionate love, however, is not the only type of love that 
elucidates the human condition; we are given another interpretation 
of love by Diotima in Plato’s Symposium. In Diotima’s dialogue with 
Socrates at the end of Symposium  e g ess e nes e s e r 

e in ni e  s e ing e ie e r ug  pr re i n  r re i n 
is everlasting and immortal as far as is possible for something mortal. 
Eros necessarily desires immortality with the good, from what has 
been agreed, since its object is to possess the good for itself forever. 
It necessarily follows from this account, then, that Eros is also love 
of immortality.”59 In ur nguis e  r g en e  ni e s e  e re 
painfully aware of our mortality; this is the negative concomitant of 
executing the will to power. In becoming syntheses through spirit do 
we become conscious of the nothingness of our being. The self, as 
outlined in §6, is set up for annihilation. As a result, the human self, in 
i s nguis e  re i i n  i s ni u e see s s  r s i  n  e is  
forever and be immortal. It can do so only in this way, by giving birth, 
ever leaving behind a different new thing in place of the old, since even 
in the time in which each single living creature is said to live and to be 
the same—for example, as a man is said to be the same from youth to 
old age— though he never has the same things in himself, he neverthe-
less is called the same, but he is ever becoming new while otherwise 
peris ing  in respe   ir n  es  n  ne n   n  e en ire 
body.”60 Although individual humans are mortal, the will to power of 
life is immortal. Through our procreation, driven by love, by striving 
towards one another, we immortalize life. In addition to infantilizing 
life through physical procreation, we can also achieve a sort of me-
ta-immortality of our knowledge through our unique ability to gain 
knowledge iteratively through generations: “Study, by introducing 
again a new memory in place of what departs, preserves the knowledge 
so that it seems to be the same.”61 

The individual will not be around forever, and nor will the 
human race. Some day, and hopefully, humans will evolve into what 
Nietzsche calls the “overman” just as humans evolved from apes. To 

58 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 50-51.
59 Plato, Symposium, 207a.
60 Id., 207d.
61 Id., 208a. 



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An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

the overman, humans will be apes.62 No being, in its ambiguity, can 
er e e e s ing re i   i s ni u e  I  n  e er  e er-

nalize the will to power through love. Through procreation and the it-
erative passing down of knowledge through generations, intelligent life 
immortalizes itself. The will to power is real; life continually dies only 
to create something new; in this process, it has discovered amazing 
things about itself. While the concept of a human as merely a kindling 

r e e ern  e  e i   p er  see  isp r ging  I p si  
that it is beautiful beyond words. Though everything is transitory and 

ni e  e  ns i u e n e inspiring  e ern  i   p er  i i  
says that “it is in this way that all that is mortal is preserved: not by 
being ever completely the same, like the divine, but by leaving behind, 
as it departs and becomes older, a different new thing of the same sort 
as it was.”63 r e i   p er  e in ni e  se er ing   
be preserved, it cannot be a singularity. It needs life to be a synthesis 
that can exploit the nothingness between itself through its ambiguous 
relationship with time. 

§9: CONCLUSION  
 Humans are intermediate beings. We are made so by spirit 
in anxiety, rendering us insatiably craving wholeness in love either 

r ug  se nni i i n r ppe  r s e in ni e  e u n  
however, can never be a being-in-itself. Yet another reason that our 
existence is ambiguous is that we did not ask for self-consciousness, 
yet the self is our responsibility. 

 Knowing that selfhood is what drives the will to power and 
can beget the overman, let us not hide from it. Let us not subjugate our 
“self” by hiding from it in conformity. We must embrace the ambiguity 
of our existence rather than seek some objective truth external to us. 
Only through self-exploration, suffering, and self-overcoming can we 
do what is most beautiful: create beyond ourselves. 

 Humans have, throughout time, gradually adopted more and 
more de-centering outlooks on the world. It began with geo-centric 
decentering: humans realize their planet is not the center of the uni-
verse. Then, in horror, we realized that man was not specially created 
and rather is a result of billions of years of evolution. Next, we realize 

62 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 124.
63 Plato, Symposium, 208b.



36

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

that even our own egos, our own selves, are mysteries to us.64 Perhaps 
now it is time for another de-centering. Let us realize that humans have 
an ethical duty to safeguard our distant future, and that we must ensure 
the being into which we will evolve is both something we are proud 
of and capable of thriving. Humans are not the end of the evolutionary 
ladder of life. It would be a shame to throw away the gift of the will to 
p er   e u ni  e en   e er r ug  ur se s ness  
Nietzsche believed that it is time for humanity to set itself a goal. It is 
time to look at humanity’s purpose and future more practically. After 
all, isn’t the most disenfranchised being that which isn’t born yet?65

64  Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
65 This is an aspect of “longtermism”, which endorses ethical consideration 

for beings who are not yet born, i.e., a being such as the overman. 



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An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

REFERENCES
De Rougemont, Denis. Love in the Western World. Translat-

ed by Montogomery Belgion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1983. 

Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. 
Herts, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2012.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psy-
chologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem 
of Hereditary Sin. Edited by Alastair Hannay, Translated by Alastair 
Hannay. NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014. 

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian 
s gi  p si i n r i i n n  ening  i e   

Alastair Hannay, Translated by Alastair Hannay. NY:  Viking Pen-
guin Inc., 1989.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Edited by Walter A. 
Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, Translated by Walter A. Kaufmann. 
NY: Random House, 1968.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in The Por-
table Nietzsche. Edited by Walter A. Kaufmann, Translated by Walter 
A. Kaufmann. NY: Viking Penguin Inc., 1968.

Plato. Symposium. Translated by R.E. Allen. New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1991. 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by 
Hazel Estella Barnes. London: Routledge Classics, 2003.



38

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

δι
άν

οι
α

A SYMETRICAL ARGUMENT FOR 
PERSONHOOD AND ABORTION

ARTHUR DECARLE

This paper will be concerned with the moral status of abortion, 
e ne  in is ins n e s e un r  er in i n  r ing ere-

of, of a woman’s pregnancy. In my opinion, to satisfactorily defend a 
woman’s right to an abortion, one must display that a fetus is unworthy 
of moral consideration. In this paper, I will craft an argument to dis-
p   r  nsi er i n is gr n e   e rs  en  ns i us 
experience is possible. Further, I will suggest that fetuses before proper 
brain development are unworthy of moral consideration, morally justi-
fying a woman’s right to abortion. 

 e u e  ssess  i  e i  rs  nee   is inguis  
between a human and a person. The traditional argument against abor-
tion is a perfect example of the necessity to distinguish these terms. 
The traditional argument, as recounted by Warren is as follows: 

It is morally wrong to kill an innocent human being, fetuses 
are innocent human beings, then it is morally wrong to kill a 
fetus.1 

1 Warren, M. A. (1973). “ON THE MORAL AND LEGAL STATUS 
OF ABORTION”. The Monist, 57(1), 43–61. http://www.jstor.org/
stable/27902294, 12.



39Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Personhood and Abortion

e s e  e r i i n  rgu en  res s n e e ni i n  u n  
u n eing  in e p i s p i  sense  is  er  i   e ni-

i ns  e rs  is se e i en  n in i i u  e nging  e spe ies 
Homo Sapien n  n ining e u n gen e  is e ni i n n 
be referred to as the genetic human.2 The moral human, or person for 
the intent and purpose of this paper, is a completely developed member 
of the moral community and is thus granted full moral consideration. 

u  s I i  n  e p   isp  e e ni i n  use  u n  
begs the question. Premise one is simply a restatement of one of our 
most basic moral truths, assuming it is specifying a “moral human.” 
If it is the case that a fetus is an “innocent human”, then by necessity, 

ere us  e  ne  e ni i n  u n  s i  is i gi   ssign 
moral judgment to an individual based solely on genetics. If premise 

 is per ing n e gene i  e ni i n  u n  en i  egs e 
question, what makes a genetic being morally innocent? If that is the 

se  en  ne  e ni i n  u n  us  e use   i  ur er 
gi  ies  ere re  ei er e rgu en  u i i es ne e ni i n 
 u n  n  egs e ues i n  r i  uses  e ni i ns  u-

man”, and the argument becomes unsound. The argument fails to prove 
 e presen e  u n gene i s is ne ess r  n  su ien  r 

inclusion into the moral community and therefore fails due to the lack 
 e u e e ni i ns  is p per i  e p   i  e pi s  

the traditional argument by further exploring the difference between a 
genetic human and a moral one.

 I  eser es e p sis  e e usi e n ure  e e ni i n  
a person is central to the debate over a fetus’ personhood status. Phi-

s p ers e n ri us  s rugg e   re e  e ni i n   pers n 
and none to this date has been generally accepted. That being said, one 
cannot act immorally to someone else on the grounds that “person” is 
n  e r  e ne  i ing e  n is re   pers n r e   n  
n  e e ni i n  ne  e    e ni i n es n  en i  e 

non-existence of the concept. One may ask, how can I assert a claim re-
g r ing pers n  i u  e er e ning e er  e ns er see s 

 ie in e   ne n ri u e su ien  n i i ns r  pers n 
i u  su   e ni i n  I  I en un er n in i i u   u s s e 
 e n  n i i ns pr p se  in e re  r  I n e n en  I 

am interacting with a person. 

First, to outline our understanding of personhood, we must 

2 Id., 15.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

start with the moral community. While I will not attempt to lay out a 
p e e n sis  r  uni  I i  e e p i  su ien  

enough to make my argument. The moral community, used descriptive-
ly in this context, is a group owing to a recognized moral philosophy 
that serves to govern their pursuits.3 It consists exclusively of people, 
with all people being included in the moral community. People are 
individuals who, alone, are granted full moral consideration from the 
moral community.4 It is the case that all persons are human, it is not 
the case that all humans are persons are human. To illustrate the point, 
I present an example: a man has his head surgically removed and 
discarded while his headless body is kept alive using medical equip-
ment. The headless body is still living and still retains its homo sapien 
status, therefore, it is human. Can the same be said for his personhood? 
Our intuitions suggest that his lack of head, the part of the body that 
contributes to every attribute we hold to be like that of a person, is 
now severed and dead. This example, and others like it are intended to 
display our intuitive belief that “human” and “person” are not synony-
mous. 

Second, to understand personhood as it is commonly under-
s  ne us  ress e ep e  su ien  n i i ns  rren 
and Dennett both formulate almost identical conditions following the 
sophisticated cognitive capacity school of thought. In their respective 
works, entitled On The Moral And Legal Status of Abortion and Condi-
tions of Personhood, they assert the following: 

1) consciousness of the objects and events external and/or 
internal to the being;

2) reasoning: the developed capacity to problem-solve relative-
ly complex issues;

3) self-motivated activity: activity independent of genetic or 
direct external control;

4) a capacity to communicate, by whatever means;

5) the presence of self-identity and self-awareness. 5

3 Babst, G.A. (2011). “Moral Community”. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) 
Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.
org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_328.

4 Dennett, Daniel. “CONDITIONS OF PERSONHOOD.” Identities of 
Persons, 1976, 175–96. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520353060-008. 

5  Id., 5; Warren, M. A. (1973). “ON THE MORAL AND LEGAL STATUS 
OF ABORTION”. The Monist, 57(1), 43–61. http://www.jstor.org/
stable/27902294, 17.



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Personhood and Abortion

 Now that both the moral community and personhood have 
been crudely described, I suggest that only consciousness (1) and the 
presence of self-identity (5) are required for a being to be regarded as 
 pers n  ns i usness ne is n   su ien  es rip i n i u  

the distinction of human self-identity. A phenomenon that seems to be 
unique to the human species is the idea of self-identity and how it feels 
to be a self. An emergent property occurs within humans that permits 
us to develop from a simple creature, a fetus, to a complex creature 
capable of advanced consciousness and the subjective experience of 
what it is like to be oneself. It is hard to dispute that a cat is conscious, 
but much harder to prove that the cat has the experience of feeling like 
a self and recognizing that same feeling in others in the way a human 
undoubtedly does. This conscious awareness and “feeling like a self” 
are the key factors to personhood and will be referred to as one term: 
conscious experience.

 ns i us e perien e  in  ie  is e rs  n  s  ru i  
deciding factor in distinguishing a being’s status in the moral commu-
nity. That is to say, conscious experience serves as a precursor to all 
other conditions presented by Warren and Dennett. To display the value 
that modern society places on the conscious experience, I will deploy 
yet another example. Let us imagine a man who gets in an extremely 
traumatic accident and is rushed to the hospital. Let us also assume 
that before his accident, he was healthy and, by all accounts, deploying 
a conscious experience. Due to his injuries, his heart stops for a few 
moments and he goes unconscious. Anyone even remotely familiar 
with modern science would reject the notion that this man is no longer 
a person, but why? I would contend that his prior conscious experience 
coupled with the medical capabilities of restarting his heart would 
allow for possible future conscious experiences. Now let us imagine 
that, tragically, all attempts to restart the man’s heart failed, his brain 
has ceased to function, and restoring his original condition is beyond 
the assistance of medical care. Yet again, I would contend that anyone 
familiar with personhood could not argue, in good faith, that this man 
is a person any longer. His current conscious experience has ended and 
the future conscious experiences are no longer possible (it comes as a 
given that if future medical advancements allow for the full restoration 
of brain functions then the hypothetical would simply need to take one 
step further). Therefore, if death is the ending of brain function, and 
ostensibly, a conscious experience no longer exists nor is one possible, 
a human has lost its personhood. This assertion is also borne out in 



42

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

ern s ien i  i er ure s e  s ere e is s nsensus i in e 
community that the cessation of brain functions constitutes death. 6 

The concept of death itself in the semantic sense separates the 
gene i  u n r  e r  ne   u n rpse  e ni i n is 
still a genetic human, the species and genome don’t change after one 
dies, but intuitively we treat corpses differently than living humans. 
A moral individual could never in good conscience bury a “moral 
human”, but could certainly bury a genetic one, assuming it is not a 
person, with no qualms at all. 

 Asserting that death is the end of personhood is as innocuous 
a claim as “a fetus is a human”. If we are to accept that a person no 
longer exists when a future conscious experience is impossible, i.e. the 
full and irreversible cessation of the brain’s functions, then it logically 
follows that a person exists as long as a prior conscious experience 
exists and future experiences are possible. 

Thus, if a person exists as long as a prior conscious experience 
exists and future experiences are possible, then a person starts existing 

 e rs  en  ese e perien es re p ssi e  r e s e  ri-
ty, the argument is as follows:

1) If a person stops existing when a conscious experience 
ends and future experiences become impossible then, 
A person exists as long as a prior conscious experience 
exists and future experiences are possible;

2) If a person exists as long as a prior conscious experi-
ence exists and future experiences are possible, then 
 pers n s r s e is ing  e rs  en  ns i us 

experiences are possible;

3)  A person stops existing when a conscious experience 
ends and future experiences become impossible;

4) ere re   pers n s r s e is ing  e rs  en  
conscious experiences are possible.

e p ssi i i  r  rs  ns i us e perien e is s e ri  i  
the ending of a conscious experience. If the cessation of the brain ends 
such an experience, the formation of all of the brain’s parts and the 

6  Burkle, Christopher M., Richard R. Sharp, and Eelco F. Wijdicks. 
“Why Brain Death Is Considered Death and Why There Should Be No 
Confusion.” Neurology 83, no. 16 (2014): 1464–69. https://doi.org/10.1212/
wnl.0000000000000883.



43Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

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harmonious interaction between them would seem to be the beginning. 
First, it is generally acknowledged that consciousness is only possible 
following the development of thalamocortical connections from the 
sensory organs. These connections are developed from 20-24 gestation-
al weeks, after this period a newborn is aware of itself and minimally 
of its surroundings.7 Before this period, the fetus may react to pain and 
other basic external stimuli, although the fetus is likely unaware due 
to the lack of said connections. Following the developmental period, 
biological structures are now developed enough to deploy conscious-
ness (assuming that the fetus is developing in a healthy manner with no 
traumatic defects) and the fetus has the possibility of future conscious-
ness. From this time frame, a fetus should be regarded as a person and 
gr n e  r  pers n   ep  e s ien i  uni  i s  
rejecting a fetus’ personhood after the emergence of its consciousness 
is akin to justifying the killing of an “innocent human” in the words of 
the traditional argument.

  For there to be a person to speak of there must be an un-
derlying conscious experience. To argue that the potentiality of x is 
equally as valued as x itself is to work against all ontological notions 
of existence. This argument is akin to claiming that a blueprint, wood 
beams, and concrete blocks are the same as a house, as the wood and 
concrete can potentially become a house, assuming the proper steps 
occur to realize the change. The same holds true for the potentiality 
of consciousness. Given the proper nutrients and environment, a fetus 
has the potential for consciousness and therefore, has the same val-
ue as one who has already realized such a development. In nearly all 
countries, children are restricted from a multitude of rights afforded to 
adults (they cannot legally consent, drive, or drink alcohol, for exam-
ple). All children also have the potential to develop into fully grown 
adults, given proper nutrients and environment. By this logic, children 
should be afforded all rights granted to adults because they possess the 
potential to develop into adulthood. An acceptance of this argument 
would point out the incongruence between the proponents of potential-
ity and accepted ontological understandings. It cannot be the case that 
the potentiality for an attribute in the future constitutes the same as the 
actuality of that attribute.

Other objections commonly raised by critics tend to fall into 

7 Lagercrantz, Hugo. “The Emergence of Consciousness: Science and 
Ethics.” Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine 19, no. 5 (2014): 
300–305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.siny.2014.08.003. 



44

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

two general tropes:

1) Claims that personhood valuing the stage of develop-
ment in which the brain is capable of consciousness is 
arbitrary;

2) Claims that the levels of consciousness exerted by a 
fetus are incompatible with the general understanding 
of the term. 

e i ns  e rs  rie  en    in    e s ip-
per s pe rgu en  ri i s i ing r  e rs  p re n  
proponents of personhood at the moment of conception. It appears to 
be evident that the development of a human being from conception 
through adolescence and onto adulthood is continuous; therefore the 
critic would contend that choosing any point on that continuum in 
which personhood begins is necessarily arbitrary. From this assertion, 
the conclusion follows that the fetus must be a person from conception 
as it is the only nonarbitrary position on the continuum.  If it were the 
case that 20-24 gestational weeks were arbitrary, then so would the de-
velopmental period for puberty and similarly the growth of a seed into 
a tree. It certainly does not follow that a seed is a tree or a prepubescent 
child a fully developed adult. If one was tasked with execution and the 
sole parameter was to cut the condemned head clean off, taking none of 
his neck with it, the execution would never take place. The executioner 
could not go on to claim that the neck is arbitrary because there exists 
no perceptible line.

Similarly, their line of reasoning can also be utilized against 
the critic’s argument. Past the point of conception, the sperm or the 
ovum alone certainly could have the potential to become a human life; 
therefore, their existence would place them further back on the contin-
uum of development.  The delineation from sperm and ovum to zygote 
is seemingly arbitrary as to when the potential for personhood starts 
and ends. From this realization, contraception and birth control would 
both constitute the killing of a potential person with moral consider-

i n  re u ing e r i n ues i n  sur i  e n  e e er 
for the slippery slope argument is to assert that the change from sperm 
and ovum to zygote is that of form and not degree, that being that the 
change is so drastic that the resulting entity is entirely separate. To 
agree to this point would be to concede that there exists pivotal chang-
es that occur along human development that permanently alter the pre-
vious entity. From this concession, it can be argued that the transition 
from a fetus without consciousness to one with consciousness is drastic 



45Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Personhood and Abortion

enough to constitute a change of form. 

 e e e ine  ri i ues  e rs  r pe  ere  e 
critic utilizes a slippery slope argument, to demonstrate the arbitrary 
nature of valuing one stage of development over another. Critiques of 
the second form are far more challenging, as the proponents claim that 
the level at which a fetus is conscious is incompatible with the general 
understanding of the term consciousness. Proponents of this argument, 
such as Robert Larmer, assert a claim along the lines of the following:

The argument that it is not the potential to become conscious, but 
rather the potential to resume consciousness, that confers a right to 
life proves too strong, inasmuch as it threatens to justify not only 
abortion but infanticide since newborn infants are not yet conscious 
in the sense in which we normally use the term.8

Larmer suggests that consciousness, as we are familiar with the term, is 
n  ri u e    u n in i i u  e  se en n s er ir  

He expands on this claim by asserting that even newborn fetuses have a 
level of consciousness lower than most newborn animals.9

 Objections of this nature are certainly more stout, but for sev-
eral reasons, I believe it fails. The argument logically entails that since 
the valued consciousness of a fetus is diminished by comparison to an 
adult human, it is necessary to grant personhood to all creatures that 
embody a level of consciousness akin to or greater than the fetus.

 irs  r er s us i i n r ns i usness e e ping 
 ges e  se en n s is gr un e  in u e  s u ies n  runs 

contrary to more modern assessments of the development of conscious-
ness. That being said, the major contention lies in the suggested levels 
of consciousness embodied by different creatures. It is a fact that a fe-
tus and even a newborn’s level of consciousness is of a “lower mental 
level” than that of a plethora of other animals. To discredit the claim I 
believe a thought experiment is an order. 

Imagine that conscious experience is like a bucket of water 
and with each new day in one’s development a splash of water is added 
to the bucket. The level of water in each bucket suggests the level at 
which you are conscious, a developed adult human having the fullest 
bucket (human in the genetic human sense). For this thought experi-

8  Larmer, Robert. “Abortion, Personhood and the Potential for 
Consciousness.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 12, no. 3 (1995): 241–51. 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/24354127, 7.

9 Ibid.



46

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

ment, a fetus at 20-24 gestational weeks is given a bucket with just a 
small splash of water in it. Next to the fetus’ bucket lies a lizard, an 
adult dog, and an adult chimpanzee’s bucket. The lizard has the same 
amount of water as the fetus, while the dog has a one-third-full bucket, 
and the chimp a half-full bucket. There is no debate that both the dog 
and the chimp are more conscious than the human fetus by orders of 

gni u e  s e e us e e ps in  n es en  i s u e  is e  
to two-thirds, now undoubtedly more full than the other animals. Is it 
the case that the fetus’ development, started with a lizard’s conscious 
e perien e  en e g  n  n  e i p e re ssu ing  
u n ne   i  is n  e se  e e us e  e i r  u -

et, then the dog, and so forth. It is not the case, in my argument, that 
one’s consciousness rises to a level deemed worthy of personhood, it 
is the animal in kind and its own genetically unique kind of experience 
which is valued. A fetus’ conscious experience is diminished from that 
of a human adult, but that statement alone entails that each species has 
its continuum of conscious development that can be compared but is 
simply not analogous.

The critic would retort, “Is it not the case that dogs can learn 
complex tricks and chimps can solve rudimentary puzzles, but a 
fetus cannot?”. Although this is true, these animals are not exerting 
a sapiens’ conscious experience of how all conscious homo sapiens 
in rinsi  un ers n  e e ni i n r e p n i n   i  ee s 
to experience a sapiens’ conscious experience is in fact impossible, 
there is no other conscious experience we can analytically compare it 

 e er  us  i e in e se  e e ni i n   person, the lack 
  e ni i n es n  e n e re un e  i en i  n  re gni e 

the existence in others. It seems to be the case that a dog does not have 
the same sense of self, if it has one at all, that a human does. If that is 
the case, then the value I assign to both consciousness and sense of self 
separates a human conscious experience from that of any non-human 
animal. Therefore, a fetus’ conscious experience is by a degree less 
than an adult’s but, by kind, greater than that of a dog.

Larmer proposes a thought experiment to challenge the asser-
tion that the resumption of consciousness is superseded by the potential 
to become conscious (his central anti-abortion claim) as follows:

Suppose someone is in a serious car accident and lapses into a coma 
as a result of her injuries. Upon arriving at the hospital, doctors ascer-
tain that her injuries will heal, but that she will be in a coma for nine 
months, after which time she will become conscious. Unfortunate-



47Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Personhood and Abortion

ly, she will have suffered total amnesia and there is no chance that 
she will regain any previous memories or knowledge of past plans, 
Indeed, the amnesia is so complete that she, like a newborn child, 
will have to learn how to use language and develop motor skills. Her 
relatives and friends, for whatever reason, express the desire that 
her existence be terminated and that she not be allowed to become 
conscious.10

Larmer utilizes this hypothetical to assert that there is a clear obligation 
to protect the life of the individual that is not accounted for unless the 
potential to become conscious is the valued condition of personhood. 

 Although the thought experiment is challenging, it fails to 
exclude my argument from protecting the injured. It is the case that 
the injured woman deserves protection as her right to life has not been 
forfeited by the nature of her personhood. That being said, it is not 
the potential for her to become conscious that grounds this belief. The 
prior conscious experience of the woman before her accident is what 
grants her personhood for the duration of her coma, as it is the case that 
her future experiences remain possible. The total amnesia as a result of 
her accident does not create a lack of prior experience, it only serves to 
remove them from her retrievable memory. It is not debatable that she 
was not conscious beforehand, the suggestion that she cannot recall the 
experiences does not refute their existence. This claim is akin to stating 
that a particularly zealous partygoer is not deploying a conscious expe-
rience for the duration of their blacked-out drunkenness. The partygoer 
in this case experiences total amnesia during the period of their drunk-
enness but the conscious experience exists nonetheless.

My goal throughout this paper has been to outline my position 
on the beginning of personhood and to defend the claim that since a 
fetus, before the development of the thalamocortical connections, does 
not have the capabilities to deploy a conscious experience, it is not 
granted personhood. Therefore, abortion is morally permissible for 
any reason before the 20-24 gestational week period. Thus the limit 
to acquire a legal abortion should be the twentieth gestational week to 
prevent the undue killing of persons.

 Second, to avoid any dispute over abortions in which the child 
was consummated through rape or incest or in cases in which the 

er s e  is in nger  I n  i  ne ess r   ri  e p si i n  

10 Id., 8.



48

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Personhood and the right to life that is granted with it entails that it 
is not by any means the right not to be killed, rather it only serves to 
pr e  g ins  e un us i e  i ing   pers n  In ses in i  e 
mother’s life is in serious and imminent peril, the rights of the unborn 
may be surpassed by those of the living. Similarly to cases in which 
a prisoner is sentenced to capital punishment, the right to life of an 
individual can only be usurped when accompanied by a just reason. For 
cases of rape and incest, the fetus may be aborted prior to 20-24 weeks, 
the same being the case for any other reason as the fetus is not yet a 
person. Following this period, the fetus is granted full moral person-
hood, and abortion for any reason other than the mother’s health is not 
permissible, in the same way, that killing a 1-year-old child conceived 
by incest is not permissible. 

 Lastly, as technology advances at an ever-increasing rate it is 
also worth clarifying the position with regards to non-human beings 
with equal, if not greater, forms of conscious experience than our 
own. Due to the necessity for the human conscious experience to my 
rgu en  r pers n  r i i  in e igen  pu ers u  n  

be granted personhood, and therefore, would have diminished moral 
consideration. The only caveat is if the creators of these machines were 
capable of perfectly replicating the human consciousness.



49Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Personhood and Abortion

REFERENCES
Warren, M. A. (1973). “ON THE MORAL AND LEGAL 

STATUS OF ABORTION”. The Monist, 57(1), 43–61. http://www.
jstor.org/stable/27902294.

Babst, G.A. (2011). “Moral Community”. In: Chatterjee, 
D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_328.

Dennett, Daniel. “CONDITIONS OF PERSON-
HOOD.” Identities of Persons, 1976, 175–96. https://doi.
org/10.1525/9780520353060-008. 

Warren, M. A. (1973). “ON THE MORAL AND LEGAL 
STATUS OF ABORTION”. The Monist, 57(1), 43–61. http://www.
jstor.org/stable/27902294.

Burkle, Christopher M., Richard R. Sharp, and Eelco F. 
Wijdicks. “Why Brain Death Is Considered Death and Why There 
Should Be No Confusion.” Neurology 83, no. 16 (2014): 1464–69. 
https://doi.org/10.1212/wnl.0000000000000883. 

Lagercrantz, Hugo. “The Emergence of Consciousness: Sci-
ence and Ethics.” Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine 19, no. 5 
(2014): 300–305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.siny.2014.08.003. 

larmer, Robert. “Abortion, Personhood and the Potential 
for Consciousness.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 12, no. 3 (1995): 
241–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24354127.



50

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

δι
άν

οι
α

AGAINST EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
ROBERTO UREÑA

The theory of evolutionary ethics suggests that the biological process 
of natural selection can supply a foundation for morality. I will argue 
that evolutionary ethics is incapable of providing such a foundation, 
because it lacks empirical and rational evidence to support it, because 
it yields unacceptable moral outcomes, and because it cannot overcome 
the ‘is-ought’ problem.

§1: THE PLACE OF EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS IN CONTEMPO-
RARY SCHOLARSHIP
The theory of evolutionary ethics, once dormant, is stirring in academia 
again—not so much among professional philosophers as among the 
biologists and psychologists. More and more, the natural sciences tout 
their assurance that the origins of moral sentiment, and perhaps of mo-
rality itself, are to be found in evolutionary biology.1 More and more, 
there is a sense that, as de Waal expresses it, “morality requires and 
probably has an evolutionary explanation.”2

At the present time, such talk is largely relegated to the natural 
sciences. Philosophically, evolutionary ethics has long been considered 
n e p  e i  e r  ing een s  i  is supp se su ien -

1 See, for instance, Dennis L. Krebs, “Morality: An Evolutionary Account,” 
Perspectives on Psychological Science 3, no. 3 (2008): 149-172, https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00072.x. 

2  Frans B. M. de Waal, et al, “Evolved Morality: The Biology and 
Philosophy of Human Conscience,” Behavior 151 (2014): pp. 137-141; p. 
137. See also de Waal’s book by the same name.



51Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

ly dealt with by Thomas Huxley, and G. E. Moore.3 This discrepancy 
between the opinions of the philosophers and the metaethical specula-
tions of natural scientists, especially at a time when natural scientists 
are brazen in their claims of a coming explanatory omnipotence,4 casts 
philosophers skeptical of such claims in a poor light.5 There are, howev-
er—as I will argue—good reasons to be skeptical. The natural sciences 
are fully capable, it will be admitted, of describing all natural phenom-
ena—that is, of explaining how things are. The natural scientist, how-
ever, must ‘remove the sandals from their feet’ when approaching the 
subject of ethics—for ethics is not the study of how things are, but of 
how things ought to be.

S i  ere re ig  pes  n ur  s ien is s  e e  
 e i s   i e e e s  p si s  i g  n  ps g  i  

su u   e re en ess r   s ien i  pr gress  e r   e rs 
ago, biologist E. O. Wilson wrote that “the time has come for ethics to 
be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologi-
cized.”6 Slowly, steadily, biologists have been marching to the drumbeat 
of Wilson and others, advancing on the subject of morality. 

The purpose of this paper is to check these advances. To that 
end, it will be important to understand precisely what evolutionary eth-
ics is, before considering the problems with this theory.

§2:  DEFINING EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
The theory of evolutionary ethics has been generally divided into three 
distinct categories: descriptive evolutionary ethics, prescriptive evolu-
tionary ethics, and evolutionary metaethics.7 Descriptive evolutionary 
ethics is concerned with the question of why human beings consider 

3 For a brief discussion of Huxley and Ruse on the subject, see Doris 
Schroeder, “Evolutionary Ethics,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 
(Accessed 15 Nov 2023), https://iep.utm.edu/evol-eth/#H2. 

4 Consider, for instance, a quote from Peter Atkins’ provocatively titled 
chapter, ‘The Limitless Power of Science’: “There is no reason to suppose 
that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence.” Peter Atkins, 
“The Limitless Power of Science,” in Nature’s Imagination: The Frontiers 
of Scientific Vision, ed. John Cornwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
1995), 125. 

5 The late Stephen Hawking argued as much in his much-acclaimed book on 
the interplay between philosophy and science, cited below: “Philosophy 
is dead,” he pronounced, because it “has not kept up with modern 
developments in science.” Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The 
Grand Design. New York, NY: Bantam Publishing, 2012. Quotes are from 
page 5. 

6  E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press, 1975, 562. 

7  William FitzPatrick, “Morality and Evolutionary Biology,” Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.
stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/morality-biology/. 



52

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

certain actions to be moral or immoral. Prescriptive evolutionary ethics 
is concerned with grounding ethical theory in the biological evolution 
of the human being. Evolutionary metaethics is concerned with the 
ues i n  e er n   e u i n r  e r  per ins  e e  

of ethics as a whole.
 For the present purposes, this paper will not consider the ques-
tion of evolutionary metaethics, and will deal solely with the descrip-
tive and prescriptive aspects of evolutionary moral theory. Thus, there 
are only two claims which this paper will consider with regards to evo-
u i n r  e i s  e rs  i  i  is e es rip i e e u i n r  

ethics claim, is that moral sentiments are grounded in natural selection. 
In other words, the reason why human beings consider any particular 
action to be morally ‘good’ or morally ‘evil’ is because nature has 
selected for human beings with those particular moral sentiments. For 
example, on this theory, human beings consider the act of murder to 
be wrong because human beings with an aversion to murder—both to 
murdering others and to seeing others murdered—are more likely to 
survive and pass on their genes than human beings without such an 
aversion. As such, over time, human beings have nearly universally 
come to consider the act of murder as something which ‘ought not to 
be done.’ 
 It should be noted, of course, that the question of whether or 
not moral sentiments can be explained by natural selection is largely a 
matter of empirical inquiry. While there may be immediate objections 
to the idea of moral sentiments as a product of natural selection—for 
instance, on the grounds that such would seem to suggest an equal-
ization of ‘moral sentiment’ and ‘morality’—it is beyond the scope of 
this paper to address these concerns. Rather than engage in biological 
in es ig i n r e e i  spe u i n  I i  ins e  re  is rs  
claim as a given.  
 The second claim of evolutionary ethics, which is the prescrip-
tive claim, is that the summum bonum is to pass on one’s genes—that 
is, to reproduce.8 In other words, “actions that increase the long-term 
capacity of survival in evolutionary terms are good and actions that 
decrease this capacity are bad.”9 As this second postulation made by 
e u i n r  e i s is n  e piri  si e  u  is r er  p i -
osophical statement, the focus of the present paper will be on the 
validity of this aspect of evolutionary ethics. Henceforth, for the sake 
of simplicity, when I use the term ‘evolutionary ethics,’ it will be in ref-
erence to this second claim. To that end, it will be important to consider 

8 Throughout this paper, for the sake of simplicity, the terms ‘pass on one’s 
genes,’ ‘reproduce,’ and ‘procreate’ will be used synonymously.

9 Doris Schroeder, op. cit. 



53Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

the arguments made in favor of reproduction as the summum bonum by 
the proponents of evolutionary ethics. 

§3: SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS FOR
EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
Perhaps the chief argument made in favor of evolutionary ethics is 
that—unlike most other moral theories—evolutionary ethics grounds 
ethics does not require a metaphysical framework, and requires few 
ambiguous terms. In particular, evolutionary ethics avoids the some-

 pr e i  s   ing  e ne n  e p in e e is en e  
‘moral facts.’10 On an evolutionary ethical basis, what makes a moral 
statement ‘true’ or ‘false’ is not the correspondence of that statement to 
some moral fact, such as a standard of perfection, but whether or not 
natural selection has so inclined human beings to believe such a moral 
statement. As stated by John Teehan and Christopher diCarlo: 

The notion that ethical truths are “out there” waiting to be 
is ere  is i se  e re n n    pre s ien i  e  

thought. It stems back to a time when not only ethics, but sci-
ence itself was under the magisterium of religion. The progress 
of modern science can be viewed as a process of freeing the 
study of nature from religious/metaphysical constraints and 
establishing its own magisterium.11 

In an age when all that is not directly established in mathemat-
i s r e n ur  s ien es is i e   e es 12 evolutionary 
ethics enables the moral theorist to avoid metaphysical entanglements 

 pr i ing  signi n  re n re e gr un ing r r s
 A second argument in favor of evolutionary ethics is its capac-
ity to answer a number troubling moral questions in a more satisfying 
manner than many other moral theories. For instance, it has been gen-
erally observed that, across cultures and ages, most human beings share 
similar moral codes.13 Such a fact presents a problem to moral theories 
which maintain that moral codes—or, at least, moral sentiments—are 
a product of individual, family, or societal decision. From an evolu-
tionary moral perspective, however, this phenomenon has a simple and 

10 See Michael Klenk, “Evolutionary Ethics,” in Introduction to Philosophy: 
Ethics, ed. George Matthews and Christina Hendricks (Montreal, QC, 
Canada: Rebus Press, 2020), 76-89; 85. 

11  John Teehan and Christopher diCarlo, “On the Naturalistic Fallacy: A 
Conceptual Basis for Evolutionary Ethics,” Evolutionary Psychology 2, no. 
1 (2004), https://doi.org/10.1177/147470490400200108. 

12 A paraphrase of David Hume’s famous statement in his Enquiry 
Concerning Human Understanding.

13 See, for instance, John C. Gibbs, et al, “Moral Judgment Development 
Across



54

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

empirical explanation: Human moral sentiments are encoded in the 
common gene pool of humanity, thus accounting for the similarities in 
moral codes across societies. Richard Dawkins—though not a propo-
nent of evolutionary ethics14—seems to agree with this explanation 
of moral sentiments when he says: “We have a moral sense which is 
built into our brains, like our sexual instinct or our fear of heights.”15 
Another problem which is readily resolved by the evolutionary moral 
theory is the question of where the compulsion to act in a morally good 

 es r   ressing e ues i n  r s s ien i  
rather than philosophically, evolutionary moral theorists avoid abstract 
speculation regarding the mechanics of how morality ‘works.’ Without 
having to posit any transcendent basis of moral compulsion—such as 
a God who punishes wrongdoing, or a karmic system—evolutionary 
e i s n s e s ur e r r  pu si n in e n ur  pr i i ies 
of human beings, which are ultimately rooted in the natural desire to 
procreate and pass on one’s genes.16

§4:  OBJECTIONS TO EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
A. Responding to the Positive Arguments

Before considering potential arguments against evolutionary ethics, I 
wish to assess the validity of the evidences presented in favor of evolu-
tionary ethics. First, there is the assertion that evolutionary ethics does 
not require a metaphysical framework, and, in particular, does not need 
to posit the existence of moral facts. I grant that this is true of descrip-
tive evolutionary ethics, but it is not true of prescriptive evolutionary 
ethics. The instant that evolutionary ethics moves from attempts at 
explaining moral sentiments to explaining what our moral sentiments 
ought to be, the evolutionary ethicist must posit some reference point—
such as a moral fact—by which to judge what ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’ 
mean. Natural selection cannot, in and of itself, provide a foundation 
for morality. Something else besides ‘The behavior X is ultimately a 
product of natural selection’ must be posited before arriving at the con-
clusion ‘X is a moral good.’ This will be further explored in a moment, 
in the discussion on the ‘is-ought’ problem, and so I will refrain from 
further comments on this point until then. The second point made by 

Cultures: Revisiting Kohlberg’s Universality Claims,” Developmental Review 
27 (2007), 443-500, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2007.04.001. 

14 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
2016, 3. 

15 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion  s n   ug n i in, 
2006, 214. 

16 See Robert J. Richards, “Evolutionary Ethics: A Theory of Moral Realism,” 
in The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, ed. Michael Ruse and 
Robert J. Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 144-
145 and 148-149. 



55Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

evolutionary ethicists—namely, that the broad explanatory power of 
evolutionary ethics is evidence in its favor—is only a half-truth. To use 
the example mentioned earlier, it is true that the commonalities in mor-
al codes across ages and cultures is a fact in need of explanation, and 
it is likewise true that evolutionary ethics provides a powerful solution 
to this problem. The answer of evolutionary ethics, however, is not the 
only plausible answer. For instance, quite independent of passing on 
one’s genes is the seemingly universal human goal of maximizing plea-
sure and minimizing pain.17 It should, therefore, be at least as plausible 
to say that all human beings act so as to maximize pleasure and min-
imize pain as it is to say that human beings act so as to stand a better 
chance of procreating. 
 On the question of moral compulsion, once again, evolutionary 
ethics, if true, would provide a strong answer to the question of why 
most individuals feel morally compelled to act one way as supposed 
to another. But the fact that one feels an instinctual compulsion to act 
in a particular way is by no means an indication that such a person 
morally ought to act that way. By what means does the evolutionary 
ethicist declare of any one instinct, ‘That is the moral instinct’? Take 
n in i i u   n s e se  in  e e  rgu en  i   i er 
n  n i us neig r  e ins in  rises up  n  s e un  e  

and batter the neighbor’s skull in. In the moment, such a thought feels 
right—the thought may even be pleasurable to the individual’s mind—
and yet the individual refrains from doing so, not from lack of instinc-
tual drive to commit the act, but from a sense of moral duty. Indeed, if 
this hypothetical individual were to follow through with their desires 
and commit their act of violence, most of society would be morally 
outraged, and condemn such an individual. It is true, one might argue, 
that one feels the moral instinct not to batter another’s skull in, and it 
is this which holds our hypothetical individual back—but this does not 
answer the question: Why ought our hypothetical individual to follow 
the ‘moral’ instinct rather than the ‘immoral’ instinct? Once again, the 
rejoinder may come that it isn’t a matter of ‘ought’—it is simply a fact 
that human beings generally, as a matter of their evolutionarily-in-
grained instincts, follow their ‘moral’ instincts rather than their ‘im-
moral’ ones.18 Let it be so—it yet remains a fact that some people do 
not follow their ‘moral’ instincts, and one must ask why such a person 

17 See, for instance, Ruut Veenhoven, “How Universal Is Happiness?” in 
International Differences in Well-Being, ed. Ed Diener, John F. Helliwell, 
and Daniel Kahneman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 328-350. 
See also Irwin Goldstein, “Pleasure and Pain: Unconditional, Intrinsic 
Values,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1, no. 2 (1989), 255-
276, https://doi.org/10.2307/2107959.

18 This, at least, is the argument made by Richards. See Robert J. Richards, 
op. cit., 144. 



56

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

ought to be condemned. After all, society does not normally condemn 
individuals who act counter to the instincts of the majority. For exam-
ple, it is a fact that most human beings predominantly use their right 
hand when holding and using objects.19 Must society, then, condemn 
those who are left-handed, for not possessing the same instincts as the 
majority of their right-handed counterparts? The notion seems prepos-
terous—there appears to be, in this case at least, a clear and qualitative 
difference between a ‘moral instinct’ and an ‘amoral instinct.’ The 
theory of evolutionary ethics can explain why human beings feel moral 
compulsion—it may even serve to explain what the ‘qualitative differ-
ence’ between a moral feeling and an amoral feeling consists of—but 
to claim that the compulsion is a reason in itself to be ethical is a leap 
of logic. 

B. Unacceptable Moral Outcomes
Besides the weaknesses of the positive arguments in favor of evolu-
i n r  e i s  ere re in se er  enges e n  ese  e rs  

of these objections is that acting based on an evolutionary moral theory 
will lead to unacceptable moral outcomes. Now, the word ‘unaccept-
able,’ of course, carries a moral connotation, and, as such, this objec-
tion immediately runs the risk of circular reasoning. This, however, 
can be avoided: I will use ‘unacceptable moral outcomes’ to mean 
outcomes which the majority of individuals would feel to be morally 
wrong. Thus, ‘unacceptable’ refers not to morality itself, but to the 
moral sentiments of ‘normal’ individuals. 
 An interesting example of the unacceptability of evolution-
ary morals can be found in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, 
wherein Fyodor Karamazov and his son Dmitri are engaged in a violent 
competition to marry the same woman, named Grushenka. In the midst 

 is n i  I n r e s n  r r  n  
Dmitri’s half-brother—is asked to comment on the situation, to which 
he gives the somewhat apathetic reply of: “One reptile will devour 
the other. And serve them both right, too.”20 Here, in Ivan’s comment, 
it seems, is an application of the evolutionary moral theory which—I 
suspect—yields an outcome which most people would consider to be 
unacceptable. There is a common moral sentiment that individuals, 

19 It should be noted, tangentially, for the sake of the argument, that 
handedness is largely a biological trait, and thus a product of natural 
selection. Thus, the instinct for right-handedness is analogous to the instinct 
for morality for the purposes of the present example. See Shan Shan Jing. 
“Hand Dominance: Nature, Nurture, and Relevance for Hand Surgeons,” 
Journal of Hand and Microsurgery 14, no. 1 (2022), 111-112, DOI: 
10.1055/s-0040-1713557. 

20 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Constance Garnett, 
(New York, NY: The Lowell Press, 1880), 153.



57Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

especially individuals sharing familial ties, should strive to cooperate 
n  e e ruis i  r  ne n er  r er n see  n i  

Nonetheless, on an evolutionary moral basis, where the greatest pos-
si e g  is  p ss n ne s genes  i  see s  i  pe i i n in 
this particular case is the inevitable—and perhaps morally favorable—
outcome. Cooperation in this situation, after all, is impossible: father 
and son cannot both ‘pass on their genes’ through Grushenka—and 
even if they did, that, too, would grate against typical moral sensibili-
ties. The question then arises: Who ought to marry Grushenka? On an 
evolutionary moral basis, the answer, as Ivan Karamazov suggests, is: 
Whichever one can physically dominate the other. From a ‘survival of 

e es  perspe i e  in  se ere r n  i ri us  -
pe e  repr u e  e er   e  s u  e e ne  pr re e  

is u e u i e  ene s u ni  s  e  s i  ser es  
‘strengthen’ the human gene pool. Thus, perhaps the evolutionary ethi-
cist can even declare, alongside Ivan, ‘Serve them both right’! 
 Of course, the case of The Brothers Karamazov is not the only 
conceivable instance in which evolutionary ethics may lead to unac-
ceptable outcomes. For instance, it seems plausible that one might be 
able to justify rape in certain cases, or slavery, on an evolutionary mor-
al basis. Both involve the subjugation of other human beings against 
their will—usually considered to be morally wrong—and yet both 
increase the moral offender’s chances of passing on their genes. That 
this, at times, happens to be to the detriment of other human beings is 
irrelevant to the question, since all that is important is that the individu-
al passes on their genes, irrespective of how the individual’s reproduc-
tive strategy affects the reproductive success of others.  
 Against this charge, the evolutionary ethicist may counter 
that each of these cases portrays evolutionary ethics in an unfair light. 
Returning to the case of Fyodor and Dmitri, it may be argued that 
there is, in fact, no correct answer to the question of who should marry 
Grushenka. As the situation is both morally ambiguous and morally 
outrageous from the outset, it would seem that any moral theory would 
struggle to produce a morally ‘acceptable’ outcome, and so to attack 
evolutionary ethics’s failure in this case is essentially ‘hitting below 
the belt.’ This argument, however, fails to recognize that—while the 
situation is morally ambiguous and morally outrageous—yet there are 
possible resolutions to the problem, as long as the summum bonum 
is not passing on one’s genes. For instance, Fyodor and Dmitri might 
settle their contest with a game of chess to avoid bloodshed, or they 

ig  ppe    ir  p r   e p e  is uss eir i u ies r  
perhaps best of all, Fyodor and Dmitri might allow Grushenka herself 



58

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

to choose between the two of them.21 While, from an evolutionary per-
spe i e  n i  see s  e e n  p ssi e p i n  ere re i e 
alternatives from other moral theories, and so the failure of evolution-
ary ethics in this case is a legitimate challenge to the theory.

All in all, however, the case of The Brothers Karamazov is a 
i n  e p e n  su  ses  i  e   ur  re r re  n  s  

likely never reach the point showcased in Dostoyevsky’s novel. The 
cases of rape and slavery, however, are much more serious, as they are 
certainly not hypothetical. 

Against the charge that evolutionary ethics cannot address the 
moral wrongs of rape or slavery, the evolutionary ethicist may point 
out that human beings have evolved to be a social species, and as such, 
an evolutionary moral theory must take this into consideration.22 Seen 

us r   s ie  perspe i e  s ie  s  e ene s s  en 
human beings cooperate, rather than forcibly subdue one another. After 

 s i  gr ups i  in r gr up n i  re ess i e  n s i  
gr ups i u  su  n i   sur i e n  p ss n eir genes  is is 
also to say nothing of potential societal sanctions which may be levied 
against those considered to be morally aberrant, thus making it more 
i u  r en ing in i i u s  p ss n eir genes in e u ure  

Therefore, while on an individual level, it would seem that there are 
certain cases when evolutionary ethics yields ‘unacceptable’ moral 
outcomes, on the societal level such problems are avoided.
 This counter-objection, however, forgets that natural selec-
tion—the underlying process which provides the basis for evolutionary 
ethics’ summum bonum—should theoretically select for individuals 

se r  sen i en s re pri ri  in ine   eir n ene  
Even from a societal perspective, natural selection will favor individu-
als who seek their own individual good, rather than the good of society. 

21 Someone may comment that this is actually the evolutionarily preferable 
outcome. I will simply observe that I see little evolutionary reason for 
either male party to concede defeat to the other simply on the basis of the 
female’s preference. Furthermore, while mating competitions in nature are, 
of course, for the purpose of winning the right to pass on one’s genes with 
a female or a group of females, I can think of few if any instances in which 
the female herself decides the contest. Even if such an instance did occur in 
nature, however, it remains to be seen that this is the ‘right’ way to settle a 
dispute, as opposed to merely ‘a’ way.   

22 It should be noted that there are two schools of thought with regards to 
e u i n r  i g  e rs  s  in ins  n ur  se e i n 
operates predominantly on the individual level, while the second holds 
that natural selection operates predominantly on the group level. This, of 
course, creates two schools of evolutionary ethical thought. The anticipated 
objection here would presumably come from a proponent of the latter 
school of thought. See Michael Klenk, op. cit., 83-84. 



59Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

nsi er  r ins n e   in i i u s in s ie  e rs  in i i u  
seeks the wellbeing of society only insofar as increasing societal well-
being increases their own reproductive success. The second individual 
seeks the welfare of society even at their own reproductive expense. 
Because the individual who seeks their own reproductive success will 
have a greater chance of passing on their genes than the individual who 
is i ing  s ri e e se es r e s e  eir e  s ie  
members, natural selection will select for the former type of individual 
over the later type. Seeing as those moral sentiments which are favored 

 n ur  se e i n re s   e ni i n s r egi  se e e  
for their ability to promote the individual’s procreative success, and as 
procreative success is the supreme ethical goal for any individual on 
the theory of evolutionary ethics, it stands to reason that individuals 
ought not to consider societal welfare in their moral decision-making if 
it is to their reproductive disadvantage. Thus, the evolutionary ethicist 

 ppr e  e r pis s ng s e r pis  n  i  su ien  
discreetness, so as to not attract the reproach of society—as well as 
the slaveholder—so long as the slaveholder holds their slaves with the 
approval of their society.
 But all of this, the evolutionary ethicist might maintain, pre-
supposes that the moral sentiments of individuals are inclined toward 
such acts as rape and slaveholding. Yet moral sentiments, as they are 
observed in actuality, are not so inclined—rape and slaveholding are 
considered to be morally unacceptable, after all—which would seem 
to undermine the previous counter-argument.  All that this fact shows, 
however, is that the moral sentiments of human beings—whether or not 
they are products of natural selection—are at least not solely oriented 
toward the alleged summum bonum of passing on one’s genes. 
 A second potential objection to the assertion that evolution-
ary ethics yields unacceptable moral outcomes is that, while there are 
select occasions in which morally unacceptable acts, such as rape or 
slaveholding, might be condoned on an evolutionary moral theory, ac-
i ns su  s ese re  in gener  n n ene i  r e in i i u  r 

the sake of simplicity, let us only consider the case of rape as it pertains 
to this line of argument. While in certain circumstances a rapist may 
‘get away’ with their act without any societal consequences, this is not 
often the case—more often than not, the rapist is caught and punished. 
Thus, one ought not to commit the act of rape, as the future conse-
uen es  su  n  re re i e   e r u  n ene i  

to the individual. Another similar, though somewhat distinct, form of 
this argument might be to take a more Kantian route: While rape may 
ene  ne p r i u r in i i u   ne p r i u r en  in i e  i  
 u n eings s    r pe ne n er ene er e  se  e 

result would be a net detriment to the species. Thus, one ought not to 



60

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

commit the act of rape, because of the moral ‘non-universalizability’ of 
the act.23 
 These two objections, however, can be dealt with simulta-
neously. In both cases, the argument shifts the focus away from the 
in i i u s ene   s ie  r e spe ies  e ri en  u  n  
grounds does the evolutionary ethicist make such a move? It has 
already been established that nature selects for self-concerned indi-
viduals over individuals who are not self-concerned.  Thus, in the 
moment of moral decision—that is, when the individual must consider 
for themselves whether or not an action which they are to undertake is 
morally right or morally wrong—the individual must not be concerned 
about the societal consequences of their decision, or about the hypo-
thetical scenario of all human beings acting as they are acting. Rather, 
the individual must judge for themself, in their particular moment and 
in their particular circumstance, whether or not their action will serve 
to facilitate the passing on of their genes or not. If so, then—irrespec-
tive of the means—that action is good. If it be by rape, then by rape; if 
by marriage, then by marriage. On an evolutionary moral basis, the two 
would appear to be morally indistinguishable. 

C. The Is-Ought Problem24

 The second attack against the theory of evolutionary ethics is 
the ‘is-ought’ problem, as made famous by David Hume.25 The prob-
lem involves the question of what kind of argument would be required 
to be able to conclude that passing on one’s genes is, in fact, the 
summum bonum. It is true that human beings, generally speaking, pass 
on their genes and desire to do so—and, moreover, that if all human 
beings ceased to pass on their genes, then the human species would 
cease to exist. But this does not answer the question of why one ought 
to pass on their genes. Why, after all, should the cessation of human 
existence be considered a moral wrong? One may multiply facts about 
what is the case ad nauseum—for instance, one may point out that 
human beings have a natural instinct to pass on their genes and pre-
serve the existence of the species. This, however, still does not answer 
the challenge. One need only ask: But why ought human beings to act 

23 The logic is paraphrased in part from Kant’s Categorical Imperative. See 
e rs  se i n  n s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. 

24 It may be noticed that I choose to address the more general ‘is-ought’ 
pr e  r er n e re spe i  n ur is i   s pu  r r  
most famously by G. E. Moore. This is because several—and, in my 
opinion, persuasive—counter-arguments have been made against the 
naturalistic fallacy. See, for instance, Oliver Curry, “Who’s Afraid of the 
Naturalistic Fallacy?” Evolutionary Psychology 4, no. 1 (2006), https://doi.
org/10.1177/147470490600400120. 

25 See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature; Book III, Chapter I.



61Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

based on their natural instincts? As philosopher William FitzPatrick 
points out: “Regardless of why one has a given [instinct], the question 
for a rational agent is always: is it right for me to exercise it, or should 
I instead renounce and resist it as far as I am able?”26 There is no 
biological fact for the evolutionary ethicist to fall back upon which can 
justify the idea that human beings ought to consider passing on their 
genes as the greatest possible good.

Perhaps the strongest reply available to the evolutionary ethi-
cist is to appeal to teleology.27 While it may be true that no biological 
fact can justify the summum bonum of passing on one’s genes, the 
evolutionary ethicist may maintain that, from a biological perspec-
tive, the purpose of human life is survival and genetic propagation. 
As Richard Dawkins once famously put it: “We are machines built by 
DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. That 
is exactly what we are here for… It is every living object’s sole reason 
for living.”28 The argument may now run as follows29: For any thing 
with a given purpose, the ‘goodness’ of that thing consists in its accom-
plishing that purpose. For example, if the purpose of a knife is to cut, 
then the ‘goodness’ of the knife consists in its ability to cut. A knife 
that cuts well is a ‘good’ knife, whereas a knife which does not cut well 
is a ‘bad’ knife. Likewise, for all living things: If the purpose of all 
living things is to pass on their genes, then the ‘goodness’ of a living 
thing consists in its ability to pass on its genes—and, as human beings 
are living things, then the ‘goodness’ of human beings also consists in 
their ability to pass on their genes. As all human actions may thus be 
measured against this ultimate human goodness, it may thus be safely 
asserted that the summum bonum is to pass on one’s genes. In this way, 
by positing the idea of a biological ‘purpose for life,’ the evolutionary 
ethicist may diffuse the is-ought problem.  

There are three problems with this defense. First, it seems 
arbitrary to choose ‘passing on one’s genes’ as the purpose for the 
existence of living things. On a biological level, after all, reproduction 
is merely one of a plethora of functions performed by any living thing. 
As there is nothing inherently value-laden about reproduction, one 
may justly ask: Why choose ‘passing on one’s genes’ as the essential 
life-purpose, rather than some other life function? The evolutionary 

26 William FitzPatrick, op. cit. 
27 This teleological appeal is a common method of overcoming the is-ought 

problem, perhaps most famously espoused and defended by Alasdair 
MacIntyre in his 1981 book After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press). 

28 Richard Dawkins, “The Ultraviolet Garden,” Royal Institute Christmas 
Lecture, No. 4 (1991).

29 This argument is largely derived from Book I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean 
Ethics. 



62

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

ethicist may respond that reproduction, as the mechanism by which 
natural selection operates, constitutes the most essential life-function, 
and as such, opting for ‘reproductive success’ or ‘passing on one’s 
genes’ as the summum bonum is not arbitrary. This, too, however, has 
a problem: It is not a priori obvious that passing on one’s genes—even 
from a biological perspective—constitutes the most essential life-func-
tion. For instance, by the same line of argumentation presented above, 
it could be argued that ‘survival’ is the teleological aim of humanity 
and all living things—and that as such, the ‘goodness’ of human beings 
consists in their capacity to survive. On what grounds does the evolu-
tionary ethicist claim that reproduction is more essential than survival? 
Without resorting to some external value system, it seems an impos-
sible task for the evolutionary ethicist to non-arbitrarily determine 
whether or not reproduction—or any other life-function—is ‘most 
essential.’ Absent a non-arbitrary purpose for humanity, the is-ought 
problem remains for the evolutionary ethicist.

The second problem with the teleological defense for evo-
lutionary ethics stems from the source of this teleology. It may be 
asked: From whence does the evolutionary ethicist derive the notion of 
purpose? One can speak about the purpose of a knife because the knife 
was made by some individual who designed the knife for the intended 
purpose of cutting. Indeed, apart from some intention or design on the 
part of an individual, a thing cannot be thought of as having a purpose. 
A body of water, for instance, cannot be thought of as existing for the 
purpose of swimming in, unless some individual had prepared that 
body of water with that purpose in mind. But if—as most evolutionary 
biologists maintain—living things were not made, but are the products 
of the ‘blind forces’ of natural selection, then the evolutionary ethicist 

us  n  s e er s ur e r e purp se  u n eings  ne 
possible means of doing this might be to understand the purpose of an 
individual as existing not within the individual, but in a community 
of individuals.30 Consider that a single cell has no purpose, unless it is 
connected to a community of similar cells into an organ—say, a heart. 
But the heart itself has no purpose, unless it likewise is connected to 
a community of organs in an organism, for the purpose of facilitating 
genetic propagation. But even genetic propagation is itself impossible 
apart from a community of organisms—at least, for sexually repro-
ducing organisms, such as human beings. Thus, one might still, in this 

ier r   purp ses  n   u si r ns en en  s ur e r e purp se 
 u n e is en e  is rgu en  e er  see s  n e pr -

tical function’ with ‘teleological purpose.’ The two are entirely distinct. 

30 This argument is put forward by Yoshimi Kawade, “On the Nature of the 
Subjectivity of Living Things,” Biosemiotics 2 (2009), 205-220, https://doi.
org/10.1007/s12304-009-9041-9. 



63Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

A heart, it is true, may be practically functionless absent the rest of the 
organism, but this does not necessarily mean that it is teleologically 
purposeless. Likewise, the heart may be teleologically purposeless, and 
yet serve a practical function. This attempt too, then, fails to establish 
reproduction as a real teleological end capable of overcoming the is-
ought problem. 

e ir  n  n  pr e  i  p si ing p ssing n ne s 
genes’ as a teleological end for humanity is that the ‘ought’ which such 
a teleology produces is an ‘ought of adequacy,’ not a ‘moral ought.’31 
Returning to the example of the knife: It is true that the ‘goodness’ of 
the knife consists in its capacity to cut, and so one ‘ought’ to use the 
knife for cutting. It would be strange, however, if this ‘ought’ were 
construed to be a moral ‘ought’—as though cutting into something 
with a knife was a moral good. The same argument can be applied 
to human beings: It may be true that the biological ‘goodness’ of a 
human being consists in their capacity to reproduce, and so, perhaps, 
one ‘ought’ to use one’s body for that purpose. This, ‘ought,’ however, 
like the previous ‘ought,’ is merely an ought of adequacy. It would be 
strange, merely on this basis, if one were to suggest that reproduction 
was a moral good.

Here the evolutionary ethicist might object that there is—at 
least, with regards to human beings—no distinction between an ‘ought 
of adequacy’ and a ‘moral ought.’ In other words, it may be that what 
is called an ‘ought of adequacy’ for other things is what human beings 
consider a ‘moral ought’ in themselves. Hence, there appears to be 
an essential difference between the statements ‘A knife ought to cut,’ 
and ‘A human ought to reproduce,’ simply because the latter involves 
a human being. This argument, however, does not consider that all 
‘ought’ statements refer implicitly to human beings. There is no ‘ought’ 
inherent in a knife, or in any other object, if that object bears no rela-
tionship to a human being. This is because, by nature, the concept of 
‘ought’—whether it be an ought of adequacy, or a moral ought—exists 
only in tandem with an agent possessing a will. Furthermore, the ought 
of adequacy and the moral ought are entirely distinguishable in this 
‘willing agent,’ so that the ought of adequacy cannot be equated with 
the moral ought. For example, a human being may use a knife to cut 

rr s  r e   use e s e ni e  u  u n ngers   -
er people’s hands. Both situations involve the ought of adequacy—in 
fact, both involve the ‘good’ of the knife—but only the latter situation 
in es  r  ug   is  ne ug  n   u  u n ngers  
even if ‘cutting’ is the ‘good’ of the knife. Here the ought of adequacy 

31 I develop this argument from Shalina Stilley, “Natural Law Theory and the 
‘Is’--‘Ought’ Problem: A Critique of Four Solutions.” Dissertations (2009-) 
(2010), Paper 57, https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/57/.



64

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

and the moral ought are neatly distinguished for the human being. But 
if the ought of adequacy and the moral ought can be so distinguished, 
then it cannot be argued that the ought of adequacy produced by the 
evolutionary ethicist’s teleological appeal is equivalent to a moral 
ought. It can thus be seen that—in light of the three problems high-
lighted here—the theory of evolutionary ethics cannot demonstrate that 
reproduction constitutes a meaningful teleological end for humanity. 
Without this teleology, the is-ought problem remains for evolutionary 
ethics to solve. Satisfying answers are not forthcoming. 

§5:  CONCLUSION
 Ultimately, the lack of strong evidence in favor of the evolu-
tionary ethical viewpoint, as well as its inability to reasonably resolve 
either the ‘unacceptable’ moral outcomes of its theory or the is-ought 
pr e  ren ers i  n i p ssi e e r   us i  supp r  In  
candidness, the evolutionary moral perspective is an overreach of the 
natural sciences into the ethical sphere. Insofar as there is real content 
in e r  r i  e n ur  s ien es e n  p e in e e   
morals. It is the role of the natural sciences to describe behavior, and 
to explain the causal connections between natural phenomena, not to 
distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ 
 Of course, the evolutionary ethicist may, in response to all of 
the arguments here presented, simply reply that morality does not exist 
anyway—that is, they may adopt the metaethical view that the biolog-
ical theory of evolution disposes of the possibility of morality in the 

rs  p e  is p per  e er  s n  s ug   ress su  n-
cerns, and they must be dealt with separately.
 With regards to the descriptive aspect of evolutionary ethics 

en i ne  pre i us  su   e   s u   pr e rui u  s 
long as the distinction between ‘moral sentiment’ and ‘morality’ is 
maintained. Let descriptive evolutionary ethics demonstrate that my 
aversion to lying is the result of natural selection. The question of why 
lying is actually wrong, apart from my—or anyone else’s—believing it 
to be so, remains. 



65Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Against Evolutionary Ethics

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Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston, MA: Hough-
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Jing, Shan Shan. “Hand Dominance: Nature, Nurture, and 
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Publishing, 1993). 

Klenk, Michael. “Evolutionary Ethics,” in Introduction to 
Philosophy: Ethics, ed. George Matthews and Christina Hendricks 
(Montreal, QC, Canada: Rebus Press, 2020), 76-89. 

Krebs, Dennis L. “Morality: An Evolutionary Account.” Per-
spectives on Psychological Science 3, no. 3 (2008): 149-172. https://
doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00072.x. 

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Universi-
ty of Notre Dame Press, 1981.

Richards, Robert J. “Evolutionary Ethics: A Theory of Moral 
Realism,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, ed. 
Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2017), 143-157. 

Schroeder, Doris. “Evolutionary Ethics.” Internet Encyclope-
dia of Philosophy. Accessed 15 Nov 2023. https://iep.utm.edu/evol-
eth/#H2. 

Stilley, Shalina. “Natural Law Theory and the ‘Is’--‘Ought’ 
Problem: A Critique of Four Solutions.” Dissertations (2009-) 
(2010), Paper 57. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_
mu/57/.

Teehan, John, and Christopher diCarlo. “On the Naturalistic 
Fallacy: A Conceptual Basis for Evolutionary Ethics.” Evolutionary 
Psychology 2, no. 1 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704904002
00108. 

Veenhoven, Ruut. “How Universal Is Happiness?” in Inter-
national Differences in Well-Being, ed. Ed Diener, John F. Helliwell, 
and Daniel Kahneman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 
328-350.

Wilson, E. O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, 
MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. 



67Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

A Natural Interpretation of

δι
άν

οι
α

A NATURAL INTERPRETATION OF 
ARISTOTELIAN TELEOLOGY

JORDAN SMITH

§1: AN OVERVIEW OF ARISTOTLE’S FOUR CAUSES
 At several key points throughout his works, Aristotle presents 
his understanding of the causal mechanisms affecting all-natural sub-
stances.1 In this view, there are four distinct types of causes: material, 

r  e ien  n  n  ug  i  is i p ssi e  u  e p i e 
any of these modes of causation in isolation from the others,2 some 
basic distinctions between them can nonetheless be drawn. To start, 
the material cause refers to “that out of which a thing comes to be and 
which persists.”3 That is to say, it is the matter of which the thing being 
explained is composed. In contrast to matter, the formal cause is “the 
e ni i n  e essen e 4 in e sense  i  e nes er in su   

way as to make a substance what it is. Next, Aristotle explains that the 
e ien  use is the primary source of the change or rest” in the way 

1  E.g. Aristotle, R. K. Gaye, and R. P. Hardie, “Physics,” essay, in The 
Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1 (Princeton, 
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), II.3, 194b24-195a3. Aristotle, 
“Metaphysics,” essay, in The Works of Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross, vol. 8 
(Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1908), I.3, 983a24-32.

2  D.C. Schindler helpfully describes Aristotle’s four causes as 
“interdependent.” See D. C. Schindler, The Catholicity of Reason (Grand 
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), 145-148.

3  Aristotle, Physics II.3, 194b24-194b26.
4  Id., 194b27-194b29.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

that “the father is cause of the child.”5 Finally, and most interestingly 
for current purposes, Aristotle affirms the existence of the final cause 
“in the sense of end or that for the sake of which a thing is done, e.g. 
health is the cause of walking about.”6 i en  n  us i n es 
not only pertain to humans but all-natural substances, Aristotle’s talk of 
“ends” and actions being “for the sake” of goals may give the impres-
sion that he is projecting anthropomorphic categories onto the natural 

r  espi e rs  ppe r n es  n e in i n  is en s n 
n  us i  re  i in e r er n e   is e p si  

worldview reveals that this interpretation completely inverts Aristotle’s 
priorities. For the Stagirite, human intentions are, in fact, teleological 
(i.e. directed to an end or telos) in a merely derivative manner. Rather 
than human intentions and desires, the primary sense of teleology for 
Aristotle is the movement of natural substances to their pre-given natu-
ral ends.

§2:  PROBLEMATIC INTERPRETATIONS OF
 ARISTOTLE’S TELEOLOGY
 In order to demonstrate that the primary point of reference for 
understanding teleology in Aristotle’s thought is nature, a few common 

isin erpre i ns  ris e i n e e g  us  rs  e e p un e  
n  su se uen  re u e  e rs  n  s  si  ng ese is-

readings are those models that attempt to reduce Aristotle’s teleology 
 s e er e  us i n  su  s e ien  r eri  n  

un   ris e s e e g  u  e s u   n  uses ne es-
sarily presupposes that he did r   uni ue e  n  us i  

 r  su   e r  s is re uire   e esis  e e g  is 
the movement of substances to their natural ends, therefore requires 

 re u i nis i  in erpre i ns  ris e s n  uses  s e 
other form of causation be rejected. Second, to determine if Aristotle’s 
understanding of teleology is grounded in his theory of nature, it will 
be necessary to discern what he means by the term “nature” (phusis). 

i en ris e s se er  s e en s n erning e r  e ne  
character of nature, it is somewhat surprising how many have restricted 
his use of the term to merely mean the sum total of biological organ-
isms. This interpretation will be shown to be far too narrow to account 
for all the situations in which Aristotle makes use of the concepts of 

5  Id.,194b30-194b32.
6  Id.,194b33-195a2.



69Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Aristotelian Teleology

nature and teleology as causal factors. Lastly, any anthropocentric 
interpretation that claims all things in the universe exists for the sake of 

n in  s eir en  runs up g ins  e i e   n  uses  in ris-
totle, are primarily grounded in the nature of each individual substance 
and are therefore logically before any consideration of human beings 
in particular. As shall be demonstrated, the anthropocentric interpre-
tation of Aristotle’s teleology goes against his broader metaphysical 
isi n  i  r s e ne essi   r s  e n ure use u  r 

mankind. Refuting these three inaccurate understandings of teleology 
in Aristotle shall constitute the majority of this essay. Once the ground 
has been cleared, a positive case for a more robust understanding of 
Aristotelian teleology that is grounded in nature shall be presented.

§3:  REDUCTIONISTIC INTERPRETATIONS OF FINAL 
CAUSES
 Several scholars have, in one way or another, argued that Aris-

e s n ep i n  n  us i  is re u i e  s e er r   
us i n  u   r e s  in uen i  n  s p is i e  un   

this sort is provided by Allan Gotthelf.7 He asserts that his understand-
ing  n  uses in ris e  e su ri e  s e irre u i e 
potential’ interpretation.”8 Gotthelf chooses this description because, in 
his view, “[p]rocesses for the sake of something are distinguished from 

7  See Allan Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” essay, 
in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James 
G. Lennox (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 204–42. This 
seminal work has birthed other reductionistic interpretations, sometimes 
even more reductionistic than Gotthelf’s own. E.g. Michael Bradie and 
Fred D. Miller, “Teleology and Natural Necessity in Aristotle,” History 
of Philosophy Quarterly 1, no. 2 (April 1984): 133–46, esp. 142. 
Cf. Susan Sauve Meyer, “Aristotle, Teleology, and Reduction,” The 
Philosophical Review 101, no. 4 (October 1992): 791–825, https://doi.
org/10.2307/2185925. Meyer takes a more epistemological approach to the 
issue or teleological reducibility: “My conclusion is not that something›s 
e ien  use is i s n  use  n r is i   n ing i  n in rinsi  
e ien  use ere  s r is  n  use  er   n usi n is 
si p   s e in rinsi  e ien  us  i s re su ien  r e ru  

 n us  i s   e pr e  i  is re ing is  r 
Aristotle, each type of cause is an “objective factor in nature,” as Balme 
puts it. David Balme, 3“Teleology and Necessity,” essay, in Philosophical 
Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox 
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 281. Aristotle’s discussion 
of causes, therefore, fundamentally concerns ontology (as opposed to 
merely epistemology, as Meyer’s interpretation suggests). 

8  Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” 251.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

those that are not by the presence in the one case, and the absence in 
the other, of a potential for form.”9 In is in erpre i n   n  use 
is the actualization of a potential that something possesses to take on a 
certain form. Hence, as Gotthelf explains, “For a living organism of a 
certain form to come to be for the sake of something is precisely for it 
to result from a sum of actualizations of potentials, one of which—and 
the most explanatorily important of which—is an irreducible potential 
for an organism of that form.”10 What Gotthelf means is that, for Aris-
totle, the matter out of which, say, a moose is made had the potential to 
take on many different forms, whether that be the form of some other 
animal or even a race car. To explain why this matter takes on the form 
that it does (e.g. that of a moose), one must have recourse to form, 

i  pr i es  e ni i n  er   n inue i  e se 
example, some of the matter composing this animal has its potential to 
be an antler actualized while other material has the potential to be eyes, 
hooves, or intestines actualized. What Gotthelf wishes to emphasize 
is that there is one form which unites together all these parts of the 
moose together so that it is one organism, and there must therefore be 
a corresponding potential to be a moose in all the matter that makes up 
its various parts (in addition to the potentials the matter has to be each 
part of the moose). Because the form of moose interpenetrates all of the 
p r s  e se n  n  ne p r   i  n su e  e  se  
the potential to be a moose cannot be reduced to any one or even any 
collection of the moose’s parts. Final causality, for Gotthelf, is the 
actualization of this irreducible potential for form. This account con-
nects to Aristotle’s teleological language insofar as all the parts of the 
moose are “for the sake of” the moose as a whole. This whole, in turn, 
is an “end” in the sense that the organism develops into a fully grown 
moose, and this stage of development marks its completion. Gotthelf, 
therefore, presents a respectable interpretation of Aristotle’s teleology 

 es in  un  n  n  e ngu ge e uses  es ri e n  
causes but also his broader metaphysical system.

 Despite the positive qualities Gotthelf’s interpretation pos-
sesses, it must ultimately be rejected because of its (admittedly subtle) 
reductionism. Before Gotthelf’s theory in particular is addressed, some 
general preliminary remarks concerning the problems with reduction-
is i  in erpre i ns  n  us i  in ris e us  e e  ri  
facie, it would be strange for Aristotle to systematically distinguish 

9 Id., 250.
10 Ibid.



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Aristotelian Teleology

e een n  n  e ien  uses  n  r e r er  e re u i e 
to the latter.11 As D. M. Balme puts it, “Aristotle always presents the 
four causes as four separate factors in a causal explanation… They are 
not one factor plus three alternative descriptions or views of it.”12 Sec-
ond, and more to the point, there are multiple places at which Aristotle 
e p i i  enies  n  us i  is re u i e  e ien  us i  
as Gotthelf implies. To take only the clearest example, in one of his 
enumerations of the four causes and their distinctions, Aristotle says 

 e ir  pe  use is e e ien  use r e s ur e  e 
nge  n  e n  use r e purp se n  e g  is pp se  

 is i e  e e ien  use 13 These considerations render implau-
sible any reductionistic interpretation of Aristotelian teleology based on 

e pre ise  n  us i  is si p     es ri e  p r i u r 
pe  e ien  us i   re ins  e e ns r e  is  

Gotthelf’s argument does in fact attempt such a reduction.

 e re re e ing e re u i n  rue n  uses  ere  
e ien  uses in e s r  i  s u  e n e ge   
he does avoid a particular type of reduction. Indeed, Gotthelf him-
self clearly believes his theory is wholly non-reductionistic (or even 
anti-reductionistic), as the self-designation of his interpretation as one 
of “irreducible potential” clearly indicates.14 He certainly has some 
claim to the title of non-reductionist insofar as he refuses to let matter’s 
potential to be some organism be reduced down to matter’s potentials 
to be each of said organism’s parts. That being said, as Rich Cameron 
rightly notes after conceding this same point in his critique of Gotthelf, 
“his analysis does count as a form of reduction to the material cause in 
virtue of the fact that the analysans refers primarily to potentialities and 
potentialities are material elements in Aristotle’s ontology.”15 Though 

11  r ris e s e ni i e is in i n e een e ur uses  see ris e  
Physics II.3, 194b24-195a3.

12 Balme, “Teleology and Necessity,” 281. Emphasis mine.
13 Aristotle, Metaphysics I.3, 983a30-32. This example as well as less 

e p i i  e p es  ris e s is in i n e een n  n  e ien  
causes are explicated in Robert Bolton, “The Origins of Aristotle’s Natural 
Teleology in Physics II,” essay, in Aristotle’s Physics: A Critical Guide, 
ed. Mariska Leunissen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 
2015), 121–43, esp. 122-125. Michael Bradie and Fred. D. Miller also 
rgue r e is in i eness  n  uses is is e ien  uses in 

Aristotle’s thought in Bradie and Miller, “Teleology and Natural Necessity 
in Aristotle,” 137.

14 E.g. Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” 251. Emphasis 
mine.

15 Rich Cameron, “The Ontology of Aristotle’s Final Cause,” Apeiron 35, 
no. 2 (June 2002): 173, n. 43 and 44, https://doi.org/10.1515/



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

er n sees e  s re u ing n  us i n  eri  us i n 
in virtue of matter’s status as potential in Aristotle’s thought, it seems 
that, in addition to this account, one must also acknowledge that form 
n  e ien  us i n s  p   r e in is re u i n  er  

Gotthelf is proposing an irreducible potential (the material cause) for 
r  e r  use   us  e u i e   n e ien  use  

in r er r e n i i ns   n  use  in  is i eren e 
between Cameron’s critique and my own, of course, does not detract 
from the main issue, namely that Gotthelf’s interpretation does not 
presen  n u  un   n  uses u  ere  re u es e   
some other form(s) of causation. Indeed, it seems Gotthelf is willing to 
acknowledge the reality of every type of cause Aristotle presents, ex-
ep  r n  uses  is e ns  e s rgu en  es in  

fall victim to the critiques of reductionistic arguments presented above 
and that his interpretation, though coherent, is not true to the thought 

 ris e i se   in ins  r  is in i n e een  ur 
types of causes.

§4:  RESTRICTIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF 
TELEOLOGY
 The claim that Aristotle’s teleology is intrinsically grounded 
in the natures of the various entities that populate the cosmos necessar-
ily entails that anything that has a nature (including everything from 
ir   e s rs  u n eings  n e e  up n   n  use  

But there are many alternate readings of Aristotle, which preclude 
such a broad understanding of nature and, by extension, teleology. 
The primary mistake made when restricting the scope of Aristotle’s 
pp i i n  n  uses is ssu ing  is n ep i n  e e g  

entails a transposition of anthropomorphic categories onto the natural 
world.16 This mistake can be seen in the work of E. Zeller who claims 
that “Aristotle cannot conceive of regulated and orderly events except 
under the analogy of human action directed towards an end.”17 Similar 

apeiron.2002.35.2.153.
16 Gotthelf, though he does restrict teleological explanation to biological 

en i ies  n ne e ess i en i es is s ne   un en  
misinterpretations of Aristotle. Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final 
Causality,” 251, n. 52.

17 Eduard Zeller, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics, vol. 1, 2 vols. 
(London, UK: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), 459. Zeller additionally 
claims that Aristotle explicitly states that the natural world, including the 

eri  e e en s  re in s e sense i e  Spe i  e i es Physics 



73Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Aristotelian Teleology

reasoning leads several other scholars to make the mistake of maintain-
ing  ris e e  n  us i   n  e pp i e  i gi  
organisms, which likewise evince some degree of desire and intention-
ality. This path is taken, among others, by D. M. Balme who argues for 

is res ri i e in erpre i n spe i   e e usi n  eri  
e e en s  e su un r  e e en s  ir e r  re n  er   e e-
ologically only when they are part of a living body; outside that (for 
ins n e in e urren e  r ins r s  ere is n  n  use ing 
n e  ris e n nes n ur  e e g   su un r  i e 18 

Compared to Balme, John M. Cooper is more attentive to Aristotle’s 
numerous claims that, in addition to biological entities, the elements 
re s  su e   n  us i  e  in e en  e  e p ies n  
uses  n  re  e  s e is isses ris e s i s n ern-

ing e i e en s r e e e en s  s ing  is us  re ers e g   re s 
tendency to heat things up.”19 On this reading, elemental teleology is 
reduced simply to a way of expressing the way the elements happen to 
behave without providing an explanation of why such behavior occurs 
regularly. Finally, the most powerful argument in favor of the view that 
Aristotle holds teleological explanations only to pertain to biological 
organisms is certainly Gotthelf’s observation that “in almost every 
passage in which Aristotle introduces, discusses, or argues for the ex-
is en e  n  us i  is en i n is use  n e gener i n n  
development of a living organism.”20 There is, therefore, a strong case 
to be made for a restrictive reading of teleology in Aristotle such that 
n  i ing eings n e e e   n  uses

 Despite the multiple lines of evidence pointing towards a 
restrictive interpretation of teleology, such an understanding is sim-
p  n  pre ensi e en ug   p ure  e uses  n  uses 

VIII.1, 250b10-250b14, the relevant part of which asks, “Is it [i.e. motion] 
in fact an immortal never-failing property of things that are, a sort of life 
as it were to all naturally constituted things?” This one question out of 

e en ire ris e i n rpus r  su es  e ns r e  ris e 
maintained a sort of universal animism, especially when one considers the 
possibility that Aristotle here refers to “a sort of life” because he associates 
eternity with the divine, which is alive in some sense (This, and not 
anthropomorphism, is incidentally why Aristotle attributes life to the stars, 
which he believes are eternal). The point being conveyed, as the context 
clearly shows, is the eternity of motion, not the animacy of matter.

18 Balme, “Teleology and Necessity,” 277.
19 John M. Cooper, “Hypothetical Necessity and Natural Teleology,” essay, 

in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James 
G. Lennox (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 268, n. 26.

20 Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” 229, n. 7, which 
refers back to his citations in n. 2 and 5.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

in the Aristotelian corpus. Though the various interpretations of the 
res ri i e ie   n  uses e  n in eir n p r i u r s  
all sides of the debate agree that Aristotle attributes teleology to those 
things which possess a nature.21 The contested issue, therefore, is 
spe i   pes  en i ies p ssess  n ure phusis) according 
to Aristotle. The views presented above generally ascribe a nature only 
to biological beings,22 but an analysis of Aristotle’s explicit comments 
on the subject reveal that he certainly had a much broader understand-
ing of the concept of nature. At the opening of Metaphysics VIII, for 
e p e  ris e is s re  e r  er  ir  s e pri e e p es  
“natural substances,” which are “recognized by all thinkers.”23 Aristotle 
provides further corroborating evidence of this broad understanding of 
nature in De Caelo III where he introduces the following distinction: 
“Now things that we call natural are either substances or functions and 

ri u es  su s n es  s su s n es I ss e si p e ies re  
earth, and the other terms of the series—and all things composed of 
them; for example, the heaven as a whole and its parts, animals, again, 
and plants and their parts.”24 Both of these passages make it clear that, 
on Aristotle’s account, substances with natures are not limited to plants 
and animals but also includes the four elements and the heavenly bod-
ies.

 Though Aristotle’s explicit statements as to what is included 
un er e s pe  n ure su e  un er ine e res ri i e in erpre-
tations presented above, these basic observations still leave open the 
question of precisely why these incomplete understandings fail. That 
is to say, what has been dealt with so far are merely conclusions, not 
premises and reasoning. To see why the reasoning behind the restric-
tive interpretations of nature fails, one must understand the criterion 

21 E.g. Balme, “Teleology and Necessity,” 275; Cooper, “Hypothetical 
Necessity and Natural Teleology,” 244; Zeller, Aristotle and Earlier 
Peripatetics, 459.

22 Zeller is an exception to this as he believes Aristotle attributes teleology 
 n ing i  in en i ns  n  e er g es n  r   ris e 

teaches everything has at least some low-level of conscious intentionality. 
Zeller, Aristotle and Earlier Peripatetics, 459-461. For a refutation of this 
interpretation, see n. 17.

23 Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII.1, 1042a6-12.
24 Aristotle, De Caelo, trans. J. Stocks (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 

1922), III.1, 598a29-32. See also De Caelo I.1, 268a1-6 where Aristotle 
e nes e s pe  e s u   n ure s  r   i  n in u e e 

whole material world, except man-made artifacts. For an analysis of this 
passage, see Monte Ransome Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford, UK: 
Clarendon Press, 2008), 133.



75Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Aristotelian Teleology

that Aristotle uses to include something under the category of nature. 
He holds that natural and non-natural substances “plainly differ” since 
every case of the former “has within itself a principle of motion and 
of stationariness (in respect of place, or of growth and decrease, or by 
way of alteration).”25 For Aristotle, nature is this principle of motion 
and rest. His standard of what constitutes a natural substance therefore 
clearly presents a disjunction where any one of various conditions is 
satisfactory, but it seems that the restrictive theories of nature take the 
“growth and decrease” characteristic of organisms to be a necessary 
condition for naturalness. If Aristotle’s own standard is applied, how-
ever, then the elements are manifestly teleological for Aristotle, since 
he believes they have a natural tendency to move “in respect of place.” 
Earth has a tendency to move down, followed by water, and air tends to 

e up  n  surp sse   re 26 Thus, Aristotle holds that the motion 
of elements to the place they usually rest is the result of a natural tele-
ological movement, and this means both nature and teleology extend 
to all substances that possess a tendency to change in some consistent 
manner.

25 Aristotle, Physics II.1, 192b12-15.
26 Christopher Byrne argues that the movement of the elements to their 

respective usual places is not driven by a teleology grounded in nature. His 
reasoning is that Aristotle claims the elements will not move teleologically 
if placed in a void, which implies that the teleological motion of the 
elements is not grounded in the substances themselves but in their mutual 
relations. Byrne concludes from this that natural motion refers to physically 
necessary motion (as opposed to teleological motion), and in this he seems 
to stand alone among scholars. I believe this is for good reason, since in 
addition to claiming that teleological motion is not possible in the void, 
Aristotle also says that physically necessary motion is impossible, which 
means one could wage the same critique concerning the non-intrinsic 
character of the type of motion in question against Byrne’s claim that 
physically necessary motion is natural motion. Aristotle’s express point is 
that no motion is possible in a void because all motion requires the ability 
to go, say, up or down, but these categories make no sense in the context of 
a void which lacks a point of reference. Additionally, in the very passage to 
which Byrne refers, Aristotle says that natural motion is prior to all other 
types of motion and makes them possible. Aristotle then says that natural 
motion is not possible in the void because there is neither up nor down. The 

ngu ge  up  n  n  n ur  i n is re e i e  ris e s r er 
discussions of elemental teleological motion (as opposed to physically 
ne ess r  i n  i   e ni i n is n  ire e  r s n  ire i n 
in particular). This implies that teleological motion is in fact natural motion, 
n  p si  ne ess r  i n is s ris e s s e se ere  e ne  s 

the deviation from this natural motion. Christopher Byrne, “Aristotle on 
Physical Necessity and the Limits of Teleological Explanation,” Apeiron 35, 
no. 1 (March 2002): 19–46, https://doi.org/10.1515/apeiron.2002.35.1.19. 
Cf. Aristotle, Physics IV.8, 215a1-13.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

 ug  e spe i i n   e  ris e e ns  
nature implicitly shows that most arguments for a restrictive interpre-
tation of teleology fail to adequately account for elemental motion, the 
question still remains why Aristotle puts so much emphasis on biolog-
i  e p es en is ussing n  uses  p ring is issue s  
helps clarify why so many scholars mistakenly restrict the purview 

 n  uses  p n s n  ni s in ris e  espi e e irresis -
ible” conclusion (to use Robert Wardy’s description) that Aristotle 
believes elemental motion is teleologically driven.27 Though certain 
scholars, such as Rich Cameron, have claimed that the constriction of 

n  us i  in ris e  e pure  i gi  sp ere is i e  
 ern u s n erning e eren e  n  us i 28 the 

ubiquity of biological examples in Aristotle’s presentations of teleolo-
gy provides a more generous interpretation of the restrictive teleology 
reading. To see how, one must turn to Physics II.8 where Aristotle ex-
plains that “the form must be the cause in the sense of that for the sake 
of which.”29 That is to say, wherever a formal cause is present, so too 

i   n  use 30 r urren  purp ses  e re e n e  is is  -
n  uses re s e si  i en i e s r  uses  sin e  n  use 
is present wherever a formal one is. If form is more apparent in plants 
and animals, then it follows that teleology is similarly more obvious in 
these cases. As Joseph Owens explains, the variegated character of the 
cosmos in Aristotle’s thought allows “form to play a proportionately 
greater role in the inanimate, plant, and animal kingdoms respectively, 
with corresponding increase in the obviousness of the teleology.”31 

e pre en e  i gi  e p es in ris e s is ussi n  n  
causality can, therefore, be explained in terms of pedagogical purposes. 
Aristotle uses the examples that are most obvious and easiest to discuss 
to demonstrate his points so as to avoid confusion. The restrictive 

27 Robert Wardy, “Aristotelian Rainfall or the Lore of 
Averages,” Phronesis 38, no. 1 (1993): 20, https://doi.
org/10.1163/156852893321052433.

28 Cameron, “The Ontology of Aristotle’s Final Cause,” 153. Cf. Margaret 
Scharle, “Elemental Teleology in Aristotle’s Physics 2.8,” essay, in Oxford 
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, ed. David Sedley, vol. 34 (Oxford, UK: 
Oxford University Press, 2008), 149.

29 Aristotle, Physics II.8, 199a30-32.
30 e re s n ris e es n  ire  i en i  r  n  n  use 

ppe rs  e  r i s e en s n  ere re n  uses  u  sin e 
they are not natural substances, they do not have a form. Final causes, 
therefore, are a broader category than formal causes.

31 Joseph Owens, “Teleology of Nature in Aristotle,” Monist 52, no. 2 (April 
1968): 173, n. 51, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist196852215. Owens rightly 
cites Aristotle’s Meteorology  I 2  0 2 2  n r  is p in



77Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Aristotelian Teleology

in erpre i n  e e g  in ris e s r s is us re e i e  e 
Stagirite’s predilection for biological examples, which is grounded in 
his hierarchical ontology of form and matter. This being said, Aristot-
le’s preference for explaining teleology in terms of biological processes 
s u  n  e en  e e usi n  er e s  n  uses  s 
is done by those who support the restrictive interpretation of teleology.

§5: THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC INTERPRETATION OF 
TELEOLOGY
 r n ne  e s  in uen i  presen i n  e n r p -
centric reading of teleology in Aristotle is that of David Sedley. Unlike 
those guilty of anthropomorphism who claim that the world possesses 
some low level of intentionality, Sedley argues that everything (even 
elements devoid of consciousness) in the universe is for the sake of 

n in   is  u ns re e n  use n  en    ings  is 
si  presen i n  e er  re uires n i p r n  u i er  Se e  

correctly notes that Aristotle draws a distinction between two ways 
one thing can be for the sake of something else. This distinction is that 
“between the beneficiary of a process or state of affairs, and its aim or 
object of aspiration.”32 The essence of this distinction is that something 

n e n en  ei er in e sense  eing ene e  r  ing ers 
i i e i se  i  is i  r  es is e  Se e  is e 
to clarify that “Nature is anthropocentric to the extent that man is the 
ultimate beneficiary.”33 If this is true, then Aristotelian teleology would 
not be grounded in the nature of each substance, as I have claimed, but 
in human nature in particular. Sedley’s interpretation, therefore, must 
be dealt with in detail prior to constructing a positive interpretation of 
Aristotle’s teleology grounded in the natures of each substance.

 Sedley presents two main arguments in support of his anthro-
p en ri  re ing  ris e i n e e g  e rs  ng ese is 
simply conveying what Aristotle, himself, explicitly states concern-
ing the issue. At one point, Aristotle claims: “For the arts too make 
their material: some of it they make simpliciter, some of it they make 
workable. And we use it on the ground that everything exists for our 
sake. For we ourselves too are, in one sense, an end.”34 Sedley would, 

32 David Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” Phronesis 36, 
no. 2 (1991): 180, https://doi.org/10.1163/156852891321052778.

33 Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 180.
34 Aristotle, Physics II.2, 194a33-36. Quoted in Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s 

Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 189.



78

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

 urse  in erpre  e in ne sense   e n in e sense   ene -
ciary.35 On this reading, it is hard to ignore the presence of a universal 
anthropocentrism in Aristotle’s thought. Furthermore, in a passage in 
the Politics, Aristotle expresses a similarly broad understanding of the 
scope of entities that are for the sake of mankind:

Hence it is equally clear that we should also suppose that, 
after birth, plants exist for the sake of animals, and the other 
animals for the sake of men — domesticated animals for 
both usefulness and food, and most if not all wild animals 
for food and other assistance, as a source of clothing and 
other utilities. If, then, nature makes nothing incomplete or 
pointless, it is necessary that nature has made them all for 
the sake of men.36

According to this passage, in virtue of their ability to provide food, 
clothing, and assistance, animals are for the sake of humans. Addition-
ally, plants are for the sake of animals since the former can be eaten by 

e er  n  p n s  in urn  re e ene i ries  e e e en s e g  
er use    er r r i n  us  i  u  see    e 

n ur  r  is in ire  i p i e  in e n r p en ris   n  
causality.

 In addition to direct textual evidence, Sedley also presents an 
argument for his anthropocentric reading on the basis of an oft-dis-
cussed passage concerning the teleology of winter rain. In his refuta-
tion to Empedoclean natural philosophy, which denies the reality of 

n  uses  ris e pr p ses n e i n  is n ie  e  
by his response:

 i u  presen s i se   s u  n  n ure r  n  
for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just 
as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of 
necessity?... Yet it is impossible that this should be the true 
view…. We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence 

35 Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 189.
36 Aristotle, Politics I.8, 1256b10-22. Quoted in David Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s 

Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 180. Aristotle’s caveat that it is “most if 
n   i  ni s  re ene i  s u  e ne suspi i us  
how precise Aristotle’s statements of the universality of anthropocentric 
teleology are intended to be.



79Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Aristotelian Teleology

the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer 
we do; nor heat in summer but only if we have it in winter. 
If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coinci-
dence or for the sake of something, and these cannot be the 
result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must 
be for the sake of something.37

The relevance of this passage is that Aristotle claims winter rain is not 
solely the result of blind mechanical forces; rather, it is for the sake of 
something. Additionally, Aristotle claims that summer rain is attributed 
to chance, since it usually does not rain in the summer in Athens. Sedley 
nicely summarizes his thoughts on this topic: “Clearly, then, he [i.e. 
Aristotle] thinks that winter rainfall is for a purpose, and natural, and 
that it is only summer rainfall that is accidental, and, strictly speaking, 
unnatural.”38 In virtue of this distinction, Sedley is able to claim that the 
spe i  se  e e gi  in er r in   e s  is n  e resu   
water’s movement towards its own natural place (down to the earth).39 
If it were, then rainfall in both the winter and the summer would be 
considered teleological. But, so Sedley claims, Aristotle’s distinction be-
tween winter and summer rain implies that only the former is teleolog-
i  i en is ssu p i n  e n  use  in er r in  nn  
be its proclivity to return to its natural place, Sedley concludes: “It rains 
[in the winter] in order to make the crops grow.”40 The growth of crops, 

 urse  is ene i  r e pe p e pr u ing e  s  is re ing  
ris e s in er r in rgu en  ur er n r s Se e s n r p en-

tric interpretation of teleology.

 When addressing Sedley’s arguments, some problems immedi-
ately arise. For starters, there is a grammatical ambiguity in the Greek 
of the passage Sedley translates as “everything exists for our sake.”41 

37 Aristotle, Physics II.8, 198b17-199a8.
38 Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 183.
39 Id., 4  Se e  es i   ris e r s e re i   e e g  

grounded in the movement of elements to their natural places, but he limits 
the scope of this type of causality such that it is not applicable to winter 
r in  I  is un e r  Se e  u  n  r   i  r ins in e in er 
both for the sake of crop growth and for water to reach its natural place or 
that winter rain is solely for the sake of crop growth but winter rain can 
still be for the sake of water attaining its natural place. By ignoring these 
options, Sedley is forced to maintain that summer rain cannot be teleological 
at all, which seems to run up against his concession that the elements can be 
teleologically driven to their natural place.

40 Ibid.
41 Aristotle, Physics II.2, 194a33-36. Quoted in Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s 

e e g  n r p en ri   e igui  in spe i  is  



80

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Sedley acknowledges that the passage is usually rendered in a coun-
terfactual manner such that Aristotle’s meaning would be “It is as if 
e er ing e is s r ur s e  u  Se e  r er ipp n  is isses 

is ern e r ns i n  s ing i  us  ere  re e  n in erpre -
tive prejudice.”42 Robert Wardy concedes that Sedley’s “grammatical 
observation is correct—so long as one appends the caveat that the 
construction does not preclude the counterfactual reading either,” since 
the expression used “is the ideal Greek construction for not making 
a commitment.”43 The issue, therefore, cannot be solved solely at the 
grammatical level. One must interpret the expression in context to 
determine its meaning. Sedley does so, but he fails to appreciate the 
variety of interpretations the passage welcomes. Interpreting Aristotle’s 
claim in light of the broader context concerning the arts, Sedley states 
that “Aristotle’s clear meaning is that the assumption underlying our 
practices of cooking, pottery, sculpture, and all such arts is that the raw 
materials of those arts—the meat, clay, bronze, stone, and wood—ex-
is  r ur ene 44 But this interpretation is by no means “clear,” or 
at least this reading does not exclude equally clear alternative ones. 
Indeed, it seems quite likely that Aristotle has in mind here that every-
thing exists for our sake in the sense that it is capable of being altered 

r ur ene   ri us r s  I  s Se e  sugges s  ris e e ie es 
all things do exist for our sake in a direct sense, then the purpose of 
art becomes unintelligible. If everything is naturally oriented towards 

e ene   n in  en   pe p e nee   use r   e 
workable”45 natural materials? Indeed, as shall be further elaborated 
below, Sedley’s singular failure seems to be this underestimation of the 
importance of art in the Aristotelian system for making natural entities 
ene i  r u ns

 Aristotle’s claim that animals exist for the sake of men, plants 
r e s e  ni s  n  s  n es n  su e  pr e Se e s 

conclusion concerning a universally anthropocentric teleology. Aristo-
e en s e p ss ge ere e r s is see ing  n r p en ri  
e r   n  us i  s s  I  en  n ure es n ing 

the construction  plus participle can connote uncertainty. Cf. Wardy, 
“Aristotelian Rainfall or the Lore of Averages,” 27.

42 Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 189.
43 Wardy, “Aristotelian Rainfall or the Lore of Averages,” 27. Emphasis in 

original.
44 Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 189. Emphasis in 

original.
45 Aristotle, Physics II.2, 194a33-36.



81Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

Aristotelian Teleology

incomplete or pointless, it is necessary that nature has made them all 
for the sake of men.”46 Sedley obviously takes this to mean Aristotle is 

r ing   ings re in  r e s e  n  n  e i -
mediate context does admittedly lend itself to such an interpretation. 
However, Aristotle’s general comments on nature actually require the 
rejection of the conditional’s antecedent, thereby leaving the conclu-
sion dubious. That is to say, Aristotle elsewhere claims that nature 
does make some things incomplete, which means nature does not 
necessarily act for the sake of mankind. That some things in nature are 
incomplete according to Aristotle is manifest in his discussion of the 
need for art, of which he says “generally art in some cases completes 

 n ure nn  ring   nis 47 I  n ure nee s  e nis e  
by art, it follows that nature is in the relevant sense not complete. The 
re e n  sense  n ure s e ien  is  in  pre ise   Se e  
mistakenly claims constitutes the perfection of nature, namely its being 
ene i  r n in  In  ris e s e  re  e i us 

empirical fact that art is often necessary to make natural substances 
useful to mankind, as in the case of the arts of hunting, farming, etc. 
Aristotle’s claim that “[i]f, then, nature makes nothing incomplete or 
pointless, it is necessary that nature has made them all for the sake of 
men”48 must therefore be read in the sense of insofar as nature is com-
plete, it is for the sake of mankind, but this does not exclude the fact 
that the intervention of art is frequently necessary to bring nature to its 
completion.

Finally, Sedley’s use of the winter rainfall example fails 
because it relies on the premise that only winter rain, which is bene-

i   u ns  is e e gi  ere s use ess su er r in is n  
teleological.49 The distinction Aristotle draws between the two types of 
rain, however, is between what is regular and irregular, not teleological 
and non-teleological, and the reason Aristotle employs this distinction 
is because of the dialectical character of the passage. He is trying to 
prove to his Empedoclean objectors that teleology is a real phenome-
non, so he naturally chooses the easiest examples to prove this, and the 
teleology of winter rain is more obvious than summer rain, not because 
it happens for the sake of mankind but because it happens consistently. 

46 Aristotle, Politics I.8, 1256b10-22. Quoted in Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s 
Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 180.

47 Aristotle, Physics II.8, 199a9-19.
48 Aristotle, Politics I.8, 1256b10-22. Quoted in Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s 

Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 180.
49 Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?,” 183.



82

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

But, as Aristotle clearly believes, water in general consistently returns 
to the ground in virtue of its nature. Though, as a broader metaphysical 
claim, this is harder to prove and would therefore detract from his main 
point. Hence, Aristotle chooses to focus his argument on winter rain in 
spe i

Even if this dialectical reading of Aristotle’s intentions is 
mistaken, Sedley’s interpretation is not only unsupported by Aristotle’s 

ri ings  i  is ire  re u e  Se e  r s ris e s n usi n  
his discussion of winter and summer rainfall: “Therefore action for an 
end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.”50 Aristo-

e us es is es eing  n ur  su s n e s  su ien  n i i n 
for being teleological. Since Sedley wishes to say that summer rain-
fall, which does not aid in crop growth and is therefore not helpful to 
mankind, is not teleological, Sedley is therefore forced to maintain that 
summer rainfall is “unnatural.” However, as Monte Ransome Johnson 
has observed, “rainfall is not a substance,”51 which means it does not 
possess a nature at all. On the other hand, “[w]ater is a substance, and 
so it can be teleologically explained.”52 This means that, given that 
teleology applies to all natural substances, if winter rainfall qua water 
is su e   n  us i  s   su er r in  u  er us  e 
teleological. Aristotle’s metaphysics does not allow for the division 
Sedley attempts to introduce when he claims that winter rain is natural 
and therefore teleological, but summer rain is unnatural and therefore 
n  sus ep i e  n  uses  er is e n ure   r in  reg r ess 
of when it falls, so all rainfall insofar as it is water must be teleological. 
Since water must be treated as an irreducible category when discussing 
i s re i n  n  uses  Se e  nn  i   er s  e 
is for the sake of mankind, since his whole argument presupposes that 
 er in pe  er  n e  su er r in  is n  ene i  r 

people. One is thus left wondering what is the true end of water, and 
this raises the more general question of to what are all natural sub-
stances teleologically oriented. Answering this question will require a 
full elaboration of an interpretation of teleology in Aristotle’s works as 
grounded in the natures of substances.

50 Aristotle, Physics II.8, 199a1-8.
51 Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, 156.
52 Ibid.



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Aristotelian Teleology

§6: THE NATURAL INTERPRETATION OF 
TELEOLOGY
 Several lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that, for 
Aristotle, teleology is grounded in the nature of each particular type of 
substance. The notion that nature is the driving force behind Aristot-
le’s teleology is apparent in the opening line of Physics 2.8, where he 
states that “Nature belongs to the class of causes which act for the sake 
of something.”53 Nature, as has already been established, refers to the 
totality of the nature of substances, ranging from the dirt below to the 
stars above, and all the organisms in between. Though Aristotle seems 
to identify nature as a subclass within the broader category of causes 
for the sake of something, his additional indirect statements concerning 

e re i n e een n  uses n  n ure re e   e er n-
s i u e e ri   e r er  e n  er pe  n  uses  

i  re en is en  en s e p r ig   n  us i  
in Aristotle, are the arts. Artistic creativity is not central to Aristotle’s 
understanding of teleology. This notion has already been implicitly 
demonstrated in the refutation of the biological interpretation of teleol-
g  i  p si s  in en i n i  is e essen e  n  us i n r 

Aristotle. Since the totality of biological organisms does not exhaust 
e s pe  en i ies su e   n  uses  i  s  r i ri  

artistic creativity, a very narrow type of animal intentionality, does not 
pr i e  su ien  pre ensi e e   un ers n  ris e s 

e r   n  uses   e ns r e  i  is n ure  s pp se   
e r s  i  s e en r  p e ng ris e s n  uses  

i  i  e ne ess r   ser e pre ise   e e ie es e  re n  
causes at all.

 ris e s i en i i n  n ure n  r  i p ies  n -
tures are the ends in the fullest sense of the term. This comes out most 
clearly in Physics II.8: “And since nature is twofold, the matter and the 
form, of which the latter is the end, and since all the rest is for the sake 
of the end, the form must be the cause in the sense of that for the sake 
of which.”54 ere  s e s s e se ere  ris e r s  n ure 
can be spoken of as either the matter of something or as its form. Na-
ture, however, is more properly spoken of as form because “a thing is 
more properly said to be what it is when it exists in actuality than when 

53 Aristotle, Physics II.8, 198b10-16. Cf. Scharle, “Elemental Teleology in 
Aristotle’s Physics 2.8,” 152-154.

54 Id., 199a25-33.



84

it exists potentially.”55 Whereas matter has the potential to take on all 
s r s  i eren  s pes  r  is  gi es e ni i n  er n  
makes it what it is. Hence, the nature of a substance is in the strictest 
sense i en i   i s r  i en e i en i i n  r  n  n ure  
it becomes clear that nature is for the sake of which things exist, since 
Aristotle clearly states that form is the end towards which substances 
s ri e  ur er re  e ire  i en i es n ure u  r  s  n  
cause. Since the form is the actualization and therefore perfection of 
matter, all matter in a natural substance is for the sake of its nature 
qua form. Contrary to the restrictive interpretations of Aristotelian 
e e g  i  re uire  i r ni  e e p en  r s  n  en  

such that the end is only achieved at the very end of a process (e.g. a 
baby moose is for the sake of the adult moose that will not emerge in 
i e un i  e rs er  ris e r s  in e  n  e er  en  

matter is wholly striving for its form in all substances.

 If Aristotle really does believe that teleology refers to the ac-
tualization of a substance’s nature, then it is unclear why he insists on 
using the seemingly anthropomorphic language of actions performed 
“for the sake of” some “end.” This problem is resolved, however, 
when one realizes that for Aristotle, in order for something to qualify 
as an end, it must be good. More precisely, Aristotle argues that each 
substance has its own particular good. For example, in the chap-
ter immediately preceding the winter rainfall example, he explains 
something can count as an end “because it is better thus (not without 
u i i n  u  i  re eren e  e su s n e in e  se 56 

Monte Ransome Johnson sums up the implications of this and several 
similar remarks made throughout the Aristotelian corpus: “The good 

i  e e gi  e p n i ns e re eren e  is spe i   e 
natural kind being explained. The good is not the same for all kinds 

 ings  r s es  ir s  n  p n s n   en i n s rs  e e en s  
households, cities, etc.).”57

Finally, a clearer image of Aristotle’s conception of teleology 
emerges. All substances possess a nature, which is an internal prin-
ciple of motion and rest. These natures are what allow substances to 
move to their respective ends, which vary according to the substance 
in question. In moving towards these ends, substances are moving 

55 Aristotle, Physics II.1, 193b7-12.
56 Aristotle, Physics II.7, 198b8-9.
57 Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, 278.



85Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

towards their nature qua form, which is their actuality. When this full 
actuality is obtained, a nature qua principle of rest is in a state of full 
actualization, and the being has reached its perfection, both in the sense 
of completion and goodness. Because of the intrinsic moral character 
of these natural ends, Aristotle speaks appropriately when he says that 
non-conscious entities act for the sake of ends, just as human beings 
always seek out their own good and perfection.

§7: CONCLUSION
 It is certainly easier to see the problems with alternative 
interpretations of Aristotle’s conception of teleology in retrospect. For 
e p e  ris e s i   n  uses re  r er eg r   
encompasses all formal causes shows that the former is not reducible 
to the latter. None of those who promote a reductionistic interpretation 

 n  uses in ris e i   r  uses re re u i e  n  
er pe  use  en e  ins r s n  uses re r  uses 

n  e en e ee  e  n  us i  si i r  nn  e re u e  
to any other mode of causation. With respect to the claim that natural 
substances capable of teleological explanation are merely coextensive 
with biological organisms, this is patently untenable in light of the 

e p si  un i n  n  uses in e u i   r s  Sin e 
teleology is the movement of a substance’s nature to its form, any 
entity with an internal principle of motion-oriented towards a consis-
en  g  en  is su e   n  uses  r ris e  is in u es n  

only plants and animals but also the elements, which reach their fullest 
actuality when in their natural places. Revisiting Sedley’s anthropo-
centric interpretation, one can see that making mankind the end of all 
substances ignores Aristotle’s claim that the good towards which each 
su s n e s ri es is spe i    in   su s n e  e es  re u -
tion of these rival theories is therefore the establishment of Aristotle’s 
actual view that teleology is grounded in substance’s natural movement 

r s pre e ne  en s

 It is understandable why so many scholars wish to propose 
alternative solutions to the problem of teleology in Aristotle. His un-
derstanding of causality can seem foreign and even paradoxical. After 
all, in Aristotle’s account, nature is both the principle of motion and 
the form towards which this principle strives. But this paradox ought 
n   e i e  s ris e pen  r s i  ure in e sense 



86

of a coming-to-be proceeds towards nature.”58 For Aristotle, nature is 
in some sense self-transcending, such that it is both what strives and 
what is striven after. This is part of his answer to the question, which 
plagued earlier Greek philosophers: How is change possible at all? 
Any non-paradoxical answer to this question runs the risk of creating 
either a static universe of eternal forms or an unintelligible world of 
matter moving about randomly. If we are to take Aristotle’s meta-
physics and the philosophical tradition he inherited seriously at all, 
therefore, we must make a central place for his account of teleology 
grounded in the natures of substances.

58 Aristotle, Physics II.1, 193b13.



87Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

REFERENCES
Aristotle. De Caelo. Translated by J. Stocks. Oxford, UK: 

Clarendon Press, 1922.

Aristotle. “Metaphysics.” Essay. In The Works of Aristotle, 
translated by W. D. Ross, 1 st ed. Vol. 8. 12 vols. Oxford, UK: Clarendon 
Press, 1908. 

Aristotle, R. K. Gaye, and R. P. Hardie. “Physics.” Essay. 
In The Complete Works of Aristotle 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 
1:315–446. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. 

Balme, D.M. “Teleology and Necessity.” Essay. In Philosophical 
Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. 
Lennox, 275-286. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 

Bolton, Robert. “The Origins of Aristotle’s Natural Teleology 
in Physics II.” Essay.In Aristotle’s Physics: A Critical Guide, edited by 
Mariska Leunissen, 121–43. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University 
Press, 2015. 

Bradie, Michael, and Fred D. Miller. “Teleology and Natural 
Necessity in Aristotle.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 1, no. 2 (April 
1984): 133–46. 

Byrne, Christopher. “Aristotle on Physical Necessity and the 
Limits of Teleological Explanation.” Apeiron 35, no. 1 (March 2002): 
19–46. https://doi.org/10.1515/apeiron.2002.35.1.19. 

Cameron, Rich. “The Ontology of Aristotle’s Final 
Cause.” Apeiron 35, no. 2 (June 2002): 153– 79. https://doi.org/10.1515/
apeiron.2002.35.2.153.  Cooper, John M. “Hypothetical Necessity 
and Natural Teleology.” Essay. In Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s 
Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 243-274. 
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Gotthelf, Allan. “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality.” 
Essay. In Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan 
Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 204–42. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge 
University Press, 1987. 

Johnson, Monte Ransome. Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford, UK: 
Clarendon Press, 2008. Meyer, Susan Sauve. “Aristotle, Teleology, and 



88

Reduction.” The Philosophical Review 101, no. 4 (October 1992): 
791–825. https://doi.org/10.2307/2185925.

Owens, Joseph. “Teleology of Nature in Aristotle.” Monist 52, 
no. 2 (April 1968): 159–73. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist196852215. 

Scharle, Margaret. “Elemental Teleology in Aristotle’s 
Physics 2.8.” Essay. In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, edited 
by David Sedley, 34:147–83. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 
2008.

Schindler, D. C. The Catholicity of Reason. Grand Rapids, 
MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013.

Sedley, David. “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?”  
Phronesis 36, no. 2 (1991): 179–96. https://doi.or g/10.1163/156852
891321052778. 

Wardy, Robert. “Aristotelian Rainfall or the Lore of 
Averages.” Phronesis 38, no. 1 (1993): 18–30. https://doi.org/10.116 
3/156852893321052433. 

Zeller, Eduard. Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics. Vol. 1. 
2 vols. London, UK: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897.



89Issue XI ◊ Spring 2024

DANIEL ANDREWS
Boston College
Daniel (Danny) Andrews is a rising senior at Boston College, where he is majoring 
in philosophy and writing an honors thesis in the upcoming year. In addition to 
existentialism and ontology, he is interested in how phenomenology intersects 
with environmental ethics. Danny also has interests in comparative philosophy 
e een e s ern n  es ern r i i ns  p i s p   e n g  n  r i i  

intelligence, and embodied cognition. Outside of philosophy, he loves being active 
in the outdoors by skiing and hiking. In his free time he likes to practice yoga, 
read, and listen to music - Pink Floyd, The Strokes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and 
Grateful Dead are some of his favorites. After graduating, he hopes to pursue a 
Ph.D. in philosophy.

ARTHUR DECARLE
University of Central Florida
Arthur deCarle is from Sarasota, Florida, and is currently attending the 
University of Central Florida as an incoming Senior. He is majoring in both 
Political Science and Philosophy and intends on applying to law school in the 
upcoming Spring. Arthur is a both a member of the Dean’s and President’s list 
for three consecutive years and is attending UCF on an academic scholarship. 
Arthur is active in UCF debate, both political and philosophical, with a special 
interest in Constitutional law and applied ethics. 

ROBERTO UREÑA
SUNY New Paltz
Roberto Ureña is a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz, having studied Philosophy, 
Political Science, and Economics. His philosophical interests include studies on 
ethics—in particular, the grounding of ethical theories—and metaphysics. He is 
also interested in Ancient Near Eastern speculative thought and mythology, and on 
the potential for the integration of ancient ways of thinking into modern society. In 
the hopes of becoming a lifelong academic, he plans to pursue a PhD in Philosophy.

JORDAN SMITH
Colby College
Jordan Smith is a junior at Colby College in Waterville, Maine where he is double 
majoring in philosophy and computer science. He is primarily interested in the 
history of Western philosophy, ranging from the ancient to early modern periods. 
In particular, he enjoys studying the interactions between theology, philosophy, 
and science as well as the practical implications these ideas have on the structure 
of society. Outside of his academic interests, Jordan also enjoys going on runs and 
whittling. After college, he intends to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy.

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Dianoia fosters open philosophical discussion and writing 
among undergraduate students. The journal is committed to 

pr i ing e pp r uni  r in e e u  re e i n  ri ges 
the academic disciplines in pursuit of holistic understanding.

e n ien  ree  r   r ns es s ug  u  
connotes a discursive direction or search for a higher form of 
knowledge. We thus hope to direct philosophical discourse 

toward an intellectually rigorous level of thinking.

Dianoia is sponsored by

The Institute for the Liberal Arts and the
Philosophy Department of Boston College






