F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e. Is the Universe Designed?
By Leszek Figurski
The end of philosophy is not that we may know what
Men have thought but what the
TRUTH of thing is.
Thomas Aquinas
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion,
And only one person were of the contrary opinion,
And only one person were of the contrary opinion,
Mankind would be no more justified in silencing that
Person, than he, if he had the power, would be
justified in silencing mankind.
John Stuart Mill
F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e
Table of contents
Acknowledgments......................................................................................................
Introductory................................................................................................................
Preface .....................................................................................................................
Chapter One – A Historical Note On the Idea of Final Causality Before Saint
Thomas Aquinas.......................................................................................................
Anaxagoras...............................................................................................................
Plato..........................................................................................................................
The Good as Ground of Purposiveness in Plato ..........................................................
The Demiurge, the Ideas and the Phenomenal World .................................................
References.................................................................................................................
Chapter Two – Aristotle ....................................................................................................39
The Explanation of Change Through the Employment of the Idea of Act and
Potency.............................................................................................................................
Change as Natural Tendency to Self-Realization ................................................................
Chance and Finality...........................................................................................................
The Prime Unmoved Mover..............................................................................................
References.......................................................................................................................
Chapter Three – Final Cause in St. Thomas Aquinas..........................................................
Building up the Principle of Finality: “Every Agent Acts for an End.” ..................................
Series of Ends: Need of an Ultimate End ...........................................................................
End as Good .....................................................................................................................
Finality in God ..................................................................................................................
The Analogical Mode of Finalistic Intentionality..................................................................
References.........................................................................................................................
Chapter Four – The Relation of Finality to Intelligence in St. Thomas Aquinas
The Need for Intelligence as the Ground of Finality ............................................................79
The Relation of the Different Modes of Finality to Intelligence ............................................
Finality as Participation in an Idea......................................................................................
Finality and Evolution........................................................................................................
References.......................................................................................................................
Chapter Five – The Reduction of All Finality to One Infinite Intelligence ............................115
Intelligence as a Participated Perfection ............................................................................
The same idea is developed by St. Thomas in the following words:...................................
Efficient Cause and Finality................................................................................................
The Ascent of All Beings Upward......................................................................................
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................
References........................................................................................................................129
Chapter Six – Arguments For the Existence of God from Final Causality in the
Two Summas.....................................................................................................................133
The Five Ways .................................................................................................................
The Fifth Way ...................................................................................................................
The Argument ...................................................................................................................
Argument for World Order in the Contra Gentiles...............................................................
References.........................................................................................................................156
Chapter Seven – Summary and Conclusions........................................................................159
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................174
F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e
Bibliography..................................................................................................................175
Primary Sources.............................................................................................................175
Secondary Sources........................................................................................................176
Anaxagoras...................................................................................................................176
Plato..............................................................................................................................176
Aristotle.........................................................................................................................177
St. Thomas Aquinas.......................................................................................................177
Related Literature ..........................................................................................................179
Recommended Readings For This Edition ......................................................................182
F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e
Acknowledgments
I take this opportunity to express many thanks to all those who with their effort
time and valuable assistance to make this edition a reality and completing it for this new
publishing. First of all I am thankful to my friend for many years Irene T.
Saunder an enthusiastic helper for correcting and adjusting the original manuscript to
modernized standard edition. My thanks also go to Adrian Sookchan, the computer
engineer, without whose help this edition would not see the light of day. The
demanding work of final adjustment of the book was done by Mr. Krzysztof
Bukowski of www.pressto.ltd.uk whose expertise and readiness to help was almost
amazing. My gratefulness also goes to Ms. Marta Morawska, Acquisition Editor for
her invaluable directions.
Author
Introductory
The second edition of the book “Finality and Intelligence” belongs to the
elucidation of the problem and analysis of existence of God. The fact of writing on
God’s existence in our times maybe surprising to a number of people who are under
the spell of the existential confusion in philosophy, literature and art of our times.
Frankly speaking, very many people, some of them known scientists in different
branches of modern science consider such a topic simply very much out of date. One
can hear from many sources statements to the effect of complete lack of interest in
such questions. Did not science settle this problem once and for all. Did not even
some existential theologians after Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur
Schopenhauer acknowledge the death of God? Is not the matter settled for good? We
also have to mention here the very aggressive group of scientists who openly stress
the fact that they are scientists but draw conclusions which are metaphysical in
nature. And of course the conclusion whether God exists or not is metaphysical.
Metaphysics is also the generally accepted way of analysis of the Universe and God’s
existence until the very Modern Times. Philosophy whether for the Ancients or as a
matter of fact any attempt to answer the fundamental origin of existence is
metaphysical in nature. On this level the mind moves from existence to another
existence as the necessary condition explaining the present observation of the
universe and it’s intrinsic structure. There are some phenomena immediately
experienced, which can only be explained in terms of existence of God. To such
belong (1) the rationality implicit in our experience of the world. Human rationality
discovers the possibility of knowledge because of the presence of rationality in the
structure of the universe. When it comes to higher levels of phenomena we would
have to mention (2) life, (3) consciousness, (4) conceptual thought, the power to
articulate and understand symbols and meaning of language, and finally
(5) the human self. Some atheists claim the existence and necessity of so called scientific
reductionism, the evolution of the cosmos, the evolution of life including humans as
“arguments “ against existence of God.
On the contrary the book is one of some other books to follow about a serious
reconsideration of the problem of God’s existence. No matter how much progress has
been made in many areas of our life and no matter how scientific investigations
modified our view of man’s position in the cosmos, the nature of the vast immensity
of billions of galaxies forming themselves in the vastness of the surrounding world,
and no matter how the human life and situation has been apparently dwarfed, the
thirst and desire for discovery of some meaning of life is not only not belittled but in
the chaos of different views and opinions intensified for the average man today. The
problem of God’s existence will be amply analyzed in the forthcoming book by
Leszek Figurski “God or no God”.
The present book is an evaluation and analysis of the last Way of the known
Five Ways leading the human mind to the existence of God elaborated by Saint
Thomas Aquinas. The Fifth Way will be considered within general context of
Thomistic philosophy. It is not the intention to analyze all Five Ways of Thomas but
center on the ascent of the mind from the orderliness of the finite beings observed in
this world towards final infinite intelligence of the First Mover and the First Creative
Cause of the world.
The analysis is done on the metaphysical level; it acknowledges the right of the
human mind to complete intelligibility of being as such and the power of the mind to
answer the ultimate questions to which of course belongs the problem of the
existence of God.
Thomas Aquinas was not the first to elaborate the argument from finality and
its relationship to the mind, but he developed it and put it on the strictly ontological
level
All the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas have very similar structure of
argumentation. They begin with existing facts which are directly observable and then
they attempt to discover the ultimate presuppositions of the observable phenomena.
This is why Thomas Aquinas does not use the word arguments or proofs of existence
of God, instead he prefers the word ways of reaching the ultimate presuppositions of
what is already in experience directly given to man. The Fifth Way is very important
for the whole Thomistic philosophy. It points to personal intelligence as a necessary
presupposition of the orderly activities of finite causes in the world. The fact that
observable entities are goal oriented in their activity must have some explanation.
Thomas does not mean here the teleological action of say human beings or even the
small degree of teleological behavior of lower forms of life; he is pointing to the fact
that in- animate structured beings because of their structured natures contain a
presupposition in their activity towards definite goals or ends.
This is why the universe is telos-oriented, this is why human rationality meets
the cosmic rationality, this is why science and any kind of knowledge is possible at
all, this is why the harmonious orderly world must be finally grounded in some
cosmic intelligence. After all the world did not have to be the way it is; it could be a
forceless chaos, not in any way open to the human mind; or perhaps it could consist
only of photons and electrons. But it is not a chaos but an orderly cosmos as the
Greeks noticed and called it at the beginning of philosophical reflection.
To the objection of the evolutionists, the scientific reductionism and some other possible objections Thomas would if he lived in our simply answer: "rethink the problem carefully and without prejudice and you will realize that there is no other valid solution but mine." How the argument will be accepted and understood as valid and sound or not is up to the judgements of the reader.n
Irene Saunder
The first edition was published in 1978 by University Press of America, New York. The book was prepared under the guidance of the late Father Norris Clarke , who was a very deep philosophical thinker and thoroughly knowledgeable in philosophy in general a the system of Thomas Aquinas in particular.
Author
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