The Teleology of Nature Aristotle believed that the best way to understand why things are the way they are is to understand what purpose they were designed to serve. Aristotle’s emphasis on teleology implies that there is a reason for everything.

According to Aristotle, the material cause of a being is its physical properties or makeup. The formal cause is the structure or direction of a being. The efficient cause is the thing or agent, which actually brings it about. And the final cause is the ultimate purpose for its being.

Also, Aristotle’s theory contributes to our understanding of how organisms work: the function of parts and the relation to wholes. That’s what final and formal causes are about. Thus formal and final causes do a bit more work than merely saying that things do what they do because that’s the sort of thing they do.

Formal Cause – the defining characteristics of (e.g., shape) the thing. Final Cause – the purpose of the thing. Efficient Cause – the antecedent condition that brought the thing about.

[T3] There is a way in which things come to be as the outcome of luck: they come to be by virtue of accident, and luck is an accidental cause.

Heidegger strongly opposes the view that technology is “a means to an end” or “a human activity.” These two approaches, which Heidegger calls, respectively, the “instrumental” and “anthropological” definitions, are indeed “correct”, but do not go deep enough; as he says, they are not yet “true.” Unquestionably.

Heidegger remarks that the silversmith should not be seen merely as a causa efficiens, because this would be to separate him from all the other causes which are so inextricably linked together.

Aristotle’s four causes were the material cause, the forma cause, the efficient cause and the final cause. The Material Cause – this is the substance that something is made from. The Efficient Cause – this refers to the reason behind somethings existence. …

If nothing remains unchanged when something undergoes a change, then there would be no “thing” that we could say underwent the change. So there are three basic principles of nature: matter, form, and privation.

Aristotle says that change is the actualizing of a potentiality of the subject. That actualization is the composition of the form of the thing that comes to be with the subject of change. Another way to speak of change is to say that F comes to be F from what is not-F.

Aristotle believed that practical wisdom as the highest intellectual virtue. Phronesis is the complicated interactions between general (theory) and practical (judgement).

Kant does believe that, all other things being equal, it is better to be happy than to be miserable. And he wouldn’t think that looking out for our own happiness is immoral. Looking out for people’s happiness follows from their intrinsic and infinite value as autonomous, free, rational beings.

According to Socrates: – Happiness flows not from physical or external conditions, such as bodily pleasures or wealth and power, but from living a life that’s right for your soul, your deepest good.