Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs ed. by Richard F. Hassing (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 645 subject matter as belonging to the other discipline. Abelard's ethics, in particular, seems to straddle both areas, and Marenbon's work is generous in what it includes. Marenbon has produced a work which is at once a splendid review of Abelard's philosophy and a welcome introduction to Abelard's life and work. The author's writing is lucid and succinct, and his presentation flows extraordinarily well from chapter to chapter; his references to contemporary scholarship are quite helpful and complete, although given the rate at which Abelard studies are appearing, it is likely that this book's usefulness as a bibliographical tool will soon be fairly limited. It is not likely, however, that Marenbon's work will soon be superseded as a survey of Abelard's philosophy, and his reevaluation of Abelard's work will surely provoke further discussion for some time to come. But provoking discussion is what one would expect from a book about Peter Abelard. W. BECKET SOULE, 0.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs. Edited by RICHARD F. HASSING. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 30. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Pp. 282. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8132-0891-2. As the title suggests, this book addresses final causality in nature and in humans. Each contribution in some way fits the overall thesis of the editor, Richard Hassing, that human affairs are not reducible to any version of unified science; that is, human experience is irreducible and specific. In addition to the introduction and final chapter provided by the editor, which together comprise 38 percent of the text, four contributions focus on human beings, two on Aristotle's physics, two on the contemporary anthropic principle, and one short offering on terminology. Discussions of final causality, difficult at best, are frequently contentious because of misunderstandings about words. Francis Slade's clear, concise essay provides an insightful distinction between end and purpose: "Ends exist independently of our willing them.... Purposes take their origin from our willing them" (84). This reviewer employs the terminology Slade suggests, and laments the inconsistency of the contributors in doing likewise. The four chapters on final causality in humans are as follows.. Ernest Fortin provides a clear discussion of the supposed medieval origin of individual rights. 646 BOOK REVIEWS Richard Velkley addresses teleology in Kant. David White continues with a discussion of unity and form in Kant's notion of purpose. John Burbridge completes this focus on the moderns with Hegel. Unfortunately, this last contribution does the least to advance any sort of mutual understanding between the sciences and humanities, one of the editor's primary purposes. Burbridge draws on Hegel's Philosophy of Nature in making the following point: "But we do not simply comprehend nature and leave it there. We appropriate it and integrate it into our individual and cultural lives. We use it as technology; we exploit it to enhance the beauty of our cities; we adapt to it so that we can be genuinely free. The final end ofnature is to be incorporated into, and used by, human society" (161, emphasis added). Little if any comment moderates this passage, which serves only to play to a view of the natural world as opposed to and for the sake of the human world, a view fairly well discredited today. Of far greater interest, at least to this reviewer, are the essays on final causality in nature. William Wallace's discussion of nature as a final cause clarifies an ambiguous issue in Aristotle, who defines nature as "a principle and cause of motion and of rest in the thing to which it belongs primarily and essentially, and not merely accidentally" (Physics 192b21-23). This definition implies that both the efficient cause and, even more intractably, the final cause cannot be part of nature. However, Aristotle also asserts, as Wallace phrases it, that "the three causes (form, agent, and end) often amount to one" (63). Wallace goes on to discuss ways of modeling nature in terms of an Aristotelian causal analysis. He concludes by noting the limitations of such analysis. Nature in Aristotle is an...