Nature Acts for an End

66 (2002): 535-75 NATURE ACTS FORAN END ROBERT M. AUGROS St. Anselm College Manchester, New Hampshire THIS ARTICLE I shall explain and defend the principle that nature acts for an end. When Aristotle and St. Thomas assert this principle they are speaking of purposefulness apart from ~mcuau intervention, since it is obvious that man can employ just about any natural thing for his own purposes. As Aristotle puts it, "We use everything [in nature] as if it were there for our sake."1 Thus, the question is whether natural things of themselves have purposes. Other ways of stating the thesis are: Nature does nothing in vain; nature acts for what is better; nature does not fail in necessary things; apart from human influence purpose is a real cause in natural things. Or as Aristotle says in On the Parts of Animals, "Everything that nature makes is a means to an end."2 A sign of the great importance of the purposefulness of nature is that it has applications in several sciences. Whether nature acts for an end is important for natural science, since we know a thing most perfectly when we know its causes. Now purpose is not only a cause. It commands and illuminates the other kinds of cause: matter, form, and mover. Therefore, if purpose is found in natural things it will illuminate these things more than the other causes will in themselves. 1 Aristotle, Plrysic.s 2.2, in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works ofAristotle (New York: Random House, 1970), 240. All subsequent quotations of Aristotle are from this edition. 2 Aristotle, On the Parts ofAnimals 1.1 (McKeon, ed., 649). 535 536 ROBERT M. AUGROS It is also important for ethics. If nature acts for ends then man has a natural purpose. It belongs to ethics to define the purpose of human life but the basis for this definition must be found in natural philosophy. Also, if there were no wisdom in nature, it would be pointless to use nature as a measure of human acts, as in the natural moral law. If our ability to eat, or our sexual faculty, or our power of speech do not have natural purposes, then it will be impossible to abuse them, since abuse means using a thing in a way contrary to its natural purpose. The consequences for political science are equally serious. If human nature is ordered to a common good, then some sense the city will be "a creation of nature," as Aristotle contends.3 But if nature does not aim at the common good, then human beings will have no natural inclination to live together and any government wm have to be imposed artificiaHy on them, as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau maintain. It is important for the arts whether or not nature is wise and purposeful, especially those arts such as agriculture and medicine that build on nature and cooperate with it. Emphasizing the centrality of purpose, St. Thomas observes, "In those cases in which something is done for an end, as occurs in the realm of natural things, in moral matters and art, the most forceful demonstrations are derived from the final cause."4 There are consequences for metaphysics. Nature acting for an end can be used as a minor premise in a proof for God's existence, as in St. Thomas's fifth way. Further, if wisdom and goodness are found in nature, this can give us insight into the wisdom and goodness of God. If natural things do not act for an end, then no action or product of nature is the object of an innate inclination or tendency. If that is true, then there are no innate inclinations or tendencies. And if that is true, there is no nature. This is why Aristotle says that those who daim nature does not act for end entirely do 3 Aristotle, Politics 1.2 (McKeon, ed., 1129). • Aquinas, V Metaphys., lect. 3, in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 311 (no. 782). NATURE ACTS FOR AN END 537 away with nature and what exists by nature. For those things are natural which, by...