FINALITY, FINALISM. — By f. is understood the correspondence that a natural process or any human act has with a certain result toward which the agent tends: this correspondence requires that the phases of natural processes, like the moments of every event in human life, realize an overall process and therefore have their first motive in the end toward which they tend. For this reason the final cause is the first in actuality in a rational conception of nature as well as of the life of the spirit: f. therefore lies beyond both materialism and absolute idealism. In free agents, which directly determine the end of their own actions and the means of attaining it, f. is evident: every decision is made with a view to a known good, whether true or apparent, which one wishes to attain. The correspondence in concrete terms between means and end is therefore established by the intelligence of the individual agent, who then actualizes it through freedom: «De agentibus per intellectum non est dubium qui agant propter finem: agunt enim praecconcipientes in intellectu id quod per actionem consequuntur et ex tali praeconceptione agunt» (C. Gent., III, 2: Adhuc²). In nature, on the other hand, the correspondence is inherent as a necessary law of the process itself, impressed upon it by God, the author of nature, even though the process may be impeded or diverted in its completion by obstacles or interfering contrary forces (contingency). The f. of nature is attested by the «regularity» and constancy of phenomena, upon which the very possibility of the laws of science rests, and it also manifests itself to experience itself as nature’s usual tendency toward the good and the better: «Videmus autem in operibus naturne, vel semper vel frequentius quod melius est; sicut in plantis folia sic esse disposita ut producant fructus et partes animalium sic disponi ut animal salvari possit» (C. Gent., III, 3: Adhuc²). The constancy and positivity of the effect constitute proof of the existence
of f. in nature and establish the need for an Intelligence ordering the universe (5th way).
The progress of astrophysics in probing the complexity of stellar systems, and the most recent discoveries of microbiology and atomic physics, have made decisive contributions to the refutation of absolute mechanism, which denies f. (ancient atomism and the positivist science of the nineteenth century). The marvelous combinations of the movements of the stellar worlds are not the mechanical result of the movement of a machine, but an overall effect that points back to a first supreme ordering Mind. Likewise, the physics of atomic and subatomic structures, while revealing at its original core the «contingency» of physical phenomena defended by traditional metaphysics, has clarified the meaning of physical laws as laws of global (statistical) facts and hence their evident finalistic character.
In biology, research in experimental embryology has clarified that the development of living matter obeys a plan of structures to be constructed by virtue of specific and proper functions, so that when, whether through traumatic accidents or through experimental procedures, the normal conditions of either the germ or the embryo are altered, living matter possesses—within limits that are at times quite broad—self-regulatory powers that likewise permit the attainment of the final result (H. Spemann, H. Driesch, M. Hartmann). The same «laws of heredity» (Mendel), which regulate the preservation of the species, show the tendency of the germ to return to the mean values of the species whenever the genetic endowment has been altered: thus an evolution without norm or principle proves untenable.
The end is therefore the «fulfillment» (τέλος) toward which becoming tends in its development, but in the precise sense that this perfection or fulfillment is understood as immanent in the process itself, as the reason «for which» (τὸ οὐ ἔσκα; Paps., II, 2, 194 a 27) the agent acts and shapes matter according to a determinate form. F., almost entirely absent from primitive Greek philosophy, was expressly banished by Democritus, who explained the becoming of nature by the mechanical movement of atoms in the void and according to the diversity of their external shape (ibid., VIII, 9, 263 b 29 ff.). For Aristotle, on the other hand, the end constitutes the first and ultimate reason for all processes of the real, whether they are considered as movements of ascent or of descent of being (generation and corruption), because every being moves insofar as it «tends» toward the attainment of a certain structure or «form» that establishes it in its specificity: and this form or substantial nature constitutes the primary f. of being. Once nature is constituted in itself, there begins the process of attaining the perfection to which it is destined, or which such nature can attain according to its actual capacities: this kind of «way from behind,» by which natural beings, and especially living things, are driven forward to complete themselves, is what constitutes secondary f. The very notion of nature (φάσις) in Aristotle (ibid., II, 1, 192 b 21-23) as «the principle of motion and rest in the subject in which it is found, in itself and not accidentally» expresses the ontological priority and dominance of the end, whereas Democritus’s mechanism expresses the ontological dominance of the efficient cause. Since f. presupposes the organization of a plan of development, it is also understandable why, for Aristotle, the first Principle of the universe must be a supreme Intelligence (Mat., XII, 7, 1074 a 7 ff.) and why the end is absolutely the first of the causes: πρᾶτην αἰτίαν ἢν λέγαιεν ἕνακᾶ τινος (De part. anim., I, 1, 639 b 14).
Aristotelian theory, submerged by Stoic fatalism, had an immediate repercussion in Epicurus, who, in order to preserve individual personality and freedom, tempered the rigidity of Democritus’s atoms by introducing into the motion of atoms a «deviation» or «declination» (κλυνόμεν). Thus Epicurus substantially accepted the Aristotelian critique of atomism, even though he did not accept its metaphysics—namely, the position that every process of becoming derives its order from a «form» immanent in the whole (cf. De Anima, III, 12, 434 e 31)—a principle, moreover, that received its definitive clarification only in the Christian doctrine of creation, according to which all sensible and finite forms originate and have their foundation in the divine Intellect and receive being and motion according to the free disposition or governance of divine Providence, which is precisely defined by St. Thomas as: «Ratio (divina) ordinandorum in finem.» (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 22, a. 1).
The anti-Aristotelian philosophies of the Renaissance (Telesio, Campanella), Galilean mechanics, the empiricist philosophies (Fr. Bacone), and those of absolute necessity and universal contingency deny f.
Dalla f. che si manifesta nell'ordine della natura gli uomini di tutti i tempi arrivarono alla conoscenza dell'esistenza di Dio (5ª via di s. Tommaso: Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 2, a. 3). Con l'argomento della f. già Platone confutava gli atei del suo tempo affermando che per questo «tanto i Greci come i barbari credevano nella divinità» (Leg., 886 B. Cf. anche: Epinomis, 98: F - 98: B che sviluppa ampiamente questa dottrina). Il giovane Aristotele platonizzante resta fedele al maestro e nell'ordine del mondo vede la presenza degli dèi, come ci ha conservato Cicerone (De nat. deor., II, 37) dal De Philosophia (Aristotelis Fragmenta, ed. V. Rose, in Opera Aristotelis, V, Berlino 1870, p. 1476). Anche s. Tommaso afferma che la considerazione dell'ordine e della f. ch'esso comporta è la via più manifesta per salire a Dio ch'egli chiama per auctoritatem Dei (Lectura in Ev. Ioannis, Prologus; ed. Parm., t. X, p. 279a). In Aristotele del resto questa solidarietà, per così dire, fra la f. e l'esistenza della divinità era concepita in modo così intimo che tutto il mondo degli atri, che si rivela come un mirabile complesso di movimento è considerato «divino» (De coelo, I, 9, 279e 30 agg. Cf. M. P. Nilsson, The origin of belief among the Greeks in the Divinity of the heavenly Bodies, in The Harvard theological review, 33 [1940], p. 7).
La f. è perciò la garanzia e la sostanza dell'ordine del mondo nel suo complesso come nelle singole parti; ciò non proclama il nostro mondo come l'ottimo o che tutto ciò che comunque accade sia bene, bensì che una legge è immanente al mondo impressa da una Mente suprema e che le infrazioni alla legge costituiscono mere deviazioni saltuarie da cui la natura aborre e che spesso riesce a superare. Per questo la causalità non si oppone alla f. ma l'attua così come la f. domina e integra la causalità.