Philosophy and teleology

The human future

The spiritual to the philosopher

Most major spiritualities pose to humanity a teleological view. They reflect on the meaning and purpose of evolution.

This is the case for Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Taoism. All these religions consider the evolution of a historical perspective. They ascribe a becoming, an improvement, achievement. Linear or eschatological, the spiritual world shows a kind of apogee, a state of perfection.

By observing human history and wide range so it easily adheres to these proposals. In any case, these religious intuitions are sufficiently relevant to captivate long many philosophers *.

* For a long time indeed, philosophy shares with this interest in religion teleology.

Ancient Greece.

For the Greeks the true happiness and true ultimate goal of this life.
Plato divine through contemplation happiness.
The Stoics : perfect detachment and abandonment to divine providence.

As soon as we think about it, you realize that there is not so many methods to get the peace of mind. What disturbs the peace is suffering, what causes suffering is the disagreement between our desires and reality. There are three ways, in theory, to remove this discrepancy : either change reality so that it matches our desires, or eliminate our desires, and finally transform them so that they fit with reality.

The first method is obviously impossible, at least in humans. We do not change reality. At most we can, through orgiastic dances, by drugs, put us in such a physical and mental state that we imagine the real other than it is. Antiquity knew the orgies of Dionysus ( Euripides Bacchae ) or the Great Mother. Modern known drugs. These methods, among other problems, that have to produce only short-lived effects. Wisdom differs from completely.

Since we can not change reality, so it remains only to change, or, in extreme cases, remove the desire. But completely remove the desire is, again, impossible. A being who no longer has any desire, it is a being who no longer has any form of life, it is a corpse. All we can do is to distinguish between wants and give satisfaction to those that can not be ignored without dying. What are these uncontrollable desires of the living ? "The flesh cries are not hungry, do not feel thirsty, do not be cold " ( Epicurus ). So we retain as necessary and natural that those who tend to the simple conservation of living desires. But nothing is easier than to satisfy those desires. A handful of beans, a little water, a rough cloak, and that the wise man says Epicurus, able to compete in bliss with Zeus himself. I named Epicurus. But as well, the gradual elimination of desires, this wisdom is to what might be called the "ideal minimum " is common to all the Hellenistic schools where the end sought is the independence of the wise : the cynical, the Epicureans, the Stoics. Further, it is found in the Desert Fathers and countless Christian ascetics. Moreover, it is one of the tenets of Eastern wisdom, and it is not without reason that Epicurus or Diogenes compared to the Buddha. In short, although little known today, it is a trend deeply rooted in the human soul : thousands of human beings have tried to turn off as much as possible all their desires, in the intimate persuasion that result in a well for them infinitely more precious, inner freedom, peace of mind, a state that, in the words of the ancients, like the surface of a perfectly smooth unwrinkled sea ( galènismos ). Universalis......

Plato

Few concepts have escaped the astute mind of Plato.
When the elements of a conscious creation lacked his brilliant intuition elaborated. Banquet and could very well fill a simplified model to describe human evolution. This dialogue imagine indeed, progress of love in humanity. From its original stage and primate, he climbs step by step until the ecstatic love. Born in the wild, it gradually detaches, finally, through culture, totally free.

In this major work man evolves gradually. He left the lover who loves a lover, as the wolf loves the lamb, for that authentic love that issues of suffering, desire and leads the soul to the divine banquet. In other words, by eliminating all our trends we become the purest expression of love. It is " without me" Buddhism, satori, understanding, enlightenment, illumination. This state of bliss is the nirvana, the bliss. In this state more home time, or the world or the beings that inhabit it.

Plato writes in the banquet to be two one becomes one....

Aristotle

Aristote, in the Nicomachean Ethics is based on the technical progress * to show human evolution towards good.

* Medicine, shipbuilding, strategy, economy.

These properties are as diverse as the corresponding activities - health medicine, for ship construction, the strategy for victory, wealth for the economy must therefore admit a hierarchy of techniques, each of which is subject to a technique. Highest, the end of which it serves. And the upholstery is subject to the equestrian art, itself subject to the strategy, which is subject to the policy ( in 1094 a 10-20, b 3).

The question then is what is the final end of man. The purpose for which other purposes are means. An end that is not itself a means to another end. This position of the problem presupposes a certain kind of response. Aristotle, like other Greek philosophers, assumes the unity of human purposes. It does not hold for a moment the possibility of a conflict between technical purposes (for example, get rich or win a war ) and moral ends. Or more than a conflict between moral purposes also *

* as the conflict had approached Sophocles' Antigone between filial piety and the service of the state.

The supreme hapiness

All men agree to call it happiness supreme good that is presupposed unity of human purposes. But as happiness is always ahead of ourselves, rather than possessed desired, it is impossible to describe and difficult to define.

Saint Augustine, compares the evolution of mankind life of an individual. Under the guidance of divine providence. Humanity passes Youth (characterized by the absence of legislation ) to manhood ( time law) to access the grace - the spiritual growth of mankind corresponding to the slow maturation of the mystical body of Christ.

The philosophy of history developed by Joachim of Fiore also comes to this conclusion : after the age of fear ( the Old Testament ) and the Faith ( New Testament ) the everlasting gospel will be the reign of love.

Pico della Mirandola, If you see a pure contemplative, forgetful of his body and removed in the sanctuary of the mind is not here a land animal or a celestial animal, it is a divine power coated flesh of men.

Roger Bacon, wanted, too, reaching a spiritual government of the world. But the political and social ideals of the Franciscan less important than the scientific ideal. It is the experience, he tells us in the Opus majus, which makes us discover the secrets of nature, thanks to experimental science that the mind rests in the light of truth. " Ignoring the science is neglected virtue. " Roger Bacon was also the first to have taken the view expressed by Seneca (Letter 64): "It is for me that raises, c ' for me it works [... ], But much remains to be done " to say that all ages contribute to the creation of science.

Spinoza's doctrine is as the route leading from error to truth, mental bondage to freedom, which is bliss and this route is both a process and an effort
As power, as life, as freedom, the substance is the beginning of philosophical reflection, that is to say, its principle and foundation, but it is also the end, understood as "sovereign right" because reflection active in the world as power can only be to its own completion as thoughtful and independent power, or if you prefer, as fitness for yourself and be as experienced as freedom and joy. at this level, that is to say, the heart of the " bliss ", which is unified by the joy of knowing perfection and act, the total substance becomes substantiality lived or substantial existence : it is the acquiescientia in ipso.

Descartes says that it is " only using life and ordinary conversations and refraining to meditate and study the things that exercise the imagination we learn to conceive the union of soul and body. " This means that the understanding of happiness lies outside of philosophy, and we can not achieve this unity by ceasing to philosophize.
We also find the positive in thinking A Count purpose, it is humanity, the Great Being, all beings, past, present and future that will contribute to improve the universal order.

Kant

The director of the Kantian explanation wire is attributed to movements of the whole story a sort of natural necessity to finalist gasoline. It is not nature that makes freedom, but the concept of freedom is realized when occurs in nature ( and we have seen that freedom is synonymous with bliss)..

Although Kant 's idea of ​​perpetual peace, a federation of free states and ecumenical rule or the law of man, is only a hypothesis, it becomes a binding way. For man it is a duty, a mandatory rule will impose. On the other hand, it's the same desire to achieve freedom in man. Should therefore be to prevent this process, a higher natural human evolution and also the desire for greater freedom to achieve strength.

Nature prepares the advent of freedom in generating a structure is an organization of the own social life symbolize, but to call the rule of reason.

The company is human nature, but a nature that creates and recreates constantly under its freedom must become an expression always purified.
True happiness is the agreement of the sensitive nature and the supersensible kind. This agreement is the idea of the highest good as " whole object of pure practical reason "

Kant's philosophy is a philosophy of law, which is immersed in nature and freedom flourishes in between.

Nature is found when art and culture reached its highest point of perfection. The completed art again becomes natural.

Culture becomes the true nature of man. Now men found immediately it once enjoyed in their natural existence. But now he discovers it is not only the immediate primitive sensation and feeling is the immediate autonomous will and reasonable conscience.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment even if choose the technical, moral and social development as a point of support for their confidence and their care all conclude a positive purpose of humanity, already a century before Descartes assumes that if we could to know the strength and actions of fire water air the stars of the heavens and all other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we could use the same way all the uses to which they are clean and so we make as master and possessors of nature and knowing that everything we know is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be seen, it may be exempt from an infinity of disease as the body and the spirit, and even perhaps the weakening of old age if they had enough knowledge of their cause, and all the remedies that nature has provided us.

Nietzsche, Teilhard de Chardin

Verily the earth will one day become a place of healing and already a new odor envelope, a wholesome odor and a new hope. Nietzsche

I teach you the superhuman wrote Nietzsche 's Zarathustra,
Man is something that must be overcome.
What did you do to overcome it ?
All beings so far have created something over them.
And you want to be the ebb of this great flood ?
And return to the beast rather than overcome man.

A phrase of Nietzsche seems subtly indicate the direction taken by this great humanity on its way to -human. She says : As the future of the property by evil!

Teilhard de Chardin. Gradually humanity releases this immense power is neutralized and lost in the excitement without talking about which Teilhard de Chardin

We say here that gradually releases the easy attainment of bliss, nirvana, this immense power, but we might as well say it leads to three after collecting a lively center of universal convergence states ( the omega center) dixit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, that is to say :

aggregation of each operation with respect to the individual; aggregation of the individual in relation to himself, finally aggregation of individuals in the human collective.

Aggregation of each operation with respect to the individual, that is to say, absolute consciousness of every act. And what prevents the individual to have a full awareness of his actions when he is ? The flight of his mind, either in the past (via remorse regret memories ) where the leak in the future ( anxiety project hope ) these two positions time draw mind off of this and therefore out of consciousness the act being realized outside also feel full of body doing.

Aggregation of the individual in relation to himself, that is to say, put in perfect coincidence of each act with the consciousness of its author. And what prevents man to act consistently as he actually suggests his conscience and moral (not bad faith ) is the power of his drives. And is not that compression of these that are struggling daily to develop the evolution of law, justice, prohibitions, and education ?

Aggregation of individuals in humanity, that is to say, not only the attainment of universal peace to others so universal love, all the others that make up humanity, but also individual total fusion cross made possible by this same experience at all, we call here bliss or nirvana, one experience that transcends the subjectivity therefore the diversity of interpretations.

The evolving universe converge and where God reveals himself first as the absolute future, through an ecstatic threshold. Teilhard announces ultra -human, that is to say, a breach of the community itself, a perspective Omega point, namely a harbinger focus of humanity, the Second Coming. universalis

While this state of bliss, this Omega point, we still seems distant, it is to him that humanity is heading.

Existentialism

Actually achieve the desired state of existentialism, namely that the being previously known to any determination of itself by itself, without any sign, concept, judgment, things that are thought about the existence, but not the existence of "would not it achieve bliss. Is not that what Jaspers calls " transcendental prédéterminisme " and Bergson immediate Data " abolish the distinction between subject and object.

Communion by this indeterminacy with the consciousness of the world access to this state or individual is block with everything and the school called " Me in the World" Jaspers
and again: It is not possible to formally specify the final point of the story, but it is possible to specify a purpose which is itself the condition for the highest human possibilities open to him the unity of humanity.
This unit can not be achieved by any rational generalization based on science. This, in effect, allows the agreement of men in terms of understanding, not their whole being (...)
For such a worthy relationship of man to be possible, there must be a space is available or no violence reign. One can imagine a united humanity to its conquest in the sense of an order in which the material conditions of life would be provided, and this is the goal that many men already devote their efforts.

2001


time

Il existe un état de repos en Dieu, de totale suspension de toute activité de l'esprit, dans lequel on ne peut plus tracer de plans, ni prendre de décisions et même faire quoi que ce soit, mais dans lequel, après avoir confié tout son avenir à la volonté divine, on s'abandonne à son propre destin.
Edith Stein