Existential Teleology and Ethics
From Aristotle to Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmy van Deurzen and Michel Foucault
Introduction
Since the 1980’s, parts of philosophy has taken an interest in the revitalization of the ancient Greek teleological ethics as a response to the inability of modern moral philosophy – since Kant – to set concrete goals for life (Foucault 1997; MacIntyre 1997; Nussbaum 1993; Nussbaum 2001). The question of the good life was significant to ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, but it has vanished from modern academic philosophy. Now the sciences and social institutions answer the questions of how to live and what the goal and purpose of life are, but they reduce the good life to a technological issue. Even though modern academic philosophy does not take an interest in the good life, the existential tradition has reflected on human life and living since the middle of the 19th Century. In this chapter, I will examine whether the existential tradition implies a teleological conception of the content and direction of the good life that can form an alternative basis for modern ethics. Based on an examination of Aristotle's ethics and the ethics of the technological age, I will therefore outline the implicit teleological ethics in Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmy van Deurzen and Michel Foucault.
From Aristotelian ethics to the ethics of the technological age
Philosophers and historians usually regard Aristotle’s ethics as one of the best representatives of ancient Greek ethics. Aristotle’s ethical approach base on a strong version of teleology. Teleology is an explanation for a phenomenon in function of its end or goal (Aristotle 1994: 1095a). Aristotle explains the end or goal (causa finalis) of human existence as human flourishing (eudaimonia). Human beings achieve flourishing through a balanced use of human reason in everyday living as well as through the contemplation of universal harmony. According to Aristotle, the essence of human being is reason, and through the balanced use of reason in daily life, human being can cultivate a number of virtues and bring forth its substantial and universal form, which is already potentially present in the individual.
According to Heidegger, this bringing-forth is a concealment of something into unconcealment, which makes it appear as it is in itself (Heidegger 1977). Bringing-forth is essential to the teleological reason of ancient Greece philosophy, and Heidegger states that it differs from the challenging that rules in modern technology as a dominant way of revealing Being in modern times (Heidegger 1977: 14). Through this technological revealing, the human beings of modernity position themselves in the middle of the world and assume dominion over everything, including themselves. Thus, things and human beings only have meaning by becoming available as resources that are under control.
The revealing of modern technology contains the ethical belief that life is only significant and has quality in its readiness for use as a resource. This idea reflect in everything from human resource thinking in modern organizational theory to the notion that the goal of individual life is to develop skills and potentials and become a success through performance and achievements.
Foucault launched the equivalent term of bio-power to describe a form of power that takes human life as an issue, and this form of power emerges in the 19th Century (Foucault 1996: Ch. 5). In the 20th and 21st century, this power over life spreads, and the state and the individual human being become preoccupied with optimizing life (Rose 2006). Within this horizon, human beings conceive life as the essence of their Being, involving an essential functionality of life. Thus, the good life is perceived as a functional resource, grasped through terms such as quality of life, health and normality.
Vague teleology of authenticity: Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre
The existential tradition involves a rejection of the strong versions of teleology, viewing human nature as having an essence that defines the true end of human being (MacIntyre 1997: 54). However, the philosophy of Kierkegaard might be said to involve a vague teleology, because it conceives human existence as a process of freedom that involves certain choices as a condition for the goal of an authentic coming into existence. Furthermore, Kierkegaard describes this coming into existence as a dialectical progression of three stages on the way of life that involves different existential states. However, since this progression is wholly dependent on individual choice, it is also possible to live an unreal inauthentic life, where one does not come into existence and become oneself.
To live according to the ethics of the technological age is an expression of inauthenticity in the first stage of this process of self-realization. Kierkegaard describes this stage as involving the philistine and the aesthetic form of life. The philistine has an unreflective lifestyle and he or she just lives from a mainstream consciousness according to the norms and values that exist in society. The aesthetic lives with a multitude of possibilities and desires sensual goals that are external to the self and might provide empty experiences of success (Kierkegaard 1964: XXVIII, 153; 1988: 192). However, to exist in truth means that one enters the ethical stage by stepping out from the crowd and making a choice between the opportunities one faces, whereby one can find one’s own vocation. Unlike the ethics of technology, this process is not about self-realization as performance and achievement but about finding oneself. Yet