Teleology and Modernity PDF

Teleology and Modernity
The main and original contribution of this volume is to offer a discussion of

teleology through the prism of religion, philosophy and history. The goal is to
incorporate teleology within discussions across these three disciplines rather
than restrict it to one as is customarily the case. The chapters cover a wide
range of topics, from individual teleologies to collective ones; ideas put forward
by the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau and the Scottish philosopher
David Hume, by the Anglican theologian and founder of Methodism, John
Wesley, and the English naturalist Charles Darwin.
William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Director of the

Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History at Oxford Brookes
University.
Dan O’Brien is Reader in Philosophy and Subject Co-ordinator for Philosophy

at Oxford Brookes University.
Marius Turda is Professor in 20th Century Central and Eastern European

Biomedicine at Oxford Brookes University.
Routledge Approaches to History
The Work of History

Constructivism and a Politics of the Past
Kalle Pihlainen
History and Sociology in France

From Scientific History to the Durkheimian School
Robert Leroux
Universal History and the Making of the Global

Edited by Hall Bjørnstad, Helge Jordheim and Anne Régent-Susini
Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money

A Global History
Bin Yang
A Personalist Philosophy of History

Bennett Gilbert
Historical Parallels, Commemoration and Icons

Edited by Andreas Leutzsch
Historians Without Borders

New Studies in Multidisciplinary History
Edited by Lawrence Abrams and Kaleb Knoblauch
Leopold von Ranke

A Biography
Andreas D. Boldt

Edited by William Gibson, Dan O’Brien and Marius Turda
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Approaches-to-History/book-series/RSHISTHRY
Edited by William Gibson,

Dan O’Brien and Marius Turda
First published 2020
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Contents
List of contributors vii
Introduction 1
W I L LI AM G I B SO N, DAN O ’ B RI E N AND MARI US T UR DA
SECTION I
Religion 17
1 ‘We apply these tools to our morals’: eighteenth-century

freemasonry, a case study in teleology 19
RI C H ARD (RI C) B E RMAN
2 Teleologies and religion in the eighteenth century 40

W I L LI AM G I B SO N
3 John Wesley and the teleology of education 56

LI N DA A . RYA N
SECTION II
History 75
4 Teleology and race 77

M ARI U S T U RDA
5 Charles Darwin and the argument for design 94

DAV I D RE DVA LD SE N
6 Teleology and Jewish heretical religiosity: Nietzsche

and Rosenzweig 112
DAV I D O H A N A
vi Contents
SECTION III
Philosophy 129
7 Can the sciences do without final causes? 131

S T E P H E N B O ULTE R
8 Hume, teleology and the ‘science of man’ 147

L O R E N Z O GRE CO AND DAN O ’ B RI E N
9 What is the function of morality? 165

M A RK CAI N
10 Is intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous? 185

J O H A N D E SME D T AND HE LE N D E CRUZ
Index 204
Contributors
Richard (Ric) Berman has been a Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes Uni-
versity since 2013 and was previously a Senior Visiting Researcher at the
Modern European History Research Centre at Oxford University. He holds
a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge University, a doctorate in
history from the University of Exeter and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical
Society. Ric is the author of numerous academic papers and books focusing
on eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century freemasonry within its
social and political context. They include The Foundations of Modern Freema-
sonry, a study of the political, religious and philosophical influences in play;
Schism, an analysis of how social and economic factors impacted freemason-
ry’s development in England and North America; and Espionage, Diplomacy
and the Lodge.
Stephen Boulter is Reader in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. His
main research interests are in metaphilosophy, metaphysics, metaethics, the
philosophy of law and the scholastics. His current work focuses on the ethi-
cal implications and regulation of emerging technologies associated with
Blockchain and AI in general. He is author of The Rediscovery of Common
Sense Philosophy (2007), Metaphysics from a Biological Point of View (2013) and
Why Medieval Philosophy Matters (2019).
Mark Cain is Reader and Programme Lead for Philosophy at Oxford Brookes
University. His research interests are in the areas of philosophy of cognitive
science, philosophy of language and moral psychology. He is the author of
two books, namely Fodor: Language, Mind and Philosophy (2002) and The Phi-
losophy of Cognitive Science (2015). He is currently completing a book entitled
Innateness and Cognition that is to be published by Routledge.
Helen De Cruz is Danforth Chair in Philosophy at Saint Louis University.
She works in philosophy of religion, philosophy of cognitive science and
experimental philosophy. Her publications include Religious Disagreement
(2019), A Natural History of Natural Theology (with Johan De Smedt, 2015)
and the edited volume Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science and Experimental
Philosophy (with Ryan Nichols, 2016). She is currently principal investigator
viii Contributors
of the Templeton-funded project Evolution, Ethics, and Human Origins: A
Deep-Time Perspective on Human Morality (2017–2020), which provides a
naturalistic account of morality by looking at the archaeological evidence
for morally relevant behaviour in hominin evolution. She serves on the edi-
torial boards of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Religious Studies,
is the executive editor for the Journal of Analytic Theology and is a commit-
tee member for the American Philosophical Association’s Committee for
Public Philosophy.
Johan De Smedt is Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. His
areas of specialisation include philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of
religion and philosophy of the historical sciences. He is co-investigator of
the project Evolution, Ethics, and Human Origins. He has co-authored A Nat-
ural History of Natural Theology (with Helen De Cruz, 2015) and, forthcom-
ing, The Challenge of Evolution to Religion (with Helen De Cruz, Cambridge
University Press). He has published papers in journals such as Philosophical
Studies, Biology & Philosophy, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science and the
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Director of the Oxford
Centre for Methodism and Church History at Oxford Brookes University.
He has written widely on religion, politics and society in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. His most recent books are The Oxford Handbook
of the British Sermon, 1689–1900 (2012) and Sex and the Church in the Long
Eighteenth Century (2018). He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and
the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Lorenzo Greco is Tutor in Philosophy and Associate Member of the Faculty
of Philosophy of the University of Oxford. His areas of interest include eth-
ics, moral psychology, political philosophy and the philosophy of Hume.
He is the author of L’io morale: David Hume e l’etica contemporanea (Liguori).
His work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of the History of Phi-
losophy, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Utilitas and in various
collections.
Dan O’Brien is Reader in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. He is
the author and editor of seven books, including The Bloomsbury Companion
to Hume (with A. Bailey, 2015) and An Introduction to the Theory of Knowl-
edge (2nd edition, 2016). The latter has been translated into Korean and
Portuguese. He works on Hume, epistemology and the philosophy of reli-
gion, and has published in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, The Philosophical
Quarterly, Philosophia and the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. He
is currently writing a monograph for Routledge on Hume on Testimony. He
is founder of the Oxford Hume Forum and epistemology editor for The
Philosophers’ Magazine.
David Ohana is Professor of Modern European History at the Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev, Israel. He has been affiliated with the Hebrew
Contributors ix
University, Jerusalem, Israel, the Paris-Sorbonne, Harvard University and the
University of California at Berkeley. He specialises in comparative national
mythologies. His recent publications include Nihilist Order: The Intellectual
Roots of Totalitarianism (2016); The Origins of Israeli Mythology: Neither Canaan-
ites Nor Crusaders (2014) and The Dawn of Political Nihilism (2012).
David Redvaldsen is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social
Work at the University of Agder, Norway. He is the author of various arti-
cles on Darwinism and eugenics as well as the monograph The Labour Party
in Britain and Norway: Elections and the Pursuit of Power between the World Wars,
published by I.B. Tauris in 2011. In 2014, he was joint winner of the Emile
Lousse Essay Prize for the best article on parliament or a representative
assembly. More generally, he is an historian of Britain and Norway in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Linda A. Ryan is an independent scholar with an interest in early Method-
ism and, more specifically, eighteenth-century attitudes to children, edu-
cation and gender. Her book, John Wesley and the Education of Children;
Gender, Class and Piety, was published by Routledge in 2017. Her research
locates Wesley’s philosophy of education, informed as it was by contempo-
rary notions of social class and gender roles, in the context of revolutionary
changes in the understanding of childhood in eighteenth-century England.
She has also previously published in Wesley and Methodist Studies and The
Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture.
Marius Turda is Professor of Biomedicine and Director of the Centre for
Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University. His recent publications
include Science and Ethnicity II: Biopolitics and Eugenics in Romania, 1920–1944
(2019), Religion, Evolution and Heredity (2018), Historicizing Race (with Maria
Sophia Quine, 2018; Romanian translation 2019), and The History of Eugenics
in East-Central Europe: Texts and Commentaries, 1900–1945 (2016, 2018). He
is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Galton Institute.
Introduction
William Gibson, Dan O’Brien and Marius Turda
The foundation for this volume originates in two workshops organised by

the Centre for Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University, the Oxford
Centre for Methodism and Church History and the Oxford Hume Forum.
These were devoted to the exploration of the relationship between science, his-
tory, religion and philosophy. Thus, the main and original contribution of this
volume is to offer a discussion of teleology through the prism of religion, phi-
losophy and history. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, from individual
teleologies to collective ones; ideas put forward by the French aristocrat Arthur
de Gobineau and philosophers David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, by the
Anglican priest John Neville Figgis and the English naturalist Charles Dar-
win. During the workshops and the conversations that followed, we became
aware that teleology remains an important concept across disciplines, and across
historical periods. This volume therefore, draws attention to ambiguous and
contested relationships between teleology and modernity (broadly defined),
highlighting debates and questions which are rarely seen from the individual
vantage points of religion, history and philosophy.
Section I: religion
Examination and discussion of historical teleologies have not been fashion-
able of late. And this was probably the general view of Christians and non-
Christians for much of human history. Consequently, historical teleology
excluded considerable parts of the historical endeavour, and especially those
that have become increasingly fashionable. In discussions of teleology, there
is little or no room for economic historians or for historians of material cul-
ture and their associated progeny. Indeed, the discussion of teleology has been
largely confined to the borders, or perhaps the margins, between history and
philosophy.1 Yet there have been scholars who have addressed teleology. David
Womersley has argued against the use of teleological narratives about the nature
of history and its purpose, and suggested that there is a danger in seeing history
as separate from religion.2
One of the problems in the discussion of historical teleology is that the term
has a broad and a narrow meaning. For historians of religion, and perhaps also
2 William Gibson, Dan O’Brien and Marius Turda
for intellectual historians, the term has tended to be associated with a strict
translation of ‘telos’ – focusing on the idea of a goal, a completion or a deter-
mined end-point. So a teleological understanding of history is one in which an
end-point is assumed, and that end-point is often the salvation of the individual
or the end of the world. This is an eschatological and soteriological interpreta-
tion of teleology, and one which should not be easily dismissed. The broader
use of the term is more familiar and assumes a guiding purpose to history, or
a directional narrative.3 In such cases, historical narratives take on meaning
because they anticipate a pre-determined future. A classic example of this is the
Whig interpretation of history, in which events are selected to demonstrate a
progressive advance to parliamentary democracy and liberal social principles.
These two approaches to teleology often do not overlap or connect. Indeed,
the latter, with a tendency towards secularisation and the elimination of reli-
gion in human history, sometimes consciously distances itself from the former.
The latter is also often associated with a form of anachronism, what Quentin
Skinner has called ‘prolepsis’,4 that projects contemporary concerns and preoc-
cupations back onto the past – or sometimes propels from the past to the future.
But it is important for scholars to recognise that eschatological and soteriologi-
cal teleology, narrative teleology and prolepsis may have features in common
but they are very different things. An example of such crossover can be found
in the debate on American exceptionalism, and the ‘manifest destiny’ of the
United States. The concept is deeply rooted in eschatology and is profoundly
religious in origin; it has also exerted a powerful grasp on freighted narratives of
American historical development, and contains all those anachronistic present-
centred elements that are so familiar to historical films and fiction.
One of the assumptions about teleological historical writing is that it is a bad
thing. Herbert Butterfield was in no doubt that historians should try to shake
off and avoid Whig historicism – though, as John Walsh has often pointed out,
there were few who were not Whigs in 1688, however quickly they shed those
views.5 There can be few academic historians of the early modern and mod-
ern periods who do not warn students against the blight of Whiggism in their
writing and ideas. A recent collection of essays on historical teleology seems
similarly to regard teleology as a feature of historical writing to be deprecated.6
The problem with this is that scholars often end up trading one transgression
for another. Perhaps the best example of this is the historical treatment of the
Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is often presented as a replacement of pas-
sionate and inflamed ideas of superstition, magic and irrational religion with
the cool reason of logic, science and naturalism. Until recently, historians of
the Enlightenment were part of the secularisation agenda who saw the period
since the eighteenth century as an onward march to rationality and modernity.
But, of course, this simply replaces an eschatological teleology with a narra-
tive secular teleology. Only in the last two decades has a new field of historical
endeavour sought to point out that the so-called Enlightenment and religion
had some proponents in common, grew at the same time and were embraced
by the same societies in equal measure.7
Introduction 3
A similar trade in teleologies exists in the consideration of empire. Imperial-
ism has been treated as a scourge and a great evil. And in such features as slavery
and economic exploitation it clearly was. Imperialism is also seen as rooted in
the colonisation that followed the religious strife of the English Civil War in
the seventeenth century and was motivated often by the soteriological teleol-
ogy of missionaries and conversion. In the case of the eighteenth century – as
is suggested in Gibson’s essay – colonial expansion was a symptom of the ‘elect’
status of Britain as a second Israel, with a favoured place in Providence. But the
opponents of imperialism and empire, of whatever sort, tend to treat its disso-
lution and collapse as an alternative narrative teleology, not the negation of the
eschatological one. In such works, decolonisation and withdrawal from empire
have an inevitability: they are the telos to which all colonies ultimately progress.
The overthrow of empire came in America in 1776, and almost two centuries
later in Africa with the ‘Wind of Change’ of the 1950s. So historians of this
sort dismiss the teleology of empire building, but replace it with the teleology
of empire dissolution.
William Gibson’s chapter considers teleology from three perspectives in the
eighteenth century – the century in which the word ‘teleology’ was coined.
First, that of the individual; second, that of society; and finally, the perspective
of national identity. These are themes taken up by Berman and Ryan as well
as other writers in this collection. Individual teleology, for most Christians
in the period, meant the point at which their temporal lives ended and at
which they were judged before admission to eternal life. The historiography
of religion in the eighteenth century has undergone a dramatic revision in the
last three decades, revealing a much more pious and faith-focused society in
which the Church played a powerful role in political life and society. Conse-
quently, it is possible to see the ways in which people focused on the telos of
individual salvation. In wider society, there was a growing expectation at the
end of the seventeenth century that the biblical Millennium was approaching –
the thousand-year reign that would bring the world to an end. This collective
telos meant that attention was paid to teleological forms of religion such as
prophecy and miraculous events. In this environment, divine intervention was
a powerful force in the world. Last is the ‘national telos’ of Britain as a Protes-
tant ‘elect nation’, which was rooted in the narrative of the survival of Prot-
estantism despite numerous attempts to return England to Catholicism. This
potent narrative meant that by the middle of the eighteenth century there was
a sense of Britain as a ‘second Israel’ – a nation marked by the exceptionalism
of divine sanction. This presaged the justification of the spread of British values
in empire and colonisation. The survival of this ‘national telos’ was principally
in the drive for empire in the nineteenth century and in the absorption of the
idea of exceptionalism into the United States. This last telos has been one with
lasting effects for global politics and international relations from the nineteenth
century on.
Richard (Ric) Berman’s chapter considers the teleology of eighteenth-
century freemasonry whose thought was based on Enlightenment principles
and Newtonian science; indeed, almost half of the fellows of the Royal Soci-
ety were freemasons. English freemasonry promoted religious toleration, self-
improvement and spiritual self-awareness. Berman shows that teleology lay
behind the changes to masonic ritual introduced around 1720, the scientific and
other lectures given in lodges in the 1720s and 1730s and in the development of
European freemasonry and Swedish Rite. Berman shows how teleology influ-
enced the development of freemasonry from medieval guilds to its expansion
to North America, where teleology was similarly embraced. Freemasonic ritual
advocated a life ‘modelled by virtue and science’ in which an individual uses
freemasonry to contemplate his existence ‘through the intricate windings of this
mortal life’. Berman argues that English freemasonry was one of the engines
of the internationalisation of teleology because it was emulated internation-
ally. Berman shows that Freemasonry also provided a means of visualising and
defining an individual’s role and place in a changing society. It offered a quasi-
spiritual alternative to traditional theology that embraced the advance of science
and secularism by positing that an objective and rational interpretation of the
natural world offered a route to truth. The result was a teleological construct
that was both extrinsic and intrinsic and that redefined and evangelised the tra-
ditional formulation of personal responsibility and external authority.
Linda Ryan argues that John Wesley’s educational work, whether individual-
istic, familial or evangelical, was grounded in two fundamental and congruent
tenets. The first was his belief that the teleology of education was salvation, and
his Arminian conviction that salvation was available to all. Wesley’s educational
programme was far-reaching. He established schools, encouraged female edu-
cation, promoted learning for his preachers and encouraged education for the
poor. By applying a teleological argument to Wesley’s thinking, this essay dem-
onstrates that intrinsic in the teleology of Wesleyan education was individual
salvation; its extrinsic value centred on evangelism and a desire for universal
salvation. The nature of Wesleyan education, therefore, became a temporal
experience which prepared a child for their eventual spiritual end. In a century
in which lives were shorter and infant mortality higher, such principles were
powerful in society. Ryan’s chapter is a contribution to the idea of teleology as
one which was a lived experience for people in the eighteenth century, rather
than a remote and abstract idea.
Section II: history

Since its coinage in the eighteenth century by the German philosopher Chris-
tian Wolff, the term ‘teleology’ has been identified with the part of natural
philosophy that explains the purpose and the ends of things. In a teleologically
organised universe, every historical process exists for the sake of another his-
torical process, in mutually reinforcing ways. To some extent, Wolff ’s teleology
was a re-enactment of the Aristotelian notion of function or purpose in nature
(with the oft-quoted example that an acorn’s destiny is to grow into an oak
tree).8
Introduction 5
This classical version of teleology, summarised in the aphorism ‘nature does
nothing in vain’,9 describes the universe, including the human species, as fun-
damentally biological. Not only is each individual subservient to the species,
but also the species has but one purpose: to continue to exist. But as Hannah
Ginsborg argues,
The ‘new science’ of the seventeenth century, associated with such figures
as Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton, had constituted a sig-
nificant break from Aristotelian science, in which the paradigm of natural
explanation was teleological. The alternative explanatory paradigm offered
by the new science, was one by which all natural phenomena were to be
explained ‘mechanically,’ that is, without the assumption of guidance by
ends or purposes.10
As the forces of political modernity, most notably the American and the French
revolutions of the eighteenth century, put mounting pressure on the ancien
régime, the Newtonian strategy was called into question. Yet, as known – and as
will be discussed in Section III of this volume – scientists of the so-called Sci-
entific Revolution such as Isaac Newton rejected Aristotle’s conception of final
causality. While philosophers such as Francis Bacon and David Hume excised
teleology and any form of final causality from natural philosophy, biologists
and natural scientists remained committed to it. The leading biologist Ernst
Mayr did not exaggerate when he remarked, ‘Perhaps now other ideology
has influenced biology more profoundly than teleological thinking. In one
form or another it was the prevailing world view prior to Darwin.’11 Indeed,
the celebrated polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe believed in nature’s
directionality and that life and art exist in a symbiosis, understood in terms of
their purposive functions.12 To achieve perfection, whether through respect-
ing God’s laws or human rationality, meant accepting that there was a purpose
to life. Testifying to its resilience, Immanuel Kant engaged with teleology in
his ‘Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View’, noting,
‘All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their
natural end.’13 This was as much an anthropological as a moral transformation,
not of the individual but of the entire species. To overcome the brutal telos of
history, Kant encourages us to lead a goal-oriented life, pursuing good for its
own sake.14 As scholars have noted, the system of ethics that Kant put forward
relied on teleology,15 but there is another aspect of human history that attracted
him, namely the idea of perfectibility. This is a Kantian idea that shaped the
nineteenth-century attitude towards culture and civilization. Yet much of this
interpretation of progress and presupposed development remained decidedly
Eurocentric, informed by (his views concerning) the intellectual superiority
of the Europeans. Kant admitted to the existence of a hierarchy of races in his
1788 text ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’.16 And he also
opposed, as Arthur de Gobineau would do later, racial mixing. Couched in a
philosophical bouquet of arguments about ethics and morality, Kant’s belief in
the cultural progress of white people added more legitimacy to views expressed
by a host of European authors about their alleged superiority. As Robert Ber-
nasconi noted, ‘The fact that Kant did not solve the problem of how, within
the framework of a universal history, cosmopolitanism can be reconciled with a
view of White superiority meant that he left to posterity a dangerous legacy.’17
Kant loomed large over nineteenth-century debates concerning human nature
and the ‘race question’. The clash between traditional ideas of evolution and
change and the new currents of thought is revealed in the attitude to teleology
which accompanied the growth of modern thinking on race, both underlying
it and building upon it. Indeed, the relationship between teleology and moder-
nity developed at two different levels: the one, a commentary on and vindica-
tion of the Aristotelian view on becoming what you are meant to be; the other,
a more intellectual, Kantian (and later on, Hegelian) approach to the question
of historical destiny and universal history. In this context, then, Gobineau’s
idea about the decline of civilization played itself out, with an unbroken natu-
ral hierarchy of races paralleling the cultural gradations of their intellectual
achievements. By the time he published his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines
in 1853, such an interpretation was gaining momentum.
This discussion about teleology, and the study of nature and man which
informed it, must, therefore, be set against a background where all science was
intimately linked with the whole cosmic hierarchy as evidenced by the work
of William Paley and others. An intimation of order was fundamental to this
world view. Yet it was not simply a framework passively received from the
natural theologies of the eighteenth century, it was also one capable of dynamic
adjustment and rethinking. Religion, of course, continued to play an impor-
tant role in shaping the debate about human purpose and cultural achieve-
ment, moral advancement and telos. In many ways, the turning point in this
debate came in 1859 when Charles Darwin published The Origins of Species.
Darwinist evolutionary theory was increasingly accepted as a practical guide to
nature’s active and passive goals. The discussion about purpose and teleology
passed from philosophers such as Immanuel Kant – for whom teleology was
philosophical – to biologists for whom it was historical.
The topic of teleology is an important one to historians, as illustrated by
the recent volume edited by Henning Trüper, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam on Historical Teleologies in the Modern World. They focus on the
plurality of modern historicities and teleological patterns in historical thought
since the Enlightenment. However, the approach adopted in the three chapters
dealing with teleology and history included in this volume is different from the
one adopted in the aforementioned book. David Redvaldsen, David Ohana
and Marius Turda do not discuss the teleological view of history; rather, they
engage with the problem of teleology historically. They do so by looking at
three authors who, both separately and together, defined the discussion about
the purpose of human life and human society during the nineteenth century.
The first author, Arthur de Gobineau, is a diplomat who had enjoyed rec-
ognition in diplomatic circles and some degree of literary success; by con-
trast, the second author, Charles Darwin, is often referred to as the ‘father
Introduction 7
of modern evolution’, and finally, the third author, Friedrich Nietzsche, is a
classical philologist and arguably one of the most influential philosophers of
modern times. Between 1850 and 1900, these three authors put forward care-
fully crafted teleological arguments concerning human evolution, civilization
and destiny, heralding a radically different intellectual climate from the one of
the previous half-century and indeed of the century before that. Scientists and
philosophers such as Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Paley and
Kant helped redefine teleological concerns at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, but by the middle of the century, their progressive view of history,
of a path of human development that had a ‘visible direction’, came under
attack from various corners of the humanities and natural sciences. As shown
in these three chapters, the new interpretation of human evolution, culture and
civilization which materialized during the 1850s drew its sustenance from vari-
ous scientific disciplines and intellectual pursuits. These different approaches –
cultural (Gobineau), biological (Darwin) and philosophical (Nietzsche) – share
structural similarities, particularly regarding the problem of teleology and its
role in understanding human history.
How do Gobineau, Darwin and Nietzsche think in teleological terms about
race, evolution and modernity? Seeking new ways to explain the purpose of
human culture and civilization, while beleaguered by anxieties and uncertainty,
Gobineau viewed human history through the prism of race. His work, as Mar-
ius Turda suggests in his chapter, was characterised by fatalism and nihilism, not
surprisingly, perhaps, given Gobineau’s aristocratic pretensions and his aversion
to the growing democratisation of European politics. The historical process
that Gobineau persistently stigmatised was racial mixing. For him, racial mix-
ing was an end in itself, and on that assumption he built a view of the future
which was depressingly pessimistic.
Gobineau challenged the progressive version of universal history of his con-
temporaries and posited a teleology which was both provocative and idio-
syncratic. As ethnic mixing had been occurring for centuries, it was set to
continue, he believed, even more so in a period when the old social, cultural
and political barriers were cast aside, as had happened to France, in particular,
and Europe more broadly, after the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. Progress
was meaningless, he argued, unless the degeneration of the race was brought
to an end. Such a narrative leads us to conclude, more generally, that in one
significant domain, that of the history of race and racism, Gobineau’s teleo-
logical argument failed to attract many adherents. Even those who respected
his audacity and who shared his obsession with race departed from his fatalism
and from his refusal to accept the possibility of racial renewal and, in effect, the
historical durability of European civilization.
In fact, much of the additional support for criticising Gobineau’s view of
human history as involution, and as inexorably moving towards its decaying
finale, was adduced from the authoritative field of evolutionary science. Only
a few years after Gobineau’s two volumes of the Essai sur l’inégalité des races
humaines appeared in France, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in
1859. Can we find a teleological world view in Darwin’s theory? Scholars are
widely divided over how to understand Darwin’s teleological nihilism; that is
to say, that without a Creator, there is no meaning to the universe and that the
only purpose of human life is the preservation of the species.18
In his chapter, David Redvaldsen discusses Charles Darwin’s theory of evo-
lution and its teleological implications. He argues that it is important to retain
the concept of teleology when attempting to understand Darwin’s views on
selection and adaptation. As he notes, natural selection is purposeful in that
it demonstrates that only those organisms who are able to breed will survive
and thus pass on their characteristics to the next generation. This observation
echoes the remark made by biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who noted that
Darwinism proposed ‘a wider teleology’ different from that of his predecessors,
most notably Paley, and one which was ‘actually based upon the fundamental
proposition of evolution’.19 That Darwin’s contemporaries saw the teleological
dimension of his theory of natural selection is further explored by Redvaldsen,
who notes that Darwin’s revision of Paley’s teleology and his thoughts on design
emphasised aspects of adaptation that were seen by many religious authors to
confirm their Christian belief, in effect reinforcing rather than undermining
their scientific commitment to the theory of natural selection. Whilst averse to
the idea of design, Darwin recognised that evolution is not without a purpose
and its intention is to achieve a certain goal, that is, the survival of the species.
One important aspect of this interpretation of human evolution was a certain
fatalism about life and the individual. This theme of nihilism, which is echoed
by both Gobineau’s racial fatalism and Darwin’s emphasis on the primacy of
the species over the individual, returns with Friedrich Nietzsche. The German
philosopher shared Gobineau’s view of modern decline and of Europe’s lack of
racial vitality; more importantly, perhaps, around the late 1860s, Nietzsche had
wanted to write a study on the relationship of teleology and nature, and some
of his ideas were then integrated into The Birth of Tragedy, published 1872.
Although in The Gay Science, which came out a decade later, Nietzsche denies
the natural world any purpose apart from generating ‘chaos’, his form of philo-
sophical naturalism and his positions on teleology are more ambiguous than
that,20 particularly regarding various traditions of philosophical thought that
emerged in Germany and Central Europe at the beginning of the twentieth
century.21 As explored by David Ohana in his chapter on Nietzsche’s influence
on the German Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig, the battle cry ‘God is
dead!’ was not just heretical – it also announced a new beginning, and with it
a refashioning of teleology. It was, however, not for the benefit of the race (as
fantasised by Gobineau) or the species (as Darwin suggested), but for the indi-
vidual that a new purpose in life and a new destination in history was needed.
Section III: philosophy

A dramatic story is sometimes told about the demise of teleological thinking
in the early modern period. We shall see, though, that the real picture is some-
what different.
Introduction 9
Aristotle argued that a full explanation of the causal order of nature required
four kinds of causes. To understand why a certain event occurred or why a
certain thing exists, we first need to know its ‘material cause’, that is, the
material of which it is composed. Part of the explanation for why the billiard
ball bounced off the cushion involves a description of the ivory of the ball and
the rubber of the cushion, along with the form taken by these materials, for
example, the ball’s spherical shape (the ‘formal cause’). The ‘efficient cause’ is
the source of change in the billiard ball and in this case this is the billiards player
who strikes the cue ball with the intention or end of attempting to win the
game (the ‘final cause’). In this example, the end for which the ball moves is
plausibly identified with the intentions of an agent – the billiards player. How-
ever, Aristotle thinks final causes also explain occurrences in the natural world
where no such intelligent agents are involved. According to such natural tele-
ology, part of the essence of what it is to be an apple tree is for it to bear fruit,
specifically, apples (and thus for apple trees to persist). This is the end of an
apple tree, the sake for which it exists. A full account of the apple tree includes
this final cause, along with a description of the biological material and form of
which the tree is composed and of the efficient causes involved in the produc-
tion of its fruit and seeds. One might say that such ends pull nature forward,
rather than push it forward, as efficient causes are seen to do.
This account – the story goes – was overturned by the rise of the new
science and mechanical explanation. For mechanists such as Galileo, Hobbes
and Descartes, in order to make the world intelligible, all that is required is
mechanistic explanation involving the contact and impact of particles of matter –
interactions that are explicable in terms of just one kind of causation, that is,
efficient causation. Teleological thinking and final causes were banished.
However, the actual interplay of Aristotelianism, science and religion is much
more complex and nuanced than this story suggests. Aristotelianism was offi-
cial Church doctrine through the middle ages up to the early modern period,
filtered through a myriad of interpreters, most importantly Thomas Aquinas.
The scholastics were intensely focused on demonstrating how Aristotle’s logic
and metaphysics were compatible with Christianity. The rise of mechanism,
then, could be seen as leading to the downfall of Aristotelian explanation, and
therefore to the separation of science from the Church, the latter acquiescing in
outdated Aristotelian metaphysics, while the sciences move on. Such a division
may today be a familiar way of characterising the relation between religion and
science, but we must be careful not to project this sharp demarcation back into
this past, distorting the relationships that there were between religion and the
new science.
To begin to understand the period, one must distinguish between Aristote-
lian and theological notions of teleology. The new science was opposed to the
former, and its mechanistic laws described the behaviour of inert matter, that
devoid of Aristotelian essences or forms. The explanation for natural processes
lay not in the things themselves, but in the laws that describe their behaviour.
However, the beautiful and complex picture that mechanistic thinking revealed
was taken by most key thinkers of the period to be revelatory of divine work-
manship, and thus revelatory of teleology in a theological sense. Such teleology,
though, is that imposed from without, by the intentions and goals of an intel-
ligent agent, in this case God, rather than that lying within, or immanent in,
matter, as is the case with Aristotelianism. The words of Psalm 19 – ‘The heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy work’ – were
not antithetical to science, but consistent with developing mechanistic accounts
of nature. Robert Boyle’s Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things is
one of the most forthright and explicit presentations of this approach.22 Boyle
argues that the new science reveals the teleological order of nature and that it
therefore motivates divine worship. Kepler and Newton had a similar approach:
the study of what is now called ‘physics’ bringing us closer to knowledge of
God’s creation and purposes.23 Margaret Osler puts it thus: ‘It was only by
studying the intricate details of the creation that the natural philosopher could
come to appreciate the manner in which they were designed to achieve their
ends’ and Andrew Cunningham expresses such interdependence even more
forcefully: ‘No-one ever undertook the practice of natural philosophy without
having God in mind, and knowing that the study of God and God’s creation –
in a way different from that pursued by theology – was the point of the whole
exercise.’24 Theology and science were deeply entwined.
Notwithstanding these claims, and the more ragged picture they give of
the decline of teleological thinking, there has been, in the last century or so,
a re-emergence of teleology.25 This is in Darwinian form: the organs, cellular
structures and metabolism of animals and plants have an end or purpose of
contributing to the biological fitness and survival of those organisms. There
are parallels here with theological notions of teleology in which the organs and
parts of creatures have the end of contributing to the flourishing of the creature
that possesses them (and creatures themselves have the end of contributing to
the perfection of the universe). Darwinian teleology, though, is metaphysi-
cally light: there is no place for Aristotelian essences or for God and, in order
to distance itself from such disreputable notions, it is sometimes referred to as
‘teleonomy’.
It is upon this background that the philosophy essays in this volume attempt
to shed more light. Stephen Boulter’s chapter sets out to answer three specific
questions regarding so-called final causes. First, what is to be understood by
the scholastic claim that ‘all things act for an end’? Second, what reasons did
the scholastics provide for this claim? As we shall see in the contribution by
Lorenzo Greco and Dan O’Brien, David Hume is an enemy of teleology in
all its forms. Boulter, however, argues that the unwitting genius of Hume’s
account lies precisely in exposing the full implications of abandoning final
causation in the natural order. Appreciating why such problems do not arise
within the Aristotelian context is crucial to understanding precisely what final
causation was taken to be by the scholastics themselves, and what they meant,
and what they did not mean by the claim that ‘all things act for an end’. Third,
and perhaps most importantly, can the traditional scholastic view be defended
Introduction 11
today? Boulter’s thesis is that once answers to these questions have been set
out, the answer to the question that forms the title of this paper becomes
readily apparent, namely, the successful prosecution of the scientific project
presupposes final causes. Boulter outlines the Aristotelian account of causa-
tion in general, and efficient and final causation in particular, as understood by
the scholastics themselves, the essential point being to show how this account
avoids the problems associated with Hume while providing the framework
necessary for science. This does not constitute a knock-down argument against
Hume, but it does highlight the costs of endorsing his version of empiricism,
and suggests that scholastic ideas should not be dismissed. Last, Boulter consid-
ers what the scholastics themselves took to be problematic in final causation.
The problems that worried them are associated primarily with the role of final
causes in the explanation of human action – precisely where moderns are most
inclined to admit final causation without demure.
Lorenzo Greco and Dan O’Brien clarify and defend Hume’s rejection of
teleology. The subtitle to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature is ‘An Attempt
to Introduce an Experimental Method of Reasoning into Human Subjects’,
and they begin by showing how this methodology leads to Hume rejecting
teleological accounts of metaphysics, the lives of individuals and political states.
Their main focus, though, is on Hume’s account of human nature and moral-
ity, one that is divorced from all teleological elements. In the final section,
they speculate concerning the attitude Hume would take to contemporary
naturalistic attempts to incorporate teleology into accounts of human nature
in the form of evolution by natural selection. There is little doubt that Hume
would have accepted a Darwinian account of the evolution of man. The title
of his essay ‘Of the Reason of Animals’26 may have been shocking in the eigh-
teenth century, but not so today, where the image of God hypothesis has been
replaced by a deflationary Humean account of our cognitive powers, no dif-
ferent in kind from those of animals. However, we suggest that Hume would
have resisted teleological accounts of reasoning and of morality. Such forms of
thinking may have contributed to our success as a species and so, in one sense,
evolution will explain why we think in these ways (although this is something
that Mark Cain questions in his contribution to this volume), but, we argue,
both causal and moral reasoning is not for biological fitness and our consequent
evolutionary success. For Hume, the normativity constitutive of morality is
grounded in the perspective afforded by our ability to sympathize with our
fellows, and not by the biological fitness with which such thinking (arguably)
endows our species.
Mark Cain’s chapter focuses on such an evolutionary account of morality.
He starts from the premise that humans are unique amongst animals in being
moral agents; much of our behaviour is subject to moral evaluation, and we
routinely morally evaluate the behaviour of our fellows and ourselves. The
question he considers is whether morality can be understood in teleological
terms. A prominent line of thought in contemporary philosophy and cognitive
science offers an affirmative answer to this question: morality has a function,
namely that of facilitating co-operation by offering a solution to the problems
that free-riding and cheating pose to co-operative endeavours. Here the notion
of function is understood in natural rather than theological or scholastic terms.
More specifically, the function of morality is grounded in the process of evolu-
tion by natural selection. Such a view is held by Michael Tomasello, who has
developed a detailed and sophisticated version of the popular view that moral-
ity has a cooperative function that promises to dominate the literature for years
to come. Cain raises a number of objections to Tomasello’s account. In particu-
lar, he argues that moral judgment does not plausibly have the required impact
upon behaviour to accrue a cooperative function; typically, the demands of
morality agree with those of self-interest and where they clash it is usually the
demands of self-interest grounded in our strategic reasoning capacities that win
out. Moreover, given the human capacity to learn conventions and the power
that learned conventions have, there are far more effective means of ensuring
that we behave in a way that supports our cooperative endeavours.
Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz focus on the fact that humans have a
tendency to reason teleologically. This tendency is more pronounced under
time pressure, in people with little formal schooling and in patients with
Alzheimer’s. This has led some cognitive scientists of religion, notably Deborah
Kelemen, to call intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous, by which they
mean teleology is applied to domains where it is unwarranted. De Smedt and
De Cruz examine these claims using Kant’s idea of the transcendental illusion
in the Critique of Pure Reason and his views on the regulative function of teleo-
logical reasoning in the Critique of Judgment. They examine whether a Kantian
framework can help resolve the tension between the apparent promiscuity of
intuitive teleology and its role in human reasoning about biological organisms
and natural kinds.
Notes
1 J. R. Torre, ‘“An Inward Spring of Motion and Action”: The Teleology of Politi-
cal Economy and Moral Philosophy in the Age of the Anglo-American Enlighten-
ment,’ Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(3), 2010, pp. 646–71 and
M. Pittock, ‘History and the Teleology of Civility in the Scottish Enlightenment,’ in
S. Manning and P. France (eds.), Enlightenment and Emancipation, Bucknell Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press,
2006.
2 D. Womersley, ‘Against the Teleology of Technique,’ in P. Kewes (ed.), The Uses of His-
tory in Early Modern England, San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2006.
3 M. Mandelbaum, History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought, Bal-
timore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.
4 Q. Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,’ History and Theory,
8(1), 1969, pp. 3–53.
5 Of course, even this has its perversities with the appearance of some recent Tory histori-
cism presenting James II as a paragon of modernity and religious toleration.
6 H. Trüper, D. Chakrabarty and S. Subrahmanyam (eds.), Historical Teleologies in the Mod-
ern World, London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Introduction 13
7 W. Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly 1676–1761, Cambridge: James
Clarke & Co, 2004; L. Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, Prophecy and Religious Experience
in Early Eighteenth Century England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015; and
P. Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Method-
ism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
8 M. R. Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
9 P. Gottlieb and E. Sober, ‘Aristotle on “Nature Does Nothing in Vain”,’ HOPOS:
The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 7(2), 2017,
pp. 246–71.
10 H. Ginsborg, ‘Kant’s Biological Teleology and Its Philosophical Significance,’ in G. Bird
(ed.), A Companion to Kant, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, p. 455.
11 E. Mayr, ‘The Idea of Teleology,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 43(1), 1992, pp. 117–35,
117.
12 J. F. Cornell, ‘Faustian Phenomena: Teleology in Goethe’s Interpretation of Plants and
Animals,’ The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 15(5), 1990, pp. 481–92.
13 I. Kant, ‘Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,’ in J. Rundell
and S. Mennell (eds.), Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization, London and New
York: Routledge, 1998 [1784], pp. 39–47, 40.
14 See H. E. Allison, ‘Teleology and History in Kant: The Critical Foundations of Kant’s
Philosophy of History,’ in A. Oksenberg Rorty and J. Schmidt (eds.), Kant’s Idea for
a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim: A Critical Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009, pp. 24–45.
15 J. H. Zammito, ‘Teleology Then and Now: The Question of Kant’s Relevance for Con-
temporary Controversies Over Function in Biology,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science (Part C), 37(4), 2006, pp. 748–70. See also I. Goy and E. Watkins (eds.), Kant’s
Theory of Biology, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2014 and P. Guyer, ‘Ends
of Reason and Ends of Nature: The Place of Teleology in Kant’s Ethics,’ The Journal of
Value Inquiry, 36(2–3), 2002, pp. 161–86.
16 I. Kant, ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788),’ tr. G. Zöller, in
R. Louden and G. Zöller (eds.), Anthropology, History, and Education, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007, pp. 192–218.
17 R. Bernasconi, ‘Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism,’ in J. K. Ward and T. L. Lott
(eds.), Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, p. 160.
18 T. Sommers and A. Rosenberg, ‘Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaning-
lessness of Life,’ Biology and Philosophy, 18(5), 2003, pp. 653–68.
19 T. Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, London: Murray, 1873, p. 305. See also J. Beatty,
‘Teleology and the Relationship between Biology and the Physical Sciences in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,’ in F. Durham and R. Purrington (eds.), Some
Truer Method: Reflections on the Heritage of Newton, New York: Columbia University Press,
1990, pp. 113–44.
20 S. Gardner, ‘Nietzsche on Kant and Teleology in 1868: “Life Is Something Entirely
Dark . . .”,’ Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 62(11), 2019, pp. 23–48.
21 See, for example, S. A. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990, Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1994.
22 R. Boyle, Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, London: John Taylor,
1688. For discussion, see L. Carlin, ‘The Importance of Teleology to Boyle’s Natural
Philosophy,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19(4), 2011, pp. 665–82, and
T. Shanahan, ‘Teleological Reasoning in Boyle’s Disquisition about Final Causes,’ in M.
Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994,
pp. 177–92.
23 J. Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, tr. C. Wallis, Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1995 [first published 1617–1621] and I. Newton, Opticks, or a Treatise of the
Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light, London: William Innys, 1730.
24 M. Osler, ‘Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy,’ Osiris, 16,
2001, p. 163 and A. Cunningham, ‘How the Principia Got Its Name: Or, Taking Natural
Philosophy Seriously,’ History of Science, 24, 1991, p. 388.
25 F. J. Ayala, ‘Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology,’ Philosophy of Science,
37(1), 1970, pp. 1–15.
26 D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000, section 9 [first published 1772].
Bibliography
Allison, H. E., ‘Teleology and History in Kant: The Critical Foundations of Kant’s Philoso-
phy of History,’ in A. O. Rorty and J. Schmidt (eds.), Kant’s Idea for a Universal History
with a Cosmopolitan Aim: A Critical Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009,
pp. 24–45.
Aschheim, S. A., The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994.
Ayala, F. J., ‘Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology,’ Philosophy of Science, 37 (1),
1970, pp. 1–15.
Beatty, J., ‘Teleology and the Relationship between Biology and the Physical Sciences in
the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,’ in F. Durham and R. Purrington (eds.), Some
Truer Method: Reflections on the Heritage of Newton, New York: Columbia University Press,
1990, pp. 113–44.
Bernasconi, R., ‘Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism,’ in J. K. Ward and T. L. Lott
(eds.), Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 145–66.
Boyle, R., Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, London: John Taylor, 1688.
Carlin, L., ‘The Importance of Teleology to Boyle’s Natural Philosophy,’ British Journal for the
History of Philosophy, 19 (4), 2011, pp. 665–82.
Carlin, L., ‘Boyle’s Teleological Mechanism and the Myth of Immanent Teleology,’ Studies in
the History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (1), 2012, pp. 54–63.
Cornell, J. F., ‘Faustian Phenomena: Teleology in Goethe’s Interpretation of Plants and Ani-
mals,’ The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 15 (5), 1990, pp. 481–92.
Cunningham, A., ‘How the Principia Got Its Name: Or, Taking Natural Philosophy Seri-
ously,’ History of Science, 24, 1991, pp. 377–92.
Gardner, S., ‘Nietzsche on Kant and Teleology in 1868: “Life Is Something Entirely
Dark . . .”,’ Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 62 (11), 2019, pp. 23–48.
Gibson, W., Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly 1676–1761, Cambridge: James Clarke &
Co, 2004.
Ginsborg, H., ‘Kant’s Biological Teleology and Its Philosophical Significance,’ in G. Bird
(ed.), A Companion to Kant, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, pp. 455–69.
Gottlieb, P. and Sober, E., ‘Aristotle on “Nature Does Nothing in Vain”,’ HOPOS: The Jour-
nal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 7 (2), 2017, pp. 246–71.
Goy, I. and Watkins, E. (eds.), Kant’s Theory of Biology, Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 2014.
Guyer, P., ‘Ends of Reason and Ends of Nature: The Place of Teleology in Kant’s Ethics,’ The
Journal of Value Inquiry, 36 (2–3), 2002, pp. 161–86.
Hume, D., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000 [first published 1772].
Huxley, T., Critiques and Addresses, London: Murray, 1873.
Johnson, M. R., Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Introduction 15
Kant, I., ‘Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,’ in J. Rundell and
S. Mennell (eds.), Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization, London and New York:
Routledge, 1998, pp. 39–47.
Kant, I., ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788),’ tr. G. Zöller, in R.
Louden and G. Zöller (eds.), Anthropology, History, and Education, Cambridge: Cambridge
Kepler, J. Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, tr. C. Wallis, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,
1995 [first published 1617–21].
Laborie, L., Enlightening Enthusiasm, Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-
Century England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
Mack, P., Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Mandelbaum, M., History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought, Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.
Mayr, E., ‘The Idea of Teleology,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 43 (1), 1992, pp. 117–35.
Newton, I., Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light,
London: William Innys, 1730.
Osler, M., ‘Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy,’ Osiris, 16, 2001,
pp. 151–68.
Pittock, M., ‘History and the Teleology of Civility in the Scottish Enlightenment,’ in S. Man-
ning and P. France (eds.), Enlightenment and Emancipation, Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-
Century Literature and Culture, Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006.
Shanahan, T., ‘Teleological Reasoning in Boyle’s Disquisition about Final Causes,’ in M.
Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994,
pp. 177–92.
Skinner, Q., ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,’ History and Theory, 8 (1),
1969, pp. 3–53.
Sommers, T. and Rosenberg, A., ‘Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaningless-
ness of Life,’ Biology and Philosophy 18 (5), 2003, pp. 653–68.
Torre, J. R., ‘“An Inward Spring of Motion and Action”: The Teleology of Political Econ-
omy and Moral Philosophy in the Age of the Anglo-American Enlightenment,’ Early
American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8 (3), 2010, pp. 646–71.
Trüper, H., Chakrabarty, D. and Subrahmanyam, S. (eds.), Historical Teleologies in the Modern
World, London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Womersley, D., ‘Against the Teleology of Technique,’ in P. Kewes (ed.), The Uses of History in
Early Modern England, San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2006.
Zammito, J. H., ‘Teleology Then and Now: The Question of Kant’s Relevance for Con-
temporary Controversies Over Function in Biology,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science (Part C), 37 (4), 2006, pp. 748–70.
Section I
Religion
1 ‘We apply these tools to
our morals’
Eighteenth-century freemasonry,
a case study in teleology
Richard (Ric) Berman
Introduction
One is hesitant to apply the term ‘teleology’ to eighteenth-century freemasonry
given that freemasonry’s remoulding in the 1720s was driven principally by the
political fallout from the Glorious Revolution and the proximate threat to
Hanoverian England from the Jacobite supporters of James Stuart, the ‘king over
the water’. Yet it is the case that much of the phraseology and content of free-
masonry’s reworded liturgy was based intentionally and conceptually on self-
improvement, and incorporated Enlightenment principles. Eighteenth-century
freemasonry referenced the rational objectivity of Newtonian science as pros-
elytised by the Royal Society, some half of whose Fellows were freemasons, and
in particular by the Rev. Dr Jean Theophilus Desaguliers, a Fellow appointed at
Newton’s behest and the Royal Society’s demonstrator and curator.1
From the early 1720s, English qua Whig freemasonry centred on a handful
of tenets among which religious toleration was pre-eminent, with freemasonry
embracing deism and latitudinarianism, and accepting dissenters, Catholics and
Jews. Masonic ritual was modified to proselytise support for ‘the supreme leg-
islature’, that is, the then novel if not radical concept of a sovereign parliament,
independent judiciary and constitutional as opposed to absolute monarchy.
Freemasonry also evangelised the ideal of self-improvement through education
and spiritual self-awareness.
It is such features that support the exploration of a teleological analysis. And
this chapter considers three relevant elements in eighteenth-century freema-
sonry: first, the changes to English masonic ritual that were introduced in the early
1720s; second, the self-improving lectures given in masonic lodges from the
1720s through to the 1730s and beyond; and third, the adoption of elements of
medieval chivalry into European freemasonry. The last found its apogee in the
Swedish Rite, an exclusively Christian order that epitomised spiritual freemasonry
and was constructed using a combination of masonic and medieval ritual.
The medieval origins of modern freemasonry

Eighteenth-century English freemasonry had its roots in the mid-fourteenth cen-
tury when what had been primarily religious guilds morphed into embryonic
20 Richard (Ric) Berman
trades unions as workers sought to preserve the rise in real earnings driven by
an extreme labour shortage following the Black Death which had led to the
mortality of some 30–40% of the population. Despite adverse parliamentary
legislation and the judicial edicts that followed,2 it proved hard to regulate
away the laws of demand and supply. Tradesmen and artisans countered repres-
sive and wage-depressing legislation cleverly using charters designed to demon-
strate their loyalty to the establishment and its hierarchy, and arguing that their
wage demands were validated by time and tradition.
These Old Charges date from around 1400 and detail traditional histories of
stonemasonry that emphasise longevity and tradition while simultaneously jus-
tifying wage rates with reference to what supposedly had been ‘agreed’ centu-
ries before by St Alban and King Athelstan.3
The conflict between the divergent interests of capital and labour was a recur-
rent theme throughout the medieval period, especially when real wage rates
fell below expectations during periods of rampant inflation. The widespread
strikes and riots that occurred in the mid-sixteenth century marked an inflexion
point. In several cities, including Chester, Coventry and York, building workers
refused to work for the stipulated 6d per day, a rate that had been determined
half a century earlier. Although their leaders were jailed, protests continued and as
the prospect of widespread insurrection grew, Parliament was obliged to adopt a
more conciliatory approach. The outcome was the Statute of Artificers, passed
in 1563. The act created a new framework for wage regulation, with justices of
the peace for the first time given the authority to settle labour rates taking into
account local market conditions.4
Over the following decades, power became a function of the interplay between
local incorporated guilds, which regulated labour supply through apprenticeship
structures and ‘quality control’ mechanisms that excluded non-guild labour, and
the local municipalities that controlled the issuance of guild charters. Over time,
the two sides developed a symbiotic relationship. In return for granting a
guild the privileges of a local monopoly and a legal remit to influence the price
at which labour was made available,5 the town or city corporation received fees,
taxes, and a share of guild fines. It created an economic interdependency that
was cemented further by invitations to fraternal guild feasts, a social and politi-
cal synergy recognised at the time
when the master and wardens met in a lodge, if need be, the sheriff of the
county, or the mayor of the city, or alderman of the town, in which the
congregation is held.6
Membership of a guild became synonymous with membership of the local

elites and by the late seventeenth century many masonic lodges in England
contained a majority of gentlemen members who perpetuated their influence
through invitations to friends and successive generations of family.7 Such lodges
became principally social clubs whose function was networking, drinking and
dining. In Lewis and Thacker’s words, the lodge provided a forum for ‘well-off
‘We apply these tools to our morals’ 21
employers, notably in the building trades’ and for the gentry.8 And although
operative lodges continued to exist, their influence diminished as certain trade
monopolies were outlawed under Charles II and additional restrictions placed
on City livery companies by James II.9 The move was in part a function of an
increasing disquiet at the guilds’ opposition to innovation and free trade which
saw them denigrated politically as constraints on economic development.
The Hanoverian succession

The years that followed the accession of George I instigated a step-change
within English freemasonry with the creation of a ‘grand lodge’ and ‘grand
officers’; the introduction of a federal governance structure; and the publica-
tion and dissemination in 1723 of a new set of Constitutions, which modified
substantially the medieval masonic regulations, oaths and charges that ‘gov-
erned’ local freemasonry.10
The most important aspect of the 1723 Constitutions was not the traditional
history which continued to place freemasonry within a historical landscape that
stretched back to Adam, ‘our first parent’; nor the regulations governing the
internal operations of the lodge and grand lodge. It was a new and radical set of
oaths or ‘charges’. These established fresh foundations for English freemasonry
that were embedded in contemporary Enlightenment values, and they initiated
a tectonic shift in organisational culture and philosophy. Equally important,
and a function of its desire to consolidate its growing authority, the new grand
lodge insisted that its tenets be applied across English freemasonry as a whole:
‘all the Tools used in [masonic] working [should be] approved by the Grand
Lodge’.11
The charges
The first charge – Concerning God and Religion – was to be freemasonry’s corner-
stone. It was a paean to religious tolerance and personal morality, and replaced
the medieval invocation to the Holy Trinity and past masonic declarations in
favour of Christian belief.12 As amended, the charge obliged freemasons only
to ‘obey the moral law’ within a new framework of ‘that religion in which all
men agree’.13 It was no longer necessary for a freemason to ‘be of the religion
of that country or nation’ where he resided but only to believe in God and be
a moral person – a ‘good man and true’.
The charge was not supportive of any specific religious denomination or
church. As written, it was a simple and powerful declaration of faith in a divine
being without a stated preference for any specific form of worship. The charge
was latitudinarian, if not deist, and was at the time a radical denial of doctrine and
a repudiation of ecclesiastical organisation:
A Mason is obliged . . . to obey the Moral Law, and if he rightly under-
stands the Art he will never be a stupid atheist nor an irreligious libertine.
Figure 1.1 Frontispiece

Source: 1723 Constitutions
Engraved by John Pine
But though in ancient times Masons were charged in every Country to be

of the Religion of that Country or Nation, whatever it was, yet ’tis now
thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which
all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves; that is, to
be good Men and true, or Men of Honour and Honesty, by whatever
Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry
becomes the Centre of Union, and the means of conciliating true Friend-
ship and Persons that must have remained at a perpetual Distance.14
The charge implicitly and explicitly gave backing to religious tolerance, not
least the right to hold to Protestant beliefs in a Catholic country. This had been
and remained a long-standing element of Huguenot philosophy and was simul-
taneously an Enlightenment sensibility shared by many Whigs.
At the same time, freemasonry openly embraced teleology on both a per-
sonal and a social level. Freemasons were enjoined to become ‘moral persons’
and ‘men of honour, purpose and integrity’, and freemasonry – ‘the Craft’ –
would be advanced as a mechanism through which personal differences could
be healed, becoming ‘the means of conciliating true Friendship’.
Desaguliers, the then deputy grand master and the probable author of the
charges, was one of the foremost advocates of such an approach.15 And his
views were shared by many others within his circle, including Martin Folkes,
a vice-president of the Royal Society and later its president.16 For such men, a
belief in God, ‘the All-wise and Almighty Architect of the Universe’,17 and in
Newtonian science, a world interpreted through rational observation, were not
in conflict. Indeed, they were one and the same:18
Natural Philosophy is that Science which gives the Reasons and Causes of
the Effects and Changes which naturally happens in Bodies. . . We ought
to call into question all such things as have an appearance of falsehood, that
by a new Examen we may be led to the Truth.19
Within a decade this teleological concept had become an integral part of

freemasonry:
As Masons we only pursue the universal Religion or the Religion of Nature.

This is the Cement which unites Men of the most different Principles in
one sacred Band and brings together those who were most distant from one
another.20
Replacing the medieval invocation to the Trinity and traditional obeisance to

the church had a disadvantage in that it provided the basis for later political and
religious attacks on freemasonry, including In Eminenti, the 1738 papal encycli-
cal.21 Although the papal bull acknowledged that freemasonry was interdenomi-
national, composed of ‘men of any religion or sect, satisfied with the appearance
of natural probity, [and] joined together, according to their laws and the statutes
laid down for them, by a strict and unbreakable bond’, private discussion in
societies where debate was circumscribed was not tolerated well. And, in addi-
tion, ‘if they were not doing evil they would not have so great a hatred of the
light’.22 Rome’s response was almost inevitable. As a latitudinarian and qua deist
organisation, freemasonry could – almost by definition – be viewed as seditious
and heretical, and thus undermining the temporal and spiritual authority of the
Catholic Church.
Regardless, the new English grand lodge combined a radical approach to
religion and a belief in a Divine Creator – the ‘Almighty Architect’, with Enlight-
enment science. For freemasons, ‘the essential part of religion [would be]
grounded upon immutable reason [and] religion may therefore be called the
Moral Law of all nations’.23 The doctrine was central to an intellectual and
philosophical approach that pursued a rational interpretation of the natural
world as a pathway to divine truth. Sympathetic contemporary texts, includ-
ing Long Livers, reflect a similar pantheistic approach. Dedicated to the free-
masons and to ‘Men excellent in all kinds of Sciences’, Long Livers proudly
proclaimed that ‘it is the Law of Nature which is the Law of God, for God is
Nature’.24
The second Masonic charge – Of the Civil Magistrate Supreme and subordinate –
addressed the sovereignty of a constitutional parliament, the validity of the
Hanoverian succession, and the real and imagined threats posed by the Catho-
lic Pretender, James Stuart, and his Jacobite supporters:25
A Mason is a peaceable Subject to the Civil Powers, wherever he resides

or works, and is never to be concerned in Plots and Conspiracies against
the Peace and Welfare of the Nation, nor to behave himself undutifully to
inferior magistrates . . . So that if a Brother should be a Rebel against the
State, he is not to be countenanced in his Rebellion, however he may be
pitied as an unhappy Man; and, if convicted of no other Crime, though
the loyal Brotherhood must and ought to disown his Rebellion, and give
no Umbrage or Ground of political Jealousy to the Government for the
time being; they cannot expel him from the Lodge, and his Relation to it
remains indefeasible.26
It was a radical proposition that a freemason could be ‘a rebel against the

state’ and although his rebellion would not be approved and his opinions may
be disowned by the brotherhood, such views alone would not provide ade-
quate grounds for expulsion ‘if convicted of no other crime’. The philosophi-
cal logic follows from the first charge, where freemasonry is positioned as the
means of conciliating true friendship among persons that would otherwise have
remained at a perpetual distance. Nevertheless, an obligation to be obedient
to the state was core to the new charges and ritual, and in his admission to
the lodge, each new member or ‘entered apprentice’ was enjoined to ‘behave
as a peaceable and dutiful Subject, conforming cheerfully to the Government
under which he lives’.27
At a more fundamental level, the second charge echoed the changes to the
English Constitution that followed the Glorious Revolution. Where absolute
allegiance to the crown – ‘to be a true liege man to the king’, a testament to
divine right, had been fundamental to the Old Charges, the 1723 Constitutions
stated instead that freemasons were subservient not to the king but to the
‘supreme legislature’ and the civil powers.
For Desaguliers and his circle at the helm of the new grand lodge, the defini-
tive political structure was not an absolute monarchy but that ‘which does most
nearly resemble the Natural Government of our System’.28
Freemasonry was to be supportive of a constitutional monarch allied to a
parliamentary government and an independent judiciary. It was an argument
and approach that Desaguliers would later express allegorically in a poem, The
Newtonian System of the World:
The Primaries lead their Satellites,

Who guided, not enslav’d, their Orbits run,
Attend their Chief, but still respect the Sun,
Salute him as they go, and his Dominion own.29
The implication was clear. Resistance to the crown could be justified where a
king was in breach of his Lockean moral contract with those he governed. It
was this argument which had provided the intellectual foundations for the Glo-
rious Revolution and the justification for replacing James II with William and
Mary. No longer would it be necessary to be a ‘true liegemen to the King of
England without any treason or falsehood’;30 freemasons would instead ‘attend’
and ‘respect’, but be ‘guided, not enslaved’.
The 1723 Constitutions mirrored mainstream Whig thinking. And it advanced
a position fundamentally different from that stated in the Old Charges which
required a pledge to report immediately any plot against the crown.31
The third Masonic charge – Of Lodges – emphasised that although member-
ship was open, Masonic Society remained select:
The persons admitted Members of a Lodge must be good and true Men,
free-born, and of mature and discreet Age, no Bondmen, no Women, no
immoral or scandalous men, but of good Report.
The sentiment was reinforced by the fourth charge – Of Masters, Wardens, Fel-
lows and Apprentices – which proffered a radical approach to preferment at a
time when rank and precedence were integral to polite society, and advance-
ment based rarely on other factors:
All preferment among Masons is grounded upon real Worth and personal
Merit only; that so the Lords may be well served, the Brethren not put to
Shame, nor the Royal Craft despised . . . no Master or Warden is chosen
by Seniority, but for his Merit.
The fifth Masonic charge – Of the Management of the Craft – continued the
long-standing practice of applying allegory to operative stone masons’ working
tools. This would remain a core component of freemasonry, with allegorical
explanations of the operative masons’ ‘working tools’ central to masonic lit-
urgy: ‘We apply these tools to our morals.’
In this sense, freemasonry adopted a teleological view of man as morally
perfectible. New entrants to the lodge – entered apprentices – were candidates
for enhancement whose moral worth could and would be elevated through
appropriate training and mental and moral discipline. Merit and meritocracy
were and are strongly teleological in concept, and both were used in that sense
throughout eighteenth-century masonic ritual, and that which followed.
Teleology in eighteenth-century masonic ritual

The various explanations of the masonic ‘working tools’ are a key component
in each of the three masonic degree ceremonies, the first of which, The Work-
ing Tools of an Entered Apprentice, contains multiple references to education as
the pivot on which self-improvement turns. A similar theme appears in and is
reinforced by the second, or ‘Fellow Craft’ degree ceremony. And in the third,
which reiterates that ‘we apply these tools to our morals’ with the intention of
attaining a ‘straight and undeviating line of conduct’.
The catechism begins with a statement concerning an ‘operative’ stonema-
son’s tools. It is given at the end of a ceremony concerned with the allegorical
‘birth’ of the candidate as he enters freemasonry:
The Working Tools of an Entered Apprentice are the twenty-four inch

gauge, the common gavel and chisel. The gauge is to measure our work,
the gavel to knock off all superfluous knobs and excrescences, and the
chisel to further smooth and prepare the stone and render it fit for the
hands of the more expert workman.
And it continues with an introduction of the allegorical functions of each work-

ing tool:
But as we are not all operative masons but rather free and speculative, we
apply these tools to our morals: the gauge represents the twenty-four hours
of the day, part to be spent in prayer, part in labour and refreshment, and
part in serving a friend or brother in time of need; the gavel represents the
force of conscience which should keep down all vain and unbecoming
thought; and the chisel points out the advantages of education by which
means alone we are rendered fit members of regularly organized society.32
A similar approach is taken in the second degree, whose subject is how life
should be lived masonically, that is, ‘with square conduct, level steps and upright
intentions’, ‘that we may live respected and die regretted’:
The Working Tools of a Fellowcraft are the square, the level and the plumb
rule. The square is to try and adjust rectangular corners of buildings and
assist in bringing rude matter into due form; the level to lay levels and
prove horizontals; the plumb rule to try and adjust uprights while fixing
them on their proper bases.
But as we are not all operative masons but rather free and accepted, or
speculative, we apply these tools to our morals: the square teaches moral-
ity, the level equality and the plumb rule justness and uprightness of life
and actions.
And in the third, which reflects that one’s conduct in life will be judged and
rewarded or punished on death – ‘when we are summoned from this sublunary
abode’:
The Working Tools of a Master Mason are the skirret, pencil and com-
passes . . .
But as we are not all operative masons but rather free and accepted, or
speculative, we apply these to our morals: the skirret points out that straight
and undeviating line of conduct laid down for our pursuit in the sacred law;
the pencil teaches us that our words and actions are observed and recorded
by the Almighty Architect; and the compasses remind us of His unerring
and impartial justice. Thus the working tools of a master mason teach us to
bear in mind and act according to the laws of our Divine Creator.
Education and entertainment – scientific and self-improving

lectures in the lodge
The second degree ceremony, that is, the fellow-craft degree, guides the
masonic candidate to ‘contemplate the intellectual faculty and to trace it from
its development, through the paths of heavenly science’, and alludes to the
seven liberal arts and sciences: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry,
music and astronomy.
The concept of self-improvement through education was driven both by
those at the centre of the grand lodge in London and by a number at its periph-
ery. Edward Oakley (d.1765), an architect, a warden at the Nag’s Head lodge in
Carmarthen, Wales’s leading lodge, and warden and later master of the Three
Compasses lodge in Silver Street London, offers one example.
Oakley argued that educational lectures should be made available to the
widest possible extent within the lodge. The text of his teleological discourse
at the Three Compasses tavern on 31 December 1728 was considered to be of
such importance that it was incorporated within Benjamin Creake’s 1731 edi-
tion of freemasonry’s Book of Constitutions, which suggests that his views were
popular and probably widely supported:
Those of the Brotherhood whose Genius is not adapted to Building, I

hope will be industrious to improve in, or at least to love, and encourage
some Part of the seven Liberal Sciences . . . it is necessary for the Improve-
ment of Members of a Lodge, that such Instruments and Books be pro-
vided, as be convenient and useful in the exercise, and for the Advancement
of this Divine Science of Masonry, and that proper Lectures be constantly
read in such of the Sciences, as shall be thought to be most agreeable to the
Society, and to the honour and Instruction of the Craft.33
Oakley’s desire to focus on the ‘intent and constitution of the sciences’ and
reduce the emphasis on ‘merry songs [and] loose diversions’ may not have been
shared by a majority of freemasons but it was nonetheless part of mainstream
thought. Reports on and advertisements for scientific lectures and demonstra-
tions, including those at the Royal Society, featured widely in the news and
classified sections of the London and provincial press, and rubbed shoulders
with numerous printers’ notices announcing the publication of educational
books, and academic, mathematical and scientific treatises.
Scientific lectures and demonstrations had become immensely popular. Larry
Stewart points to the connections between scientific education, finance and the
wealthy aristocrats and upper middling.34 The number of patrons attending
such events, and the high fees that the more eminent lecturers commanded,
underline their status and perceived value. Wigglesworth makes a similar point.35
Scientific lectures, many in a lodge environment, disseminated knowledge
across provincial England and continental Europe.36 And they served a political
purpose, emphasising the pre-eminence of Newtonian thought and, by exten-
sion, British scientific and political achievement.
As part of this process, science became bound up with freemasonry and with
cultural and commercial aspiration: ‘Knowledge is now become a fashionable
thing and philosophy is the science á la mode: hence, to cultivate this study, is
only to be in taste, and politeness is an inseparable consequence.’37
William Stukeley, a member of the Fountain Tavern lodge and a Fellow of
the Royal Society (FRS) who proposed at least seven freemasons for mem-
bership of the Royal Society, recorded similar sentiments in his journal: ‘By
this time [1720] courses of philosophical experiments with those of electricity
began to be frequent in several places in London, and travelled down into the
country to every great town in our island.’38
As Elliott and Daniels comment, freemasonry became quite rapidly the ‘most
widespread form of secular association in eighteenth-century England’.39 And
within 1730s London, at least a fifth and perhaps as many as a quarter of the
gentry, upper middling and professional classes became freemasons, some 3,000
to 4,000 men.40
For many of its new members, Desaguliers epitomised and was synonymous
with science qua Enlightenment freemasonry. Desaguliers had started public
and private lecturing in London in 1713, following the award of his MA from
Oxford, and by 1717 had become an established speaker. Desaguliers contin-
ued to lecture until the early 1740s, stopping only shortly before his death in
1744, with multiple courses of lectures and demonstrations that ran daily or
weekly for months at a time.41 An indication of his stature can be seen in the
fees he commanded, with one lecture series in Bath in May 1724 proving so
popular that he was able to charge three guineas per head, grossing Desaguli-
ers around 120 guineas per night, a vast sum and testament to the lectures’
perceived economic and social value,42 and the cost of the apparatus and scien-
tific machinery Desaguliers employed!43
Few masonic minute books survive from the 1720s and 1730s, but one which
does is that of the lodge at the King’s Arms Tavern in the Strand, whose mem-
bers were mainly middling professional men, with a leavening of landed gentry.
Under the de facto leadership of Martin Clare, its acting master and senior war-
den, a leading educator, author and another FRS,44 the lodge was renowned
for its lectures. These were given not only by Clare but also by members and
their guests, and centred on a range of subjects in which they were either prac-
titioners or hobbyists. The lodge offers a strong example of what Clare terms
‘useful and entertaining conversation’ designed to encourage an understanding
of ‘the grand design’.45 At least thirty-six lectures are recorded at the King’s
Arms lodge in the decade 1733–1743, including nine that explained new sci-
entific discoveries, inventions, techniques and apparatus; other lectures covered
art, architecture and mathematics.
Clare’s educational objectives within freemasonry were in line with those of
Desaguliers: using ‘experiments performed with accuracy and judgment’ to
create ‘principles . . . built on the strongest and most rational basis, that of
experiment and fact; which cannot but be acceptable to those, who admire
demonstration, and delight in truth’.46
Clare had a substantial influence on eighteenth-century education. His Soho
Academy had opened in 1717 and his textbook, Youth’s Introduction to Trade and
Business, published in 1720, ran to at least twelve editions through to 1791.47
Clare’s approach to education was summed up succinctly as a function of prac-
ticality: whereby his students might ‘be fitted for business’. The Academy
became one of London’s most popular and successful boarding schools, and
Clare’s emphasis on practical learning as well as the social graces set a pattern
for education with a syllabus that combined natural and experimental philoso-
phy, mathematics, geography and languages, with dancing, fencing, morality
and religion.
Clare’s Motion of Fluids, a collection of papers given as lectures in the lodge,
was financed mainly by the members of the King’s Arms, described by Clare
as ‘a set of gentlemen . . . so indulgent both to their matter and form as to
encourage their publication’.48 The book was dedicated to Lord Weymouth,
the master of the lodge and subsequently the grand master of the Grand Lodge
of England, and in line with his example its subscribers included other promi-
nent freemasons. In keeping with this precedent, the second and third editions
were dedicated respectively to Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington, and Henry
Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke, both well-known affluent freemasons.
Clare’s intellectual standing in masonic circles was underpinned by his Dis-
course, a teleological lecture given to the grand stewards’ lodge and subsequently
to the grand lodge itself. Its central message expressed what was regarded as the
core of eighteenth-century freemasonry, and it was celebrated for so doing:
The chief pleasure of society – viz., good conversation and the consequent
improvements – are rightly presumed . . . to be the principal motive of our
first entering into then propagating the Craft . . . We are intimately related
to those great and worthy spirits who have ever made it their business and
aim to improve themselves and inform mankind. Let us then copy their
example that we may also hope to attain a share in their praise.49
The combination of entertainment – ‘good conversation’ – education – and

‘the consequent improvements’ – encapsulated what was now a central tenet of
freemasonry. Its purpose was wholly teleological – ‘to improve . . . and inform
mankind’. And its efficacy was enhanced by a publicly lauded, highly fashion-
able milieu of dining, drinking and ‘ancient’ masonic ritual.50
The combination of Enlightenment and antiquarian mores, an opportu-
nity for self-improvement and financial betterment, and its open association
with the ruling elites, gave freemasonry a uniquely attractive set of aspirational
characteristics. And its desirability was not limited to England, Wales, Ireland
and Scotland. In continental Europe, freemasonry would be taken to a higher
level, positioned as a synthesis of fraternalism, social exclusivity, and arcane and
Enlightenment knowledge, all within a framework of faux medieval ritual and
chivalry.
Freemasonry in Europe
European freemasonry differed from its Anglo-Saxon counterpart in that it
embraced a more theatrical and spiritual format, albeit that it also incorpo-
rated elements of self-improving chivalric ritual. The European aristocracy’s
penchant for medieval chivalry and myth was exploited by Desaguliers, who
adapted his masonic deliveries accordingly. A letter to the Duke of Richmond
from Thomas Hill, the duke’s former tutor, then a member of his household,
explains how Desaguliers intended to alter the ritual at a forthcoming meeting
of the duke’s lodge at Aubigny to make it more appealing to an audience of
French nobility:
I have communicated to . . . Dr J Theophilus Desaguliers, your Grace’s

command relating to the brotherhood of Aubigny sur Nere . . . When I
mentioned the diploma he immediately asked me if I had not Amadis de
Gaula or some of the old Romances.51 I was something surprised at his
question, and begun to think as the house was tiled our brother had a mind
to crack a joke.52 But it turned out quite otherwise. He only wanted to
get a little of the vieux Gaulois in order to give his style the greater air of
antiquity and consequently make it more venerable to the new lodge . . .53
What the production will be you may expect to see soon.54
An oration given at Paris two years later in December 1736 by Andrew Michael
Ramsay55 – ‘Chevalier Ramsay’ – at the exiled Lord Derwentwater’s masonic
lodge,56 had much in common with Desaguliers’ approach. In his address,
Ramsay took the opportunity to embellish the Old Charges, combine them
with the new 1723 Constitutions, and extend the ‘traditional history’ to embrace
aristocratic continental mores.57
Ramsay intentionally exaggerated and embellished freemasonry’s lineage,
tracing it to Abraham and the Jewish patriarchs, and to ancient Egypt. But his
coup de théâtre was to place freemasonry directly within a medieval European
context, dating the origins of the modern version of freemasonry to the Cru-
sades, when ‘many princes, lords and citizens associated themselves and vowed
to restore the Temple of the Christians in the Holy Land, to employ themselves
in bringing back their architecture to its first institution’.58
Ramsay stated that the holy knight crusaders had ‘agreed upon several ancient
signs and symbolic words drawn from the well of religion in order to recognize
themselves amongst the heathen and Saracens’, and that ‘these signs and words
were only communicated to those who promised solemnly, even sometimes at
the foot of the altar, never to reveal them’. The masonic promise was thus a
‘bond to unite Christians of all nationalities in one confraternity’. And the
essence of Ramsay’s chivalric – ‘muscular’ – freemasonry was ‘after the example
set by the Israelites when they erected the second Temple who, whilst they
handled the trowel and mortar with one hand, in the other held the sword and
buckler’.59
In addition to extolling freemasonry’s medieval chivalric antecedents, Ram-
say argued that the nature of freemasonry was intrinsically teleological: that it
epitomised all that could be regarded as virtuous, namely, a sense of humanity,
good taste, fine wit, agreeable manners and a true appreciation of the fine arts,
science and religion. He offered an attractive and holistic form of freemasonry
that appealed to Europe’s elites and validated their sense of self-worth. At the
same time, Ramsay posited that ‘the interests of the Brotherhood are those of
mankind as a whole’, and that ‘the subjects of all kingdoms shall learn to cher-
ish one another without renouncing their own country’. In common with
Desaguliers, Ramsay positioned freemasonry as a movement that could unite
individuals ‘of all nations’ and actively proselytised it as such, albeit that his tar-
get audience was limited to the aristocracy and wealthy upper middling.
Paul Monod and others have argued that Ramsay’s 1736 oration ‘fired the
starting gun’ for the introduction of what are termed the higher Masonic
degrees, and the roll-out of complementary quasi-masonic orders across Europe.
This is partly true, although such higher degrees were already in use in Scot-
land and Ireland, frequently for fund-raising purposes. And one cannot ignore
continental European aristocracy’s enduring obsession with chivalric orders,
something that dated back at least six centuries. Among many examples are
the Knights Hospitallers formed in 1099, the Order of Saint Lazarus (1100),
the Knights Templars (1118) and the Teutonic Knights (1190). Certain degrees
and orders were especially select, among them the Order of the Golden Fleece,
founded in Bruges in 1430 by Philip III, Duke of Burgundy, and limited to
fifty knights plus the sovereign.
Intentionally or otherwise, Ramsay’s masonic appropriation of medieval
chivalry allowed him to push at an already open door. Partly as a consequence,
freemasonry was successful in attracting adherents among the nobility and in
court circles across Europe, most notably within the German states, Austria,
Hungary, Russia and Sweden, where it had been introduced from France in the
1730s and was later transformed by Charles XIII into the Swedish Rite, argu-
ably the zenith of Masonic spirituality and teleological self-discovery.
The Swedish Rite

The Swedish Rite was formalised in the late eighteenth century and has remained
virtually unchanged since that time. The ceremonies are based on a combi-
nation of Scottish and French masonic ritual, both of which have roots in
and similarities to English ritual, and elements of Rosicrucianism. But unlike
English (and American) ritual, Swedish Rite is an exclusively Christian order.
The rite contains ten principal degrees as compared to the three ‘blue’ degrees
of English freemasonry and the fourth Royal Arch or ‘red’ degree, which is
deemed to complement and ‘complete’ the first three degrees.60
The Swedish Rite begins with three St John’s or Craft degrees. It progresses
to a further two St Andrew’s or Scottish degrees,61 and then to five Chapter or
Templar degrees.62 Members of the Grand Council of Swedish Rite take an
eleventh degree, becoming Knight Commanders of the Red Cross.
The system is based on the concept of personal spiritual progression over
an extended period of time, often a decade or more. Advancement from a
St John’s lodge to a St Andrew’s lodge to Chapter is not automatic, and rather
than follow the English pattern of moving ‘up the line’ progressively via an
ascending order of offices within a lodge – from inner guard to junior deacon,
to senior deacon, junior warden, senior warden, and ultimately master of the
lodge, a candidate’s progress within Swedish Rite is associated with ascending
the degrees themselves.
The first five degrees are broadly similar to the first four in English freema-
sonry, but there are a number of important differences. The most fundamental
is that each degree has its own bespoke lodge room that sets a specific masonic
tone and throws into relief the moral and spiritual aspects of that degree. For-
mal court dress (now ‘white tie’), combined with a sword and scabbard, is worn
by all participants throughout each meeting.
From a teleological viewpoint, Swedish Rite epitomises an individual's spiri-
tual and moral advancement. However, since the degrees are not open and
secrecy is maintained conscientiously in order to preserve the emotional impact
for each participant, the following observations are generalised and limited to
the first degree alone.
The first-degree Swedish Rite ceremony is conducted within an ornate
lodge room configured to represent an open-roofed Egyptian or Greek temple.
The rite begins with the sun rising in the east and over the course of the cer-
emony it moves slowly across the open sky before setting in the west, at which
point the sun sets and the constellations come into view. Period eighteenth-
century music is played throughout the ceremony, which serves to enhance
the candidate’s emotional experience and encourage and augment personal
reflection.
In Swedish Rite, as in freemasonry as a whole, a candidate’s moral and spiri-
tual development is marked by and taught via a series of one-act morality plays,
with the allegorical aspects of the degree explained obliquely via lectures and
catechisms in which formal answers are given by the candidate to set ques-
tions. But in Swedish Rite, there is markedly greater drama and significantly
enhanced emotional investment.
The lighting, music and solemnity of the lodge room, the bearing of lodge
members, and the formality of the proceedings, are designed expressly to focus
the attention of the candidate on the intrinsic message of the degree ceremony,
prior to which the candidate will have been isolated in a separate room to
encourage spiritual introspection.
Transatlantic influences
Freemasonry’s teleological influence on revolutionary America was profound
and has been the subject of numerous journal articles and books. Following
America’s War of Independence, the masonic lodge became a preferred space
for those who wished to associate with the new nation’s post-war leaders, and
American freemasonry was perceived as a font of Enlightenment virtues, high
moral principles, and an organisation that could and would work for the benefit
of the community as a whole. The latter aspect was given tangible form at the
dedication of new public buildings and monuments from the Capitol Building in
Washington, where the foundation stone was laid by George Washington, the
nation’s first president, a freemason, in a masonic ceremony, to the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where General William Richardson Davie,
the grand master of freemasons in the state, a war hero, and a national and state
politician, presided over another masonic ceremony.
Freemasonry flourished in post-war America with a membership drawn not
only from the elites but also the middling – farmers, merchants, store-keepers,
tavern-owners, lawyers and local politicians. In contrast to Europe, American
freemasonry embraced accessibility and inclusiveness, and ushered in a funda-
mental change to the organisation’s social demographic.
This section focuses on a single reference point: the Seal of the State of
Georgia, adopted in 1799. The Seal depicts three columns supporting an arch,
three steps, and a militiaman with a drawn sword. The same imagery is pres-
ent on the Seal of Georgia’s Supreme Court. The official explanation of the
allegory is that the arch represents the state’s constitution and the columns the
branches of government: legislative, guided by wisdom; judicial, guided by
justice; and executive, exercising moderation. The presence of a soldier points
to the defence of the state’s constitution against its enemies.
But the Seal also has masonic symbolism; indeed, it was designed by Daniel
Sturges, a freemason appointed Georgia’s surveyor general in 1797.63 In free-
masonry, the three columns represent the Sun, the Moon and the Master of the
lodge, respectively signifying wisdom, strength and beauty. They also allude to
three key items of lodge ‘furniture’: the square, the compasses, and the Bible.
The columns support an arch which represents the lodge itself and the universe
as a whole. And the soldier represents the Tyler, the lodge’s external ‘guard’,
whose sword is drawn to keep out cowans and intruders to freemasonry,64 and
thus keep sacrosanct the spiritual knowledge that freemasonry imparts:
Your admission among masons in a state of helpless indigence is an

emblematical representation of the entrance of all men on this their mortal
existence. It inculcates the useful lessons of natural equality and mutual
dependence; it instructs you in the active principles of universal benefi-
cence and charity to seek the solace of your own distress by extend-
ing relief and consolation to your fellow-creatures in the hour of their
affliction. Above all, it teaches you to bend with humility and resigna-
tion to the will of the Great Architect of the Universe; to dedicate your
heart thus purified from every baneful and malignant passion fitted only for
the reception of truth and wisdom to His glory and the welfare of your
fellow-mortals.
Proceeding onwards, still guiding your progress by the principles of
moral truth, you are led in the second degree to contemplate the intellectual fac-
ulty and to trace it from its development through the paths of heavenly science
even to the throne of God Himself. The secrets of Nature and the principles
of intellectual truth are then unveiled to your view. To your mind, thus
modelled by virtue and science, Nature, however, presents one more great
and useful lesson. She prepares you by contemplation for the closing hour
of existence and when by means of that contemplation she has conducted
you through the intricate windings of this mortal life she finally instructs
you how to die.65
Conclusion
Is it feasible to apply a teleological analysis to eighteenth-century freemasonry –
the answer, in short, is ‘yes’. The masonic degree ceremonies state as much.
Indeed, one can go further. As the largest and most influential of the eigh-
teenth century’s numerous fraternal clubs and societies, there is a strong argu-
ment that freemasonry had a powerful – if not seminal – role in reformulating
and disseminating many of that century’s more profound Enlightenment ideas
and attitudes. This was particularly true of the way in which freemasonry acted
upon the middling, by advocating and articulating a sense of personal moral
responsibility in a society that was altering irrevocably as a function of urban-
isation and the implementation of revolutionary changes to agriculture, trade
and industry.
In the vortex of rapid societal transformation, freemasonry provided a means
of visualising and defining an individual’s role and place within society, and a
key to explain that society. It offered a spiritual or quasi-spiritual alternative
to traditional theology, and it embraced the advance of science and secularism
by positing that the search for an objective and rational interpretation of the
natural world offered a viable alternate route to ‘truth’.
At the same time, freemasons and freemasonry supported the well-being and
development of society by providing a positive moral structure while concur-
rently advocating a quasi-democratic qua liberal constitutional political frame-
work. The result was a teleological construct that was simultaneously extrinsic
and intrinsic; a paradigm that redefined the traditional formulation of personal
responsibility, and qualified and reinterpreted external authority.
Notes
1 R. Berman, The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry, Brighton: Sussex, 2012, pp. 98–111
et al.
2 For example, Edward III’s Ordnance of Labourers (1349) and Statute of Labourers (1351).
3 See, for example, British Library, Regius MS c.1390; Royal MS. 17 A.1. Collectively,
such manuscripts are known as the Old Charges. They date from the 1390s.
4 See D. Woodward, ‘The Determination of Wage Rates in the Early Modern North
of England,’ Economic History Review, 47(1), 1994, pp. 22–43. See also D. Woodward,
‘The Background to the Statute of Artificers: The Genesis of Labour Policy, 1558–63,’
Economic History Review, 33(1), 1980, pp. 32–44; D. Woodward, ‘Wage Regulation in
Mid-Tudor York,’ The York Historian, 3, 1981, pp. 7–9; and D. Woodward, Men at Work:
Labourers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England, 1450–1750, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 169–207.
5 See M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, London: Routledge, 1946, pp. 89–90,
97 – ‘monopoly was of the essence of economic life in this epoch . . . since the municipal
authority had the right to make regulations as to who should trade and when they should
trade; it possessed a considerable power of turning the balance of trade in [its own]
favour’; and H. Swanson, ‘The Illusion of Economic Structure: Craft Guilds in Late
Medieval English Towns,’ Past & Present, 121, 1988, pp. 29–48, esp. pp. 30–1.
6 W. Preston, Illustrations of Masonry, London: J. Wilkie, 1796, p. 184.
7 Examples include those in Warrington, Chester and York.
8 C. P. Lewis and A. T. Thacker (eds.), A History of the County of Chester, London: Boydell
and Brewer, 2003, pp. 137–45.
9 M. Knights, ‘A City Revolution: The Remodelling of the London Livery Companies
in the 1680s,’ English Historical Review, 112(449), 1997, pp. 1141–78.
10 J. Anderson, The Constitutions of the Freemasons, London: John Sennex & John Hooke,
1723.
11 Anderson, The Constitutions of the Freemasons, p. 53.
12 For example, the William Watson MS at York (c.1530): ‘The first Charge is that you
be [a] true man to God, and the Holy Church’. See Quatuor Coronati Antigrapha, vol. 3,
1891, available at www.quatuorcoronati.com/research-resources/ (accessed 30 January
2019).
15 The Rev. Dr John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744), FRS, cleric, scientist and
Huguenot. Grand Master, 1719; Deputy Grand Master 1722, 1723, 1725. Regarded as
‘the best mechanic in Europe,’ he was one of Europe’s most highly regarded scientific
lecturers and waved the flag for Britain’s commercial and scientific standing. See Ber-
man, Foundations, esp. Chapter 2; and A. T. Carpenter, John Theophilus Desaguliers: A Natural
Philosopher, Engineer and Freemason in Newtonian England, London: Bloomsbury, 2011.
16 Martin Folkes (1690–1754), a member of the Bedford’s Head Tavern lodge in Covent
Garden.
17 J. T. Desaguliers, The Newtonian System of the World, London: A. Campbell, 1728, Dedi-
cation, pp. iii–iv.
18 See Berman, Foundations, esp. Chapters 2 and 6.
19 J. T. Desaguliers, Lectures in Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, London: n.p., 1717,
Foreword.
20 W. Smith, A Pocket Companion for Freemasons, London: E. Rider, 1735, pp. 43–5.
21 In Eminenti, Pope Clement XII, Papal Bull, 28 April 1738.
22 In Eminenti, Papal Bull of Pope Clement XII, 28 April 1738. See also J. Habermas, The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society,
tr. T. Burger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
23 H. Peters, ‘Sir Isaac Newton and the “Oldest Catholic Religion”,’ Ars Quatuor Coronatu-
rum [Hereafter AQC] Transactions, vol. 100, 1987, pp. 193–4.
24 Eugenius Philalethes (probably Robert Samber), translated from the French of Harcouët
de Longeville, Long Livers: A Curious History of Such Persons of Both Sexes Who
Have Liv’d Several Ages, and Grown Young Again , London: J. Holland, 1722, p. xvii.
25 Cf., R. Berman, Espionage, Diplomacy & the Lodge, Goring Heath: The Old Stables Press,
2017.
27 Smith, A Pocket Companion for Freemasons, pp. 43–5.
28 Desaguliers, The Newtonian System of the World, pp. iii–iv.
29 Desaguliers, The Newtonian System of the World, p. 27. My italics.
30 Watson MS. Cf., William Watson MS in AQC Antigrapha, 3.4, 1891. The MS was copied
in York in 1687. United Grand Lodge of England Library & Museum of Freemasonry,
London: BE 42 WAT.
31 See, for example, the discussion of Dumfries Lodge No. 4, MS (c.1700/10) in D. Steven-
son, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990, 2nd edn., pp. 137–65. See also, C. Révauger, ‘Anderson’s Free-
masonry: The True Daughter of the British Enlightenment,’ Cercles, 18, 2008, pp. 1–9.
32 Author’s italics.
33 J. Anderson, The Ancient Constitutions of the Free and Accepted Masons, London: B. Creake,
1731, pp. 25–34.
34 L. Stewart, ‘Public Lectures and Private Patronage in Newtonian England,’ Isis, 77(1),
1986, pp. 47–58. Also L. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
35 J. Wigglesworth, Selling Science in the Age of Newton: Advertising and the Commodisation of
Knowledge, Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.
36 See R. Porter, ‘Science, Provincial Culture and Public Opinion in Enlightenment
England,’ Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 3(1), 2008, pp. 20–46.
37 Porter, ‘Science, Provincial Culture and Public Opinion,’ p. 28. Quote from Benjamin
Martin.
38 W. Stukeley, The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, M. D., Durham: Andrews &
Co., 1882, vol. 2, p. 378.
39 P. Elliott and S. Daniels, ‘The “School of True, Useful and Universal Science?” Free-
masonry, Natural Philosophy and Scientific Culture in Eighteenth-Century England,’
British Journal for the History of Science, 39, 2006, pp. 207–29.
40 Berman, Foundations, esp. Chapters 3, 4 and 5.
41 Berman, Foundations, esp. Chapter 2 and 6. See, for example: Post Boy, 10 October
1721; Post Boy, 17 October 1721; Daily Courant, 20 October 1721; Daily Courant,
15 January 1722; Daily Courant, 11 April 1722; Daily Courant, 13 April 1722; Daily
Courant, 17 April 1722; Post Boy, 19 April 1722; Daily Courant, 18 October 1723; Daily
Post, 4 January 1724; et al.
42 British Journal, 9 May 1724.
43 Cf., D. Agnew, French Protestant Exiles, London: Reeves & Turner, 1871, p. 92, letter
from the Prussian Ambassador, 6 March 1741: ‘[Desaguliers’ planetarium] constructed
by Mr Graham, the most able and celebrated watchmaker [cost] more than one thousand
pounds sterling’.
44 Martin Clare (1688–1751). Grand Steward (1734), Junior Grand Warden (1735), Dep-
uty Grand Master (1741); founder and headmaster of the Soho Academy, Soho Square;
FRS (1735).
45 United Grand Lodge of England, Library & Museum of Freemasonry, London. The
Minute Book of the Old King’s Arms, No. 28, 6 August 1733: BE 166 (28) OLD fol.
46 M. Clare, Motion in Fluids, Natural and Artificial, London: Edward Symon, 1735.
47 F. H. W. Sheppard (gen. ed.), Survey of London: Portland Estate: Nos. 8 and 9 Soho Square:
The French Protestant Church, London: London County Council, 1966, vols. 33–34.
48 M. Clare, Youth’s Introduction to Trade and Business, London: J. & C. Rivington, 1720, n.p.
49 Clare’s Discourse was given to the Quarterly Communication of the grand lodge on 11 Decem-
ber 1735.
50 See, for example, S. Schaffer, Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in Eighteenth Century
England in History of Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, vol. 21, p. 2.
51 Amadis de Gaula is a sixteenth-century Spanish tale of knight errantry. It was the subject
of an opera by Handel in 1715: Amadigi di Gaula.
52 ‘Tyled’: the reference is to a closed and guarded masonic lodge.
53 Literally the ‘Old Gaul,’ probably ‘ancient or historical French’.
54 UGLE Library: Thomas Hill to Duke of Richmond, 23 August 1734: HC/8/F/3.
55 The date of the Oration was probably 26 or 27 December 1736. It was given on subse-
quent occasions and was printed and circulated widely.
56 Charles Radcliffe [sometimes written ‘Radclyffe’] (1693–1746), titular fifth Earl of Der-
wentwater. Radcliffe had fought in the 1715 Jacobite Rising; he was condemned to
death for treason but escaped from the Tower of London and fled to the continent.
57 See C. N. Batham, ‘Chevalier Ramsay: A New Appreciation,’ AQC, 81, 1968, pp. 280–315.
There are various versions of Ramsay’s Oration. Alain Bernheim suggests that he plagia-
rised material from English and French sources. See inter alia, Bernheim, Etudes Maçon-
niques ‘Ramsay and his Discours Revisited,’ available at www.freemasons-freemasonry.
com/bernheim_ramsay03.html#c (accessed 29 June 2017).
58 See, among many articles and books, J. Stuckey, ‘Templars and Masons: An Origin
Myth,’ in A. J. Andrea and A. Holt (eds.), Seven Myths of the Crusades, Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing, 2016, p. 116.
59 Quotations from D. Wright, Gould’s History of Freemasonry throughout the World, New
York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, vol. 3, pp. 13–14. For a more detailed exposition cf.
Batham, ‘Chevalier Ramsay.’
60 The degrees are (a) the St John’s or Craft degrees: Apprentice (I); Fellow Craft (II);
Master Mason (III); (b) the St Andrew’s or Scottish degrees: Apprentice-Companion of
St Andrew (IV–V); and Master of St Andrew (VI); and (c) the Chapter degrees: Very
Illustrious Brother, Knight of the East (VII); Most Illustrious Brother, Knight of the
West (VIII); Enlightened Brother of St John’s Lodge (IX); Very Enlightened Brother of
St Andrew’s Lodge (X). The XI degree is that of the Most Enlightened Brother, Knight
and Commodore with the Red Cross.
61 These degrees can be compared to the Royal Arch and Select Master in the York Rite
and to Scotch Master in the French Rite.
62 The Knight of the East, the seventh degree in Swedish Rite, depicts the erection of the
Second Temple following the release of the Jews from captivity in Babylon. The degree
is comparable to the Illustrious Order of the Red Cross in the York Rite and to the 15°
of Scottish Rite. A warden of a St John’s Lodge (1°–3°) requires this degree. The Knight
of the West, the eighth degree, is the first Templar order and is based on the Templar
legend, that the Templars fled to Scotland where they founded freemasonry. A master
of a St John’s Lodge must hold this degree. The ninth degree, Knight of the South, is
Hermetic with Rosicrucian influences. The Confident of St Andrew, the tenth degree,
is broadly comparable to the 29° of Scottish Rite.
63 F. W. Cadle, Georgia Land Surveying History and Law, Athens, GA: University of Georgia
Press, 1991, p. 180.
64 A cowan is a stonemason who has not undergone an apprenticeship and is therefore
unapproved.
65 Author’s italics.
Bibliography
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Old charges
British Library, London
- Harleian MS 2054, fo. 34
- The Matthew Cooke MS: Add. MS 23,198
- The Regius MS: Royal MS. 17 A.1
United Grand Lodge of England, Library & Museum of Freemasonry, London
- William Watson MS.: BE 42 WAT
Anderson, J., The Constitutions of the Freemasons, London: John Senex & John Hooke, 1723.
Anderson, J., The Ancient Constitutions of the Free and Accepted Masons, enlarged Second Edi-
tion, London: B. Creake, 1731.
Anderson, J., The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free
and Accepted Masons, London: Caesar Ward and Richard Chandler for Anderson, 1738.
Anderson, J., The Constitutions of the Ancient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted
Masons, revised and enlarged by John Entick, London: J. Scott, 1756.
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ster: J. Roberts, 1728.
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Preston, W., Illustrations of Freemasonry, London: G. & T. Wilkie, 1812.
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Both Sexes who have liv’d Several Ages, and Grown Young Again, London: J. Holland, 1722.
(translated from the French of Harcouët de Longeville).
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J. Scott, 1759.
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1977.
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2 Teleologies and religion
in the eighteenth century
William Gibson
The word ‘teleology’ was coined in English in the eighteenth century; its first
use was in 1742, when Phillip Henry Zollman wrote in the Philosophical Trans-
actions of the Royal Society, ‘Teleology is one of those Parts of Philosophy, in
which there has been but little Progress made.’1 Eleven years later, Chambers’s
Cyclopedia defined teleology as ‘the science of the final causes of things’. And it
added: ‘This is an ample and curious field of enquiry.’2 By 1798, the German
philosopher A.F.M. Willich had identified a distinction between scientific ideas
which he called ‘physical teleology’ and religious beliefs which he called ‘moral
teleology’.3 And a year later, Immanuel Kant wrote, ‘Teleology gives abundant
proofs of the [wisdom of the Author of the world] in experience.’4 This sug-
gests that the eighteenth century was an era in which teleology became an
important subject for scientific and philosophical discussion. But it was not an
idea that preoccupied the intellectual and philosophically inclined classes alone.
Teleology was a concept that was detectable in wider society. Few called it by
that name, but the idea of a goal or purpose, a moral design and end for society,
and for mankind as a whole, was one which was not new but was of increasing
influence in the eighteenth century. The ‘telos’, or goal, that is considered in
this chapter is the theological teleos of salvation. Such teleology in the eigh-
teenth century had three specific forms, two of which were familiar forms of
Christian theology and the third a form which was specific to the period.
The teleology of individual salvation

For eighteenth-century Christians, personal salvation was the goal of most lives
and much human endeavour. A good deal has been written about the Enlight-
enment and Secularisation that seems to contradict this. The eighteenth cen-
tury is often presented as a period in which Christianity and society at large
developed a more rational, ethical and natural character, born of scientific
advances, and shed the superstitious and supernatural ideas of earlier periods.
This, of course, is a simplistic and distorting narrative of the Enlightenment,
which assumes an inexorable decline of religion and its replacement by the rise
of science and reason. In fact, of course, most historians of the eighteenth cen-
tury now dismiss such unsophisticated deterministic narratives as unsustainable.
Teleologies and religion in the 18th century 41
In most recent accounts of Britain in the eighteenth century, the role of
religion has been restored. Consequently, it can be asserted that for most men
and women in the eighteenth century, faith and the teleos of death and salva-
tion were the stuff of life. But that was not always the case. Until the 1980s,
it was usual for historians to view religion in the eighteenth century through
the lens of Victorian churchmen, who tended to write ecclesiastical history
at that time. Their view of the preceding period was bleak.5 But this account
has largely been dispelled by three decades of concerted revision of religion
in the period,6 so that it is no longer tenable to dismiss the period as one in
which people did not take religion seriously, or in which matters of faith and
salvation were not a daily preoccupation for most people. Or to suggest that
the eighteenth-century Church was lethargic or ineffective. Certainly a con-
temporary observer of religious life in London in 1714 concluded that it was
a city filled with well-attended churches and people who took pains to attend
not just Sunday but also weekday services.7 Bishop Gilbert Burnet of Salis-
bury credited the 1689 Toleration Act, which permitted Trinitarian Protestant
Dissenters to worship legally, with injecting a degree of competition into the
‘market’ for religious observance and encouraging both Anglicans and Dis-
senters to improve their message to the people of the country. Thus, religious
toleration could intensify the faith of people.8 This is in stark contrast to some
accounts that regard religious toleration as a dilution of religion and an element
in secularisation.
Evidence for the assertion that the eighteenth century was an era of faith
and piety is widespread and forms a major strand in the religious history of the
period. This chapter will confine itself to a number of examples which suggest
that individual salvation was a common strand in popular thought. The end of
the seventeenth century had witnessed a decline in the Puritan idea of com-
munal sin, in which the sins of one person might affect the salvation of another
if they did not reprove or shun the sinner. Such collective ideas of sin faded fast
and individual responsibility for sin, and therefore for salvation, replaced it. This
process was a vital formative process between 1660 and 1720 and from it flowed
all sorts of social effects. What historians have identified as the eighteenth-century
trends of sociability and politeness were among these consequences. So were the
later evangelical movements, which emphasised Arminianism – which replaced
predestination with individual responsibility for sin and salvation.9
A key figure in the development of ideas which may be seen as teleological
in this individualistic way was Benjamin Hoadly.10 Hoadly taught that God’s
expectation of human behaviour was proportionate to each Christian’s capaci-
ties.11 It followed that God would not have given mankind desires without a
proportionate ability to enjoy them or restrain them. Furthermore, God did
not expect perfection of men and women; Hoadly preached that on earth,
‘The perfection required of man in a state of trial and probation cannot be a
state incapable of improvement.’12 So God himself came to be regarded as more
tolerant of human weakness and frailty, and this applied as much to matters of
faith and piety as to other forms of moral behaviour.
42 William Gibson
Hoadly’s sermons were extremely popular and sold well.13 One volume of
Hoadly’s sermons, which were popular both as individual sermons and as a
collected volume, was his Several Discourses concerning the Terms of Acceptance with
God. This contained a cycle of sermons preached in his London parish of St
Peter Poor, between 1702 and 1716. The most powerful sermon was Hoadly’s
discussion of ‘the example of the thief upon the cross’. The thief was a gross
sinner, who on the cross saw the truth of Christ’s messiahship and proclaimed
it. It was his only chance to profess it and his reward was admission to Heaven.
Hoadly’s explanation was that God’s expectation of faith and good works was
proportionate to the ability of the Christian to undertake them. Thus, a long-
standing Christian had many opportunities and many good works to his credit,
whereas the thief on the cross had no opportunity but the one he took. Both,
however, had inclined their hearts towards Christ, and this saved them. Hoadly
denied the latitude of the thief to his parishioners. He warned them that they
had the full opportunity to profess their faith through works and they should
not hope for a deathbed repentance to carry them to Heaven. This was teleol-
ogy writ large: the end of human society for Hoadly, and most people in the
period, was the life they led as a preparation for judgment and eternal salvation
or damnation.
Another example of the fierce focus on the religious purpose of life comes
from the work of the societies for the reformation of manners. These were a
series of local societies founded, with royal encouragement, after the Revolu-
tion of 1689, and which sought to reinvigorate religion by vigilante action
designed to suppress vice. If Hoadly’s sermons were the carrot, the work of
the societies for the reformation of manners was the stick.14 Members of the
societies formed groups to prosecute all sorts of moral misbehaviour includ-
ing swearing, adultery, Sabbath-breaking, prostitution and sodomy. Sometimes
members acted as agents provocateurs to incite and then prosecute the behaviour
that they sought to stamp out. The societies printed pro forma warrants for
constables to use, and prompted magistrates to prosecute where they some-
times turned a blind eye. The societies had the backing of the archbishop of
Canterbury (and were controversial as they brought together Dissenters and Angli-
cans). The societies also held annual meetings at which they presented lists of the
numbers of transgressors prosecuted (by the 1730s, these ran into the tens of
thousands) and congratulated themselves at having saved the souls of so many
of their fellow men and women.15 The goal of the societies was to enforce
moral behaviour, in part because of the social advantages of removing prostitu-
tion and other immorality from the streets, but principally as a means of saving
souls, both of those who behaved immorally and of those to whom it was a
temptation.
Other organisations also had a strong focus on the salvation of men and
women. One of the earliest pioneers of publishing and education in Eng-
land was the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK),
whose work was principally the printing and distribution of cheap or free cop-
ies of the bible, the prayer book and other devotional literature, and organising
free schools. The explicit purpose of the Society was to save the souls of those
who might be unable to hear the Christian message or who could not access
it because of illiteracy. The work of the Society was especially strong in areas
such as Wales where the infrastructure of schools and printing was limited.16
The eighteenth century is often thought of as a period in which Britain
became the first industrial nation and in which market economics of early capi-
talism developed. The poor was a pool of labour which could be exploited
for the ends of a growing industrial economy. At the same time, paupers were
subject to moral judgment: it was their fault that they had fallen into poverty
and destitution, and therefore they deserved less consideration than their fellow
men and women. The Poor Law, though it prevented death from starvation in
most cases, did not provide more than the barest of necessities. This was in part
because it was funded by local rate payers who did not want to see their hard-
earned money spent on the lazy and indigent. Yet even in this hardest environ-
ment, the needs of salvation were present. Most workhouses in Britain, and
many parishes, ensured that inmates and apprentices were supplied with copies
of the Bible, a Book of Common Prayer and a copy of the best-known manual
for a Christian life, The Whole Duty of Man. These were not cheap, nor were
the service of a chaplain, but despite every penny counting in the Poor Law
system, one thing counted more: the salvation of fellow men and women.17
A final example of the ways in which England in the eighteenth century
expressed its sense of teleology is in the evangelical movement, both inside the
Church of England and, in the case of later Methodism, beyond it. Evangeli-
cals, by definition, sought to draw peoples’ attention to the dangers their souls
were in and to redeem them by religious zeal and conversion. The power of
the evangelical movement was the demand its preachers made for men and
women to pay attention to their souls and need to be converted to a strong
faith in order to save them.18 If there was one consistent message in the preach-
ing of John Wesley and his followers it was that salvation by faith was what
would achieve eternal life.19 Conversion was itself a way-station on the road
to salvation, a down-payment on a greater teleology.20 Methodism was, ini-
tially at least, a movement among the poorest in society, which meant that the
most economically and socially disadvantaged were brought into direct contact
with faith and the idea of a purpose or end of human life. The response of
many early adherents was an ecstatic and emotional outpouring, perhaps this
was exactly because an otherwise impoverished life was treated as worthy and
purposeful.
The Church of England in the eighteenth century had a powerful influence
on all aspects of culture, and there were few cultural forms and experiences
which were not Anglican in ethos. Printing and books, music and poetry,
architecture and the built environment were aspects of the material culture of
the century in which Anglicanism was the dominant religious influence. At
assizes, festivals and holidays, and at births, marriages and deaths the Church
was present with a persistent voice reminding the population about the end
and purpose of life.21
44 William Gibson
Measuring the popular piety of any particular era is not a task that can be
accomplished. But it is possible to identify the key ingredients in the piety of an
era. W. M. Jacob’s conclusion was that ‘a considerable proportion of the popu-
lation of each parish was in church on Sundays’ and the Book of Common
Prayer was ‘embedded in people’s consciousness’.22 The model which devel-
oped in the nineteenth century was one in which the Church sought to supply
religious services in the teeth of growing ‘consumer resistance’. But this is not
what can be seen in the eighteenth century. There was, instead, a constant and
healthy demand for the Church and its provision. The most recent account of
church building in the period depicts a society in which the supply of church
buildings could not keep up with demand.23 Sermons were a key form of lay
engagement in religion and the demand for sermons both spoken and printed
was extraordinarily strong. Sermons outsold most other forms of literature,
and Britain in the eighteenth century can surely be regarded as having a domi-
nant sermonic culture.24 By the end of the century, speculative building proj-
ects and printing ventures were funded by the seemingly unquenchable desire
of people to hear and read strong and persuasive preaching.25 If demand is
a measure of the ‘market penetration’ of society, and the popular consensus
afforded to it, the Church in the eighteenth century for the most part achieved
its goal of focusing the attention of the people on the moment of personal telos,
their death and judgment.
The collective teleology of the apocalypse

In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a growing sense
that the end of the world, sp. in the Bible, was approaching. The millenarian
idea that society was on the threshold of a thousand-year age before the second
coming of Christ was strong in this period. One of the reasons for this was the
portents of world events. Among these was the threat from Islam, and what
seemed to be the providential defeat of the Ottoman Turks who had reached
the gates of Vienna in 1683. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1683 was
hailed by the Pope as a divine intervention, and became in popular think-
ing a turning point in the history of the world and mankind. To those who
looked for it, evidence of the work of Providence seemed to appear every-
where.26 Apocalyptic preaching and teaching spread extensively. W. Johnston’s
study Revelation Restored, The Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century Eng-
land, suggests that prophetic language was used to explain the political events
in England from 1660 to 1700. Johnson demonstrates that, far from having
disappeared from the intellectual landscape, apocalyptic ideas still held the
potential to animate opinions in the mainstream of political debate in the later
seventeenth century.27 Well into the eighteenth century, prophetic religion
suggested that the world would soon come to an end, and that individuals
and society as a whole should prepare for that end. Sects and religious groups
sprang up in the period which used prophecy as a means to try to discover the
time of the end of the world. The ‘French Prophets’ and the Philadelphian
Society were among these groups that stimulated men and women to consider
the end of the world.28
Evangelical groups included those who regarded the end of the world as
imminent. John Wesley may have been wary of prophecy, but he regarded the
Millennium as a certainty and looked forward to it.29 He also countenanced
aspects of apocalyptic thinking such as the supernatural, the existence of witches
and the direct intervention of Providence. Wesley even used the biblical system
of casting lots as a way of determining God’s mind in specific matters. Cal-
vinistic Methodism was strongly sympathetic to millenarianism, and there is
a case to make that adherents of Calvinistic evangelicalism were the strand of
continuity between prophetic and apocalyptic thought that stretched between
the start and the end of the eighteenth century.
For some theologians, it was not the Millennium that was prefigured but
the apocalypse itself: the end of the world. Arthur Williamson has shown that
some of the most creative minds and thinkers took the view that humanity
was close to the end of time.30 John Milton, Oliver Cromwell and the Fifth
Monarchy Men were among them, and so too were other figures of intellec-
tual significance, like Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza and Denis Diderot. Per-
haps most surprisingly, Williamson argues that apocalyptic expectations played
a central role during this period in creating popular culture – arguably a signal
achievement of the post-medieval West. Indeed, Williamson also claims that
the apocalypse was an element in popular thought well into the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
Such millenarian thinking became prevalent in the 1790s when the political
events in France seemed also to suggest that the Millennium was imminent.
In England, the prophetess Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) represented another
example of the popular idea that the Millennium was coming. Southcott sold
paper ‘seals of the Lord’ at prices varying from twelve shillings to a guinea. The
seals were purported to ensure the holder’s place among the 144,000 people
who she claimed would be elected to eternal life. By her death in 1814, she had
100,000 followers. Moreover, Southcott presented herself as a source of light
embattled by the forces of darkness.31 By her death, there was no doubt in
the public mind that Southcott was announcing the end of the world and the
imminence of the second coming of Christ.32 By the nineteenth century, mil-
lenarian thinking was an entrenched element in fringe religion in both Britain
and the United States.33 There is also evidence that millenarian thinking was
influencing politics and political radicalism in the early nineteenth century.34
The prospect of the end of the world or of the Millennium focused the
minds of churchmen on issues of guilt and responsibility for sin. Consequently,
all manner of events were the occasion for expressions of collective remorse
in the hope that God would not punish men and women for sinfulness and that
the apocalypse would not occur when they were in a state of sinfulness. The
uniquely damaging ‘Great Storm’ of 1703, which battered Britain in Novem-
ber and caused many hundred deaths, led to widespread expressions of national
sinfulness, which was thought to have occasioned the storm. Ofspring Blackall
46 William Gibson
was charged with leading the nation in prayer in response to it at St Paul’s
Cathedral.35 Wars were especially prone to attracting the attention of Church
and State because the Book of Revelation seemed to identify that wars were
harbingers of the Millennium. Consequently, the wars against the French in
the first decade of the eighteenth century were the occasion of repeated days of
prayer and fast for the war effort.36 These prayers and days of fast and of thanks-
giving were intended to ensure that the souls of the people were prepared and
ready for the end that was approaching. They also sought divine forgiveness so
that Britain as a nation would not be subject to the punishments meted out to
other nations for their collective sinfulness.
So in the eighteenth century, for many people, the world was on the brink
of a destruction predicted in the Bible and which would usher in the day of
judgment and the end of time. Such a view framed everyday decisions and
attitudes. It meant that ideas of a divine purpose pressed on Britons then in a
way that they do not today.
The national teleology of the new Israel

The third form of religious teleology evident in Britain in the eighteenth cen-
tury is one which was unique to the period, through it had echoes and conse-
quences into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That is the idea of Britain
as a ‘new Israel’, as a chosen or elect nation which had been set apart by God
for some special purpose, and for special treatment. The evidence for such
an extraordinary idea came from the post-Reformation Protestant history of
Britain. The survival of Protestantism, and the defeat of repeated attempts to
extinguish it, seemed, to scholars and laity alike, to confirm the idea of divine
protection. How else could the heroic martyrdom of Protestants under Bloody
Mary – kept alive by frequent reprinting of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs be explained?
How could Elizabeth I’s defeat of the Spanish Armada be understood? How
had the discovery of the gunpowder plot of 1605 happened? And what had
enabled the downfall of the Catholicising policies of Charles I, Charles II
and James II? The discovery and destruction of the Popish Plot of 1678? The
Protestant winds which had been so favourable to naval forces in 1588 and
1688? The peaceable succession of William and Mary in 1689 and of George
I in 1714? And the defeats of the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745? They
seemed to be a litany of providential interventions in history to protect and
defend Britain as a Protestant nation. And what could this mean, if not that
God had some special purpose for the nation? In Shakespeare’s Henry V, the
idea was inserted in the claim: ‘God fought for us’ at Agincourt.
At the same time, Catholic powers seemed to find their ambitions dashed.
Louis XIV’s aspirations to dominate Europe were humbled, as were those of
Spain, Portugal and the Dutch in both Europe and the New World.37 Later
in the century, Spanish and French colonial ventures collapsed in the face of
British naval supremacy. Once planted, the idea rooted itself in other examples
in the eighteenth century: the destruction wreaked by the Lisbon Earthquake
of 1755, but the relatively light effects of the London earthquake; the year of
‘three victories’ of 1759 which led to a burst of imperial ventures and acquisi-
tion in North America, India and the East; the growth of Britain’s industrial
economy which was unique in the period. By the second half of the eighteenth
century, British exceptionalism had become firmly rooted in the national con-
sciousness. It can perhaps be seen in popular form in the words of ‘Rule Bri-
tannia’ (1740), whose first two verses run:
1
When Britain first, at Heaven’s command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
‘Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
Britons never will be slaves.’
2
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
‘Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
Britons never will be slaves.’
Equally, the second verse of God Save the King, which was first sung in 1744,
suggested that God would have a hand in foreign military ventures:
O Lord our God arise,

Scatter his enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all.
As Linda Colley wrote:
Protestantism, broadly understood, provided the majority of Britons with

a framework for their lives. It shaped their interpretation of the past and
enabled them to make sense of the present. It helped them identify and
confront their enemies. It gave them confidence and even hope. It made it
easier for them to think of themselves as a people apart.38
The degree to which Protestantism influenced and formed British national
identity in this period is a complex topic and one which has preoccupied
48 William Gibson
historians.39 Nevertheless, for the purposes of this chapter, it is clear that for
many people, Britain’s Protestant identity was providential and divinely sanc-
tioned for a purpose. For some, that purpose was the advance and spreading of
Protestantism itself.
Moreover the extremely close association of the Church and State meant
that Protestantism, in the form of the Church of England, was effectively a
religious as well as a national identity. Certainly, Catholicism was regarded as
politically, morally and sexually dangerous and was, therefore, the subject of
considerable discrimination.40 The law imposed penalties on Catholics, and
popular opinion regarded it as dangerous and a subject of fear. When, in 1778,
there was an attempt to reduce the legal burdens on Catholics, it was relatively
easy for the population to be whipped into a destructive frenzy which led to
the Gordon Riots of June 1780. The unrest led to the deaths of over 200 men
and women and took four days for the army to quell.41 The defence of the
settled order in Church and State became one of the responsibilities of the
clergy and up and down the land; from 13,000 pulpits in England and Wales,
and also in Scotland, sermons preached the duty of obedience to the State in
the form of the Revolutionary settlement of 1689.42
From these potent messages emerged a sense of British exceptionalism that
could legitimise empire and colonial acquisition.43 The Society for the Propa-
gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was consciously created as a vehicle to
spread Anglicanism to the colonies and plantations in the Caribbean and North
America. Its internal narrative, evident in the sermons preached annually to the
meetings of the Society, was that it was divinely sanctioned to ensure that the
purest form of Christianity, in the form of Anglicanism, went to all parts of
the world, following the economic and military activities of the British state.44
What gave this train of thought a supercharged prominence was a theological
underpinning, which treated Britain as a successor to Israel and the Jews, as
enjoying elect status with God. Britons, both laymen and theologians, looked
at the similarities between the Jews in the Old Testament, encircled by enemies,
and their own position as facing Catholic France and Spain. Tony Claydon has
identified three elements in this sense of an ‘elect nation’: first, a uniqueness
which meant that no other nation could lay claim to the same special relation-
ship with God; second, a narrative of trial and struggles against enemies from
which divine deliverance ultimately rescued Britain; and third, an enhanced
sense of destiny and a role in God’s ultimate plan for the world.45
By the Peace of Paris of 1763, such a view, at least in the popular imagina-
tion, was becoming unassailable. How could Britain have obtained such enor-
mous territory and economic wealth, without divine sanction? And this was
made all the more potent by the awareness that Britain was geographically
relatively small. Even the loss of the North American colonies could not dent
the myth of exceptionalism. Explorers and adventurers were regarded as doing
God’s work, as much as their country’s, in bringing territory under British
rule. The death of Captain James Cook in the South Seas in 1779 was depicted
in Philip James de Loutherbourg’s print of ‘The Apotheosis of Captain Cook’
(1794) in which Cook was shown ascending to heaven, carried by Britannia
and a winged figure of Fame, from the scene of his death in Karakakooa Bay;
meanwhile Cook’s companions fired from small boats at the natives on the
shore while making their escape.46 Clearly Cook’s acquisitions of territory in
the South Seas was part of a divine plan and his death occasioned his return to
the God who had guided his hand.
To this mixture was added an evangelical view that indigenous peoples in Brit-
ain’s new colonies were morally inferior. John Wesley was especially shocked
by accounts from Captain Cook’s voyages of men and women freely having
sex ‘without any sense of shame’.47 This censorious eye led evangelicals to
invest in missionary activity to bring indigenous people to the ‘truth’ of Chris-
tianity. Missionary work was directly connected to the idea of a teleological
role for Britain as a ‘civilizing’ influence. This was Britain’s destiny, which arose
from her status as the ‘elect nation’. The London Missionary Society and the
Church Missionary Society, both founded in 1795, had as their explicit goals
the conversion of heathen peoples to Christianity. The Rev. George Burder
was one of those clergymen who embraced and proclaimed the role of Britain
as a ‘teacher of nations’.48 Paradoxically, the missionary groups and evangelicals
were, for the most part, in the vanguard of abolitionism, seeking to confer on
slaves the same rights of Britons achieved at the Revolution of 1688. By the
middle of the nineteenth century, Empire was evidence of God’s sanction,
and the ‘white man’s burden’ was one which could not be resisted or laid
down because it was ordained by God. This national teleos was one which,
injected into the Victorian age, became industrialised and indiscriminate. The
‘Scramble for Africa’ was at the same time an unashamed attempt to find new
markets and sources of raw materials, and to protect existing trade routes and
a means by which Britain’s imperial destiny could be achieved. The flag, trade
and the cross merged in a purpose that could not be controverted because it
came from God.
The final incarnation of the exceptionalism of Britain in the eighteenth cen-
tury was its absorption into the founding myths of the United States of America.
The claims that American exceptionalism can be dated to the early nineteenth-
century declaration of de Tocqueville underestimate the longevity of the idea.49
It owes more to British Protestant self-identity than to de Tocqueville. English
emigrants in the seventeenth century were already bringing Protestant excep-
tionalism to colonial North America.50 Puritans like John Winthrop argued
that America brought from England the seeds of a new nation under a new
covenant with God.51 The Founding Fathers of the United States of America
similarly saw in their new republic a nation which had learned the lessons of
the English experience of the eighteenth century and would apply it to their
own form of liberty. Some, like John Adams, explicitly acknowledged their
debt to the English Whig tradition of liberty and property born in 1688.52
It was from Britain that America embraced the idea of a mission among the
nations akin to that of Israel in the Bible. Daniel Dresibach has contested the
idea of America as a secular, Enlightenment invention, arguing that the new
50 William Gibson
republic was rooted in providential ideas of a Christian mission. The discourse
of the so-called Great Awakening raised the question of what was the purpose
of the ‘awakening’? As early as 1765, John Adams wrote in his diary that
there has been such a chain of extraordinary events in the discovery of this
country at first, in the peopling and planting of it afterwards, in the rear-
ing and nursing it to its present state, and that protection of it through the
present war, that no man can doubt, but Providence has some nobler end
to accomplish. 53
American exceptionalism reached its highest and most contested form in later
periods.54 This national teleology is multilayered, but assumes that the desti-
nation for any country is capitalism, democracy and the rule of the market
economy. Its application in the 1950s through the post-Second World War
settlement and Marshall Plan morphed into the globalisation of world econo-
mies and in the 1990s in a foreign policy which sought to make other nations
in simulacra of the USA.
For generations, men and women have found the idea of a teleos attractive.
If individuals, nations and civilization as a whole have a purpose and an end,
then human existence is not meaningless – or at least not meaningless in the
sense that atheists would suggest. A Christian world, as most Britons regarded
themselves as inhabiting in the eighteenth century, was one in which order and
purpose existed and in which they had both a place and a future beyond death.
It was a reassuring even, perhaps, an optimistic view. It was, of course, also a
comfort that a life that might be, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, ‘solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short’ could also be redeemed by a purpose and an end which
promised a future reward.
It was not, however, without its troubling aspects. A world in which the
current and future state of mankind was determined, and pre-determined, by
God was one in which human agency was circumscribed. The decline of Cal-
vinist ideas that there was an elect group of individuals who were ordained,
before the existence of the world and their own births, to be saved, gave way
to an Arminian view that all could be saved if they had sufficient faith. But
both positions limited the place of human agency in the history of the world.
Arminians placed the credit for salvation not on human endeavour but on
God’s grace. So the opportunities for men and women to effect change or
improvement in their lives and salvation were very narrow. Ultimately, God
intervened to determine the outcome of wars and conflict. He deposed tyrants
and installed benevolent rulers. He rescued the good and condemned the sin-
ner to damnation. Yet sometimes this was patently not the case. In such cases as
the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century and the tyranny of James II,
how did people navigate the restricted path between Providential intervention
and human action? This was not always clear.
Equally problematic was whether whole nations could be saved or elect.
If God had chosen Britain as an ‘elect nation’, the modern equivalent of the
Hebrews of the Old Testament, how could it be so sinful? This was the dilemma
faced by members of the societies for the reformation of manners who sought
to enforce morality. Surely, people in a chosen nation had an additional obliga-
tion to be sinless and faithful. There were also aspects of colonial expansion
that was unsettling. Was the enslavement of indigenous people consistent with
Christian teaching? Was the exploitation of natural resources in accord with
ideas of human stewardship of the world? If Britain alone was elect, how could,
in the nineteenth century, Dutch, French and Portuguese colonies be legiti-
mate? Was missionary activity the sole preserve of the Church of England, or
could other Protestants, and even Catholics, legitimately seek to convert hea-
thens? These were all troubling thoughts that affected the world view of men
and women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In conclusion, this chapter has made the case for treating the idea of teleol-
ogy within a historical and theological framework. In the eighteenth century –
and perhaps in some aspects in later centuries – the culture of Britain was one
which was replete with teleological ideas. Indeed, eighteenth-century Britain
might be said to have been a teleological society in which the three-fold foci
of personal salvation, the apocalypse, and the imperial destiny of Britons were
a constant presence. There can have been few Britons in this period who did
not, from the graveside to the battlefield, think about their own teleos and
that of the world. The greatest cultural expression of this idea, Thomas Gray’s
‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’, was the inspiration for General James Wolfe,
who in 1759 before the Battle of Quebec, heard the poem recited and told his
officers that ‘he would rather have been the author of that piece than beat the
French tomorrow’.55
Notes
1 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1739–40, 41, p. 299; Oxford Eng-
lish Dictionary. The word may have had a use in Europe before this. H. Truper, D.
Chakrabarty and S. Subrahmanyam, ‘Introduction: Teleology and History: Nineteenth-
Century Fortunes of an Enlightenment Project,’ in H. Truper, D. Chakrabarty and S.
Subrahmanyam (eds.), Historical Teleologies in the Modern World, London: Bloomsbury,
2015, pp. 3–23.
2 A Supplement to Mr Chambers’s Cyclopedia, London: W. Innys and J. Richardson, R. Ware,
J. and P. Knapton, T. Osborne, S. Birt et al., 1753, p. 611.
3 A. F. M. Willich, Elements of the Critical Philosophy: Containing a Concise Account of Its
Origin and Tendency: A View of All the Works Published by Its Founder, Professor Immanuel
Kant; and a Glossary . . . To Which Are Added: Three Philological Essays; Chiefly Translated
from the German of John Christopher Adelung; . . . , London: T. N. Longman, 1798, p. 165.
4 I. Kant, Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects, 2 vols.,
London: William Richardson, 1798–1799, 1st edn., vol. 2, p. 192.
5 See Chapter 1, W. Gibson, The Achievement of the Anglican Church, 1689–1800: The
Confessional State in England in the Eighteenth Century, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press,
1995; and my first chapter, W. Gibson, The Church of England 1688–1832: Unity and
Accord, London: Routledge, 2001.
6 Foremost among these are J. S. Chamberlain, Accommodating High Churchmen: The
Clergy of Sussex, 1700–1745, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997; J. C. D. Clark,
52 William Gibson
English Society 1688–1832, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; J. Gregory,
Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828, Archbishops of Canterbury and the Dio-
cese, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; J. Gregory and J. Chamberlain (eds.), The
National Church in Local Perspective: The Church of England and the Regions, 1660–1800,
Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002; R. G. Ingram, Religion, Reform and Modernity
in the Eighteenth Century, Thomas Secker and the Church of England, Woodbridge: Boy-
dell Press, 2007; W. M. Jacob, Lay People and Religion in the Early Eighteenth Century,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; W. M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in
the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680–1840, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; M.
Snape, The Church of England in Industrialising Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in
the 18th Century, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003 and J. Gregory (ed.), Oxford
History of Anglicanism, Volume II: Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017, pressed that revision to fruition.
7 J. Paterson, Pietas Londininensis, London: Joseph Downing, 1714.
8 W. Gibson, ‘English Provincial Engagements in Religious Debates: The Salisbury
Quarrel 1705–15,’ in The Huntington Library Quarterly, 80(1), 2017, pp. 21–45.
9 This idea is developed further in W. Gibson and J. Begiato, Sex and the Church in the Long
Eighteenth Century, London: I. B. Tauris, 2017.
10 W. Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly 1676–761, Cambridge: J. Clarke,
2004; G. Sanna, Religione E Vita Publica Nell’Inghilterra, Del ‘700, Le Avventure de Benja-
min Hoadly, Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012.
11 B. Hoadly, Several Discourses Concerning the Terms of Acceptance with God, London: J. Knapton,
1719.
12 Hoadly, Several Discourses, pp. 136–8.
13 Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate, pp. 277–9. For sermons generally, see K. Francis and
W. Gibson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1689–1901, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012 and J. van Eijnatten, Preaching, Sermon and Cultural Change in the
Long Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2009.
14 For the societies for the reformation of manners, see Anon., An Account of the Societies for
the Reformation of Manners in London and Westminster and Other Parts of the Kingdom . . . ,
London: B. Aylmer, 1699; B. S. Sirota, The Christian Monitors, the Church of England
and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730, London and New Haven: Yale University Press,
2014; G. V. Portus, Caritas Anglicana, London: Mowbray, 1912; Gibson and Begiato, Sex
and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Century.
15 Portus, Caritas Anglicana.
16 W. O. B. Allen, E. McClure, Two Hundred Years, the History of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898, London: SPCK, 1898; Sirota, The Christian Monitors;
W. K. Lowther Clarke, Eighteenth Century Piety, London: SPCK, 1945; W. K. Lowther
Clarke, A History of the SPCK, London: SPCK, 1959; M. Clement, The SPCK and
Wales, 1699–1740, London: SPCK, 1954. M. Clement, Correspondence and Minutes of
the SPCK Relating to Wales, 1699–1740, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1952; H. P.
Thompson, Thomas Bray, London: SPCK, 1954.
17 S. Tye, ‘Religion, the SPCK and the Westminster Workhouses: “Re-Enchanting” the
Eighteenth Century Workhouse,’ Oxford Brookes University, PhD Thesis, 2014.
18 J. Coffey (ed.), Heart Religion, Evangelical Piety in England and Ireland 1690–1850, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016; D. B. Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative,
Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007;
M. Smith and S. Taylor (eds.), Evangelicalism in the Church of England c. 1790–1900,
Church of England Record Society, vol. 12, 2004.
19 J. Wesley, ‘Sermons.’ https://wesley-works.org/sermon-register/ (accessed 30 July 2017).
20 J. W. Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology: Perceptible Inspiration, Abingdon: Rout-
ledge, 2016.
21 For the Church and culture, see Chapter 5 of my The Church of England 1688–1832:
Unity and Accord.
22 Jacob, Lay People and Religion in the Early Eighteenth Century, p. 224.
23 T. Friedman, The Eighteenth-Century Church in Britain, London and New Haven: Yale
24 W. Gibson, ‘Sermons,’ in J. Gregory (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II:
Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
25 W. Gibson, ‘The British Sermon, 1689–1901: Quantities, Performance and Culture,’
in Francis and Gibson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1689–1901; and W.
Gibson, ‘John Trusler and the Sermon Culture of Late Eighteenth-Century England,’
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 66(2), 2015, pp. 302–19 and Gibson, ‘Sermons.’
26 W. Gibson, ‘Millenarianism and Prophecy in Eighteenth-Century Britain,’ in L. Laborie
and A. Hessayon (eds.), Early Modern Prophecy and Millenarianism, Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.
27 W. Johnston, Revelation Restored, the Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England,
Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011.
28 L. Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-
Century England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, pp. 78–121. See also,
J. Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment England, London and New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2006, pp. 126–8.
29 D. Hempton, Methodism, Empire of the Spirit, London and New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2005, pp. 33–40.
30 A. Williamson, Apocalypse Now: Prophecy and the Making of the Modern World, Westport,
CT: Praeger, 2008.
31 Anon., Joanna Southcott: A Dispute between the Woman and the Powers of Darkness, London:
W. Tozer, 1802.
32 A. Underwood (ed.), Prophecies Announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace, Extracted from
the Works of Joanna Southcott to Which Are Added a Few Remarks Thereon, Made by Herself,
London: W. Marchant, 1814. See also G. Allan, ‘Joanna Southcott: Enacting the Woman
Clothed with the Sun,’ in M. Lieb, E. Mason and J. Roberts (eds.), The Oxford Handbook
of the Reception History of the Bible, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 635–48.
33 A. Taylor, Visions of Harmony: A Study in Nineteenth: Century Millenarianism, New York:
Clarendon Press, 1987 and A. Hessayon and D. Finnegan (eds.), Varieties of Seventeenth-
and Early Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism in Context, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011.
34 P. J. Lockley, ‘Millenarian Religion and Radical Politics in Britain 1815–1835: A Study
of Southcottians after Southcott,’ University of Oxford, DPhil Thesis, 2009.
35 O. Blackall, A Sermon Preach’d before the Rt Hon: The Lord-Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of
London at the Cathedral Church of St Paul, January 19, 1703/4 Being the Fast-Day Appointed
by Her Majesty’s Proclamation Upon the Occasion of the Late Dreadful Storm and Tempest, and
to Implore the Blessing of God Upon Her Majesty and Her Allies in the Present War, London:
H. Hills, 1708.
36 An example, which also linked itself to the storm of 1703 was W. Talbot, A Sermon
Preach’d before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled, in the Abbey-Church
of Westminster, on Wednesday, Jan 19. 1703/4: Being the Fast-Day Appointed for the Implor-
ing of a Blessing from Almighty God Upon Her Majesty and Her Allies Engag’d in the Present
War: As Also for the Humbling Our Selves before Him in a Deep Sense of His Heavy Displea-
sure, Shew’d Forth in the Late Dreadful Tempest, London: W.S., 1704.
37 John Hoadly explicitly contrasted the ways in which Britain was governed with the ways
in which other nations’ liberties were trampled on as a reason for the victories in Europe
in the War of the Spanish Succession. See J. Hoadly, The Abasement of Pride: A Sermon
Preach’d in the Cathedral Church of Salisbury at the Assizes Held for the County of Wilts, July
18th 1708 Upon the Occasion of the Late Victory, London: T. Childe, 1708.
38 L. Colley, Britons, Forging the Nation, 1707–1838, London and New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1992, p. 55.
39 T. Claydon and I. McBride, ‘The Trials of the Chosen Peoples: Recent Interpreta-
tions of Protestantism and National Identity in Britain and Ireland,’ in T. Claydon and
I. McBride (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity, Britain and Ireland c. 1650-c. 1850,
54 William Gibson
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 3–30 and J. Black, ‘Confessional
State or Elect Nation? Religion and Identity in Eighteenth-Century England,’ in Clay-
don and McBride (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity, pp. 64–74.
40 C. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–80: A Political and
Social Study, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993 and Gibson and Begiato,
Sex and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Century.
41 I. Haywood and J. Seed (eds.), The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late
Eighteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
42 J. J. Caudle: ‘The Origins of Political Broadcasting: The Sermon in the Hanoverian
Revolution, 1714–1716,’ in W. Gibson, E. Chalus and R. Anderson (eds.), Religion,
Loyalty and Sedition: The Hanoverian Succession of 1714, Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
2016, pp. 62–3; J. Chamberlain, ‘Parish Preaching in the Long Eighteenth Century’; P.
Ihalainen, ‘The Sermon, Court and Parliament 1689–1789’; J. J. Caudle, ‘The Defence
of Georgian Britain, the Anti-Jacobite Sermon 1715–1746’ and W. Johnston, ‘Preach-
ing, National Salvation, Victories and Thanksgiving, 1689–1800,’ all in Francis and Gib-
son, Oxford Handbook to the British Sermon, 1689–1901.
43 For a discussion of this, see Chapter 2 in R. Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire,
1700–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
44 Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire, pp. 60–4.
45 T. Claydon, ‘The Trials of a Chosen People,’ in Claydon and McBride (eds.), Protestant-
ism and National Identity, Britain and Ireland, pp. 10–11.
46 For a discussion of the mythology surrounding Cook, see G. Obeyesekere, The Apotheo-
sis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1997; for an examination of de Loutherbourg’s print see K. Wilson, ‘The
Island Race,’ in Claydon and McBride (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity, Britain
and Ireland, pp. 275–6.
47 P. Smethurst, Travel Writing and the Natural World, 1768–1840, Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2012, p. 53. See also Gibson and Begiato, Sex and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Cen-
tury, Chapter 1.
48 K. Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth-Century, London:
Routledge, 2003, p. 81. See also B. Tennant, Corporate Holiness, Pulpit Preaching and the
Church of England Missionary Society, 1760–1870, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
49 H. H. Koh, ‘Foreword: On American Exceptionalism: Symposium on Treaties, Enforce-
ment, and U.S. Sovereignty,’ Stanford Law Review, 1 May 2003, p. 1479.
50 A. Gandziarowski, The Puritan Legacy to American Politics, Norderstedt: Grinn, 2010.
51 J. B. Litke, ‘Varieties of American Exceptionalism: Why John Winthrop Is No Imperial-
ist,’ Journal of Church and State, 54(2), 2012, pp. 197–213.
52 Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate, pp. 35–8.
53 D. L. Dreisbach, ‘A Peculiar People in “God’s American Israel”: Religion and National
Identity,’ in C. W. Dunn (ed.), American Exceptionalism: The Origins, Nature and Future of
the Nation’s Greatest Strength, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.
54 H. E. Restad, American Exceptionalism: An Idea that Made a Nation and Remade the World,
New York: Routledge, 2015.
55 E. E. Morris, ‘Wolfe and Gray’s “Elegy”,’ English Historical Review, 15(57), 1900,
pp. 125–9 and R. L. Mack, Thomas Gray a Life, London and New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2000, p. 509.
Bibliography
Black, J., ‘Confessional State or Elect Nation? Religion and Identity in Eighteenth-Century
England,’ in T. Claydon and I. McBride (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity, Britain
and Ireland c. 1650–c. 1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 64–74.
Clark, J. C. D., English Society 1688–1832, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Clarke, W. K. L., A History of the SPCK, London: SPCK, 1959.
Coffey, J. (ed.), Heart Religion, Evangelical Piety in England and Ireland 1690–1850, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016.
Gibson, W., The Church of England 1688–1832: Unity and Accord, London: Routledge, 2001.
Gibson, W., Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly 1676–761, Cambridge: J. Clarke, 2004.
Gregory, J. (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II Establishment and Empire, 1662–
1829, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Haydon, C., Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–80, A Political and Social
Study, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.
Hindmarsh, D. B., The Evangelical Conversion Narrative, Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern
England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Ingram, R. G., Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century, Thomas Secker and the
Church of England, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007.
Johnston, W., Revelation Restored, The Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England, Wood-
bridge: Boydell Press, 2011.
Laborie, L., Enlightening Enthusiasm, Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-
Century England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
Restad, H. E., American Exceptionalism: An Idea That Made a Nation and Remade the World,
New York: Routledge, 2015.
Sirota, B. S., The Christian Monitors, The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–
1730, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Tennant, B., Corporate Holiness, Pulpit Preaching and the Church of England Missionary Society,
1760–1870, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Williamson, A., Apocalypse Now: Prophecy and the Making of the Modern World, Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2008.
3 John Wesley and the teleology
of education
Linda A. Ryan
John Wesley regarded scholarship as a Christian virtue and saw no contra-

diction in an educational practice which ‘taught the knowledge of God, and
the knowledge of letters at the same time’.1 Nevertheless, the evidence pre-
sented in this chapter demonstrates that although Wesleyan educational prac-
tice offered individuals the chance of intellectual and academic advancement,
its primary purpose was as a means of saving their souls. Wesley’s attitude to
education was teleological in nature since he argued that the sole end of life,
and consequently of education, was to prepare individuals ‘for the enjoyment
of God in eternity’. ‘For this and no other purpose is our life either given or
continued’, he declared.2 Wesley’s Arminian philosophy argued that salvation
was available to all; he contended that it was an individual’s responsibility to
seek salvation by overcoming sin, and by learning how to lead a life of holiness
built on self-awareness, self-denial and self-improvement.
Wesley’s educational endeavours have predominantly been associated with
the boarding school he established at Kingswood, near Bristol, in 1746, prin-
cipally because of the importance he himself placed on it. This chapter argues
that an examination of the way the school was run demonstrates Wesley’s belief
in the teleological nature of education, and his assumption that the rules he
implemented provided pupils with a pathway to the kind of conversion he
himself had experienced. But a degree of caution is required: the fee-paying
boarding school was primarily, although not exclusively, restricted to the sons
of Wesley’s wealthier followers. His educational work extended well beyond
the confines of the school which, even at its peak, educated no more than fifty
pupils at any one time.3 If salvation was available to all, Wesley’s thinking on
female education, and that of children of the poor, also demands attention.
Although Wesley was anxious to provide girls with the opportunity to expand
their intellect, intrinsic in the teleology of Wesleyan female education was the
expectation of salvation through piety and virtue; attributes to be learned not
just for life on earth, but in preparation for the life to come. Many of Wes-
ley’s followers were drawn from the lower ranks of society, and ignited by a
desire for self-improvement and self-advancement, they took on active roles,
including preaching, or instructing children. Wesley’s educational work among
John Wesley and the teleology of education 57
the poor was, nevertheless, teleological in nature. Instruction and learning,
whether individualistic, familial or evangelical, offered the poor a pathway to
salvation. Education was designed to protect them against the dangers of a non-
Christian way of life, not give them aspirations above their station.
Education and the pursuit of a life of holiness

For John Wesley, education and the pursuit of a life of holiness went hand in
hand. Educating children in a correct way of holy living alongside academic
instruction, he believed, provided them with a route to salvation. Wesley was
himself raised in an atmosphere of piety and learning, and there is little doubt
that his thinking on how children should be raised and educated was profoundly
influenced by his mother. The way Susanna Wesley instructed her children at
Epworth showed him that religiosity was not built solely on religious instruc-
tion but involved every aspect of daily life. A strong and rational foundation
of religious education was coupled with what Adam Clarke referred to as ‘a
regular method of living’, an important aspect of which was self-discipline and
self-control.4 In a letter to her son Samuel, dated 11 October 1709, Susanna
Wesley explained that the reasoning behind her methods was ‘to do some small
service to my children; that as I have brought them into the world, I may, if it
please God, be an instrument of doing good to their souls’.5
Influenced by his own upbringing, and demonstrated in his many published
works, it is clear that Wesley took a keen interest in the way children were to
be raised and educated throughout his life. His sermons and writings resonate
with an emphasis on the importance of the family as the seat of virtue and piety.
His belief in the teleological nature of education is evident in his attitude to
parents, who were expected to instruct their children ‘early, plainly, frequently
and patiently’. Wesley consistently exhorted them to instruct their offspring in
Christian values of virtue, morality and piety, alongside Puritan values of indus-
triousness, sobriety, frugality and temperance. He warned them to watch over
their children with utmost care, so ‘that when you are called to give account
of each to the Father of Spirits you may give your accounts with joy and not
with grief ’. He asserted that the wickedness of children was generally due to
the fault or neglect of their parents; and that taking too soft and tender a line
with their children would be like ‘offering up their sons and their daughters
unto the devil’.6
Both Charles and John Wesley had, by the 1730s, committed themselves to a
pattern of ‘holy living’. This quest for holiness, purity of intention and Christian
perfection followed the guidance of William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and
Holy Life, which was published in 1729.7 Law’s work evoked the classic High
Church message that life was to be taken seriously, filled with good works, with
no room for pleasure or relaxation and with regular self-examination and reso-
lutions to do better. He called all men to a state of self-denial, and contended
that Christian education was not a school for the teaching of moral virtues, the
58 Linda A. Ryan
polishing of manners or forming a life of decency and gentility; rather, it was
the training for a life of holiness which demanded nothing less than a change
of heart and mind.8
Wesley’s association with the Moravians in the late 1730s further persuaded
him that spirituality arose not just from the head, but from the heart. Spiritual
development was built on self-awareness, and Wesley emphasised introspection,
feeling and emotion as significant features of religiosity. He asserted that even a
young child could ‘feel the things of God’ through a profound religious experi-
ence. Indeed, he regarded an emotional response arising from a religious expe-
rience as an indicator that a child had been ‘moved’, and he searched diligently
for edifying accounts of such religious experiences, which he subsequently
published in The Arminian Magazine.9
Wesley frequently recorded accounts of religious awakenings that were said
to have occurred at Kingswood School. Wesley’s belief in the teleological
nature of education was demonstrated in his assumption that his educational
programme at the school provided pupils with a pathway to the kind of con-
version he himself had experienced. While he took great delight in recording
the names of students involved in religious revivals, and published accounts of
these incidents in The Arminian Magazine, Wesley did not acknowledge the
academic distinction of any of his pupils.10 In a letter published by Wesley in
The Arminian Magazine of 1778, William Spencer detailed an incident which
had occurred at Kingswood School in August 1748, two years after it had
opened. It stated that some of the boys were said to have been ‘pricked to the
heart and cried out – what shall we do to be saved?’. Jacky Williams was said
to have asked his fellow pupils: ‘If the Lord should require your soul of you this
night, what would become of you?’11
It was, however, during a period in the 1760s and 1770 that reports of ‘reli-
gious revivals’ intensified. In his Journal, Wesley claimed that the death from
smallpox of a Kingswood pupil in September 1763 had caused God to ‘touch
many of their hearts in a manner they never knew before’.12 Despite this, when
Joseph Benson arrived at the school in 1766, he stated that although ‘some of
them do desire to fear God, I hope to see it more so’.13 Nevertheless, by 27 April
1768, James Hindmarsh, a senior master at the school, advised Wesley that ‘we
have no need to exhort them to pray, for the spirit runs through the whole
school . . . the cries of the boys are sounding in my ears’.14
Perhaps the most dramatic account of religious fervour at Kingwood School
occurred two years later, following an incident on 18 September 1770. On
that day, most of the school were taken in solemn procession to view the body
of a near neighbour who had died some four or five days earlier. The pupils,
who ranged in age from eight to fourteen, were, unsurprisingly, greatly affected
by what they witnessed. On their return to the school, the boys were said
to be on their knees, praying and crying out in the company of three maids
sent to restrain them.15 This religious hysteria continued for some days and
Hindmarsh, writing on 28 September 1770, reported that ‘ten of the children
quickly gathered roundabout me earnestly asking what they must do to be saved.
All this time we observed, the children who were most affected learned faster
and better than the rest’. This tension was maintained at the school until,
some thirteen days after the incident began, physical exhaustion finally moder-
ated it. In his nineteenth-century history of the school, Hastling cited Robert
Southey, who commented: ‘It is a wonder that the boys were not driven mad
by the conduct of their instructors. These insane persons urged them never to
rest till they had obtained a clear sense of the pardoning love of God.’16
Wesley, despite the many opportunities he had of observing the behaviour of
children, appears to have been unaware that in an introverted and pressurised
atmosphere such as that at Kingswood School, pupils might aim to please adults
by imitating their words and behaviour, and was often taken aback by the
decline that followed a Kingswood revival. Within a year of this incident, on
6 September 1771, Wesley was asking himself the same question that seems to
have followed every revival: ‘What is become of the wonderful work which
God wrought in them last September? It is gone! It is lost! It is vanished away!’17
Wesley, it appears, expected pupils to be as serious and pious as he himself had
been, and was frequently dismayed when this proved not to be the case.
From the outset, Wesley was determined to build a strong and rational foun-
dation of religious instruction into his educational programme at Kingswood,
declaring to Mrs Mary Jones, a prospective parent, that ‘it being our view not
so much to teach Greek and Latin, as to train up soldiers for Jesus Christ’.18
Wesley’s teleology was demonstrated in his insistence that prospective pupils
display a desire to save their souls, and their parents agree to the strict rules
and purpose of the school that he published in his A Short Account of the School
in Kingswood, Near Bristol, of 1749.19 Although A Short Account consists of just
eight pages, Wesley’s rules for Kingswood School were unequivocal; alongside
the acquisition of ‘every branch of useful learning’, pupils were to be trained
for a life of holiness through an education built on industriousness, self-restraint
and self-denial.20
Wesley was not alone in his desire to safeguard the moral and spiritual lives
of children in his care through self-discipline and self-denial. Indeed, through-
out the eighteenth century, physical self-denial was a practice widely valued
as morally beneficial. Frugality, temperance and sobriety were regarded not
only as indicators of piety, but also were seen as forms of self-discipline which
enhanced the ability to ‘feel’. Physical restraint allowed emotions to flourish,
whereas overloading the body with food, it was argued, produced numbness.
Parents were warned not to over-indulge their offspring, for it rendered their
bodies diseased and ineffectual. The advice for genteel parents was to lead
simpler, less luxurious lives and bring up their children in a like manner.21
Rejection of excessive food consumption was considered to be evidence of
the distance between civilized society and a former state of boorish gluttony
born of want.22 The physician George Cheyne, in his popular work Essay
on Health and Long Life, published 1724, argued that a plain diet, refined to
its essentials of milk, vegetables and seeds, could ‘return the corrupt body to
Adamic purity’.23
60 Linda A. Ryan
Wesley confessed in his Journal on 28 June 1770 that ‘from ten to thirteen or
fourteen, I had little but bread to eat, and not great plenty of that’. Despite the
fact that he appears to have been a victim of the bullying that was experienced
by the younger boys at Charterhouse School, who were deprived of their meat
by the older boys, Wesley was subsequently to regard this experience in rather a
different light. He suggested that ‘far from hurting me . . . [it] laid the founda-
tion of lasting health’.24 Indeed, this enforced deprivation came to be regarded
by Wesley as an important act of self-denial, which thereafter was adopted by
him voluntarily. During his time at Oxford, Wesley often confessed in his diary
to ‘over-eating’, and argued:
If there are two dishes set before you, by the rule of self-denial you ought to
eat of that which you like the least. And this rule I desire to observe myself:
always choose what is least pleasing and cheapest . . . self-indulgence (not
in food only) is practised by too many.25
Anxious to protect Kingswood pupils from what he regarded as the dangers of

over-indulgence, Wesley stipulated a ‘plain and simple’ diet for them. Although
this diet was not insubstantial, Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as the period
throughout Lent, were designated as days when only ‘vegetable and dumplins’
would be served. On Fridays, the boys were to fast until three in the afternoon
since, Wesley argued, ‘experience shows this is so far from impairing health
that it greatly conduces to it’.26 There was no tuck shop at the school; the boys
were to have nothing between meals ‘lest they should insensibly contract habits
which were neither good for body or mind’.27
Wesley asserted that without industry, men were ‘neither fit for this world
or the world to come’.28 He regarded seriousness and industriousness as virtues
necessary in the development of a pious child.29 But it was not Wesley’s inten-
tion to make children unhappy; he believed self-denial, virtue and happiness
to be congruent. He claimed that ‘true religion or holiness can not be without
cheerfulness . . . true religion has nothing sour, austere, unsociable in it’.30
Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century, children were instructed in the
benefits of working hard and being engaged in worthwhile activities. Indus-
triousness, parents explained, would bring more time for self-improvement,
and would make them happy.31 Arguing that ‘he who plays when a child will
play when a man’, Wesley contended that in order to safeguard their moral
and spiritual well-being, children were to be kept at the ‘utmost distance from
idleness’.32
Early rising was regarded by Wesley as an important act of self-denial since,
he argued, to take more sleep than was necessary was contrary to piety, ‘pre-
pared the soul for every other kind of intemperance’ and ‘occasioned universal
softness and faintness of spirit’. It would be no sacrifice, he declared, ‘to rise
to prayer at such a time as the drudging part of the world are content to rise
to their labour’.33 As well as the spiritual benefits of early rising, Wesley sug-
gested ‘by constant observation and by long experience’ it was ‘of admirable
use, either for preserving a good, or improving a bad constitution’.34 Pupils at
Kingswood were expected to rise at 4:00 a.m., both winter and summer, and to
spend the time prior to a public service at 5:00 a.m. in private when they might
subject themselves to ‘self-examination’, or read, sing, pray or meditate.35
Outside the confines of Kingswood School, Wesley advised parents that
their primary duty was to ensure that their offspring received an education that
would equip them for ‘the world to come’. Parents were told that if sending
their sons to a private school, it should be one kept by a pious man, who would
instruct a small number of children in religion and learning. Sending them to
large public schools, Wesley contended, would be little better than sending
them to the devil. Daughters, Wesley argued, were not to be sent to large board-
ing schools which taught ‘pride, vanity and affectation, intrigue, artifice and in
short, everything which a Christian woman ought not to learn’.36
Wesley was determined to protect younger children from the dangerous
influences of a non-Christian way of life. His own upbringing at Epworth
had convinced him that Christian education had to begin in the home, where
children could be instructed in Christian values in order that they might seek
salvation. Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century, the family was regarded
as the seat of virtue and piety. The Whole Duty of Man advised parents that they
should improve their children’s minds ‘with sound principles of religion and
good morality, and bring them up to learning’.37
Although Wesley frequently expressed concern over the way parents raised
their children, his views on the parent–child relationship are ambivalent.38 While
salvation of the child’s soul depended on piety and virtue learned in relation-
ship with, and by example of, parents, this did not, in Wesley’s view, necessitate
the sort of deep emotional attachment brought about by parenthood. Wesley
rarely discussed parental relationships in his writings, and when he did refer to
them in connection to the death of a child, he focused on the triumph of faith
rather than the emotion of bereavement.39 In his view, love for one’s children
was always subordinate to a concern to save their souls.
Female education, piety and salvation

During the eighteenth century, the way children were educated was defined by
gender, class and religious affiliation. Education was not a universal prerogative;
boys and girls were not considered educational equals. Nevertheless, Wesley’s
Arminian philosophy argued that salvation was available to all, which neces-
sitated an education for girls and young women that would enhance their piety,
safeguard their virtue and set them on the path to salvation.40 While Wesley
was anxious to provide girls with opportunities to expand their intellect, the
evidence demonstrates that intrinsic in the teleology of Wesleyan female edu-
cation was the expectation of salvation through piety and virtue; attributes to
be learned not just for life on earth, but in preparation for the life to come.
Wesley lived in an age when the expectation among wealthier parents was
that their sons would receive a public school education designed to prepare
62 Linda A. Ryan
them for university, an opportunity not available to their daughters. Despite
the expansion of establishments for girls’ education throughout the century, the
commonly held view was that the home was the most suitable place for girls
to be educated. Here, a daughter’s virtue could be protected under the super-
vision of her mother. There were many women who possessed intellectual
abilities, including a knowledge of mathematics or classical languages, having
acquired these skills because they were either daughters of learned men who
instructed them at home, or of wealthy men who employed tutors. Neverthe-
less, John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters advised young women:
‘But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially
from the men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a
woman of great parts and a cultivated understanding.’41
That is not to suggest that female education was unimportant; indeed, the
reverse can be argued.42 Girls were expected to be devout, to provide spiritual
support in the household and to know how to conduct themselves in a moral
fashion.43 In order for girls to develop the correct approach to life, they were
encouraged to read edifying texts such as religious and moral treatises, and
were warned against reading that might have a pernicious effect on the female
mind.44 Among Evangelical and Dissenting movements, girls were encouraged
to write diaries and the conversion narrative proved to be one of the most potent
means of passing the piety of one generation on to another.45
Wesley’s early childhood was spent predominantly in a feminine atmosphere
where his sisters were both lively and literate. His mother placed great signifi-
cance on the education of girls, believing it was important for her daughters to
be heard and understood.46 It was John Wesley’s ‘sonship’ to Susanna, Brantley
argues, that set the pattern for his lifetime of intellectual relationships with
women.47 Wesley encouraged female education, arguing that girls should be
instructed at home ‘as my mother did, who bred up seven daughters to years
of maturity’.48 Even though girls were frequently educated at home, their edu-
cation was seldom as rigorous as Susanna Wesley’s for her daughters.49 Wesley
seems to have overlooked the fact that Susanna herself stated that ‘there’s few (if
any) that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hope
to save the souls of their children’.50 Indeed, the evidence demonstrates that it
was his mother’s emphasis on the need to safeguard the souls of her children
through a pious and disciplined upbringing which was to influence Wesley’s
thinking on female education.
When he opened his boarding school at Kingswood in 1746, Wesley’s inten-
tion was that it would accept only boys.51 Perhaps under pressure from his
friends for places for their daughters as well as their sons, a small number of girl
boarders were accepted.52 Samuel Lloyd sent his niece Molly to Kingswood
for a short time, but her experience there was far from satisfactory. It would
seem that Wesley’s intention that the school instil in pupils a sense of piety
and virtue as well as academic learning was not always borne out in practice.53
In a letter to Samuel Lloyd dated 3 July 1751, Wesley referred to news he had
received from another parent which alleged that ‘the boys and girls committed
wickedness together, and destroyed one another, both body and soul’. Dis-
missing such accusations as ‘senseless tales’, Wesley advised Lloyd, who had by
then withdrawn Molly from the school, that his niece ‘might board for twelve
pounds a year at Mrs Robertson’s, a serious and prudent woman’. ‘Senseless
tales’ or not, there were no further references to girls being educated at the
school.54
Wesley advised parents sending their daughters to small boarding schools that
they should ensure that this was under the care of a ‘mistress who truly fears
God, one whose life is a pattern to her scholars, and who has only so many that
she can watch over each as one that must give account to God’.55 He declared
in 1765 of Mary Bosanquet’s school: ‘I rode to Leytonstone and found one
truly Christian family . . . what that at Kingswood should be, and would be if
it had such governors.’56 Frequent references to girls’ schools in Wesley’s Jour-
nal demonstrate the delight he took in recording the spiritual development of
pupils. For example, he commended Miss Warren on 30 April 1781, writing:
I met about fifty children; such a company as I have not seen for many
years. Miss Warren loves them, and they love her. She has taken true pains
with them, and her labour has not been in vain. Several of them are much
awakened, and the behaviour of all is so composed that they are a pattern
to the whole congregation.57
In 1782, Wesley recorded that he had ‘spent an agreeable hour at the boarding
school in Sheriffhales’, adding that ‘the Misses Yeomans are well qualified in
their office’, and ‘several of the children are under strong drawings’.58
A particular accolade was accorded to the school run by Mrs Owen and
her daughters in Publow, Somerset, six miles south of Kingswood, which was
described by Wesley as ‘perhaps the best boarding school for girls in Great
Britain’.59 He commended Frances Owen for limiting her boarders to twenty
so that she could look after them properly.60 Nevertheless, in a letter dated
6 September 1772, published in The Arminian Magazine for 1785, Owen sug-
gested that, as several of the children’s parents were not spiritual and were con-
sequently ‘pleased with trifles’, they had begun to teach the children ‘to make
artificial flowers, network, and little pieces of embroidery’.61 Unhappy with
the inclusion of such ‘worldly’ accomplishments, Wesley’s early support for the
school appears to have declined since he suggested that the school had lost its
‘original simplicity’.62
Wesley’s belief in the teleological nature of education was expressed in
his letter to Mary Bishop dated 21 May 1781. He once again lamented the
‘worldly’ expectations of parents. ‘Good breeding I love’, Wesley declared, ‘but
how difficult it is to keep quite clear of affectation’. Advising Bishop that she
should teach for ‘another world’ rather than the present one, Wesley advised
her: ‘Let it be said of the young women you educate: grace was in all her
steps, heaven in her eye; in all her gestures sanctity and love.’63 Condemning as
unwise and unkind those parents who desired to make their daughters ‘finer
64 Linda A. Ryan
than themselves’, Wesley threatened to ‘make their ears tingle’. He warned
Bishop not to be influenced by the ‘fashions of the world’, but to set an exam-
ple herself, and thereby train her pupils by ‘all mildness and firmness’ to a
Christian life of primitive simplicity.64 In a further letter to Wesley, Bishop
complained about parents who were threatening to remove their daughters
from her school because they were not being instructed in dancing.65 Wesley
responded robustly: ‘If dancing be not evil in itself, it leads young women to
numberless evils . . . you have chosen the more excellent way.66
Although Frank Baker contended that Wesley’s lifelong dedication to female
education was sparked by the discovery of Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to
Ladies (1697) in 1731, it was not until 1780 that he published in The Arminian
Magazine ‘A Female Course of Study’.67 Addressed to those who ‘had a good
understanding and much leisure’, Wesley outlined a course of study for young
ladies from households where daughters had access to reading material, or were
able to purchase the books he recommended. While the course of study was
extensive, Wesley assured his female readers that the Bible was fundamental:
‘All you learn is to be referred to this, as either directly, or remotely conducive
to it.’68
Wesley advised Philothea Briggs in 1771 that ‘all the knowledge you want
is comprised in one book – the Bible. When you understand this, you will
know enough’.69 Although, as the teenage daughter of his book steward at the
Foundery, she would have had access to Wesley’s publications, access to reading
material would have been a considerable obstacle for many women. Indeed,
Wesley’s sister Kezzia wrote to him on 3 July 1731, stating,
I am entirely of your opinion, that the pursuit of knowledge and virtue

will most improve the mind: but how to pursue these is the question. Cut
off indeed I am from all means which most men, and many women, have
of acquiring them.
She described, having ‘a thirst for knowledge’, but complained of struggling

‘against many disadvantages, among which comparative poverty and bad health
were none of the least’.70
Evangelism, the poor, piety and salvation

Among Evangelicals, thinking on education was complex, and opinions on its
teleology varied significantly. Some Evangelicals supported nothing broader
than learning the ‘doctrines of the Gospel’, since they argued that intellectual
ability was irrelevant to the development of a personal commitment of faith.
They shunned intellectual pursuits, believing that they were called to make
better use of their short and accountable time on earth. Richard Cecil argued:
However desirable and useful in various respects learning may be, it is not
essential to the Christian . . . I have met with poor and illiterate men, who
having the grace of God in their hearts, could state the doctrines of the
Gospel with admirable distinction and accuracy.71
On the other hand, notable among Evangelicals promoting education were

Dissenters Philip Doddridge and Joseph Priestley. Doddridge, a Calvinist,
provided students at his Northampton Academy with an environment where
they were ‘in a state peculiarly favourable to the serious pursuit of truth, as
they were about equally divided upon every question of much importance’.72
Priestley, declaring that the education offered at grammar schools and univer-
sity was ‘remote from the business of civil life’, sought to educate ‘for the world
rather than the cloister’.73
Although he supported education, Wesley refused to permit such intellec-
tual freedom, fearing that students might become ‘wholly swallowed up in that
detestable doctrine of predestination’.74 Wesley’s Arminian conviction that sal-
vation was available to all shaped the teleology of his educational programme.
Books in the library at Kingswood School were either published by Wesley
himself, or scrupulously edited by him, ensuring that all references to Calvin-
ist doctrine were removed. Indeed, when Lady Huntingdon opened a train-
ing college in Trevecka, South Wales, her ‘nursery for preachers’ very soon
became a cause for division within the emerging Methodist movement.75 Wes-
ley insisted that Arminian theology form the basis of instruction, something
the Calvinist Countess was not prepared to allow.
Many of Wesley’s preachers, although men of piety, were from humble back-
grounds and had little education.76 While he did not expect them to have a uni-
versity education, Wesley encouraged his preachers’ self-improvement through
constant reading and study. He declared at the Methodist Conference in 1746
that preachers should consider themselves ‘as young students at the University,
for whom therefore a method of study is expedient in the highest degree’.77
Wesley corresponded with his preachers at length, and expected them to write
an account of their own spiritual experiences. They were instructed to learn
scripture and doctrine by reading the Bible, and Wesley supplied them with
his printed sermons, and Notes on the New Testament. They learned Christian
tradition through reading his Christian Library.78 Wesley cautioned, ‘If we read
nothing but the Bible, we should hear nothing but the Bible; and then what
becomes of preaching?’79 The teleology of Wesley’s educational programme for
his preachers was not only a means by which they might seek salvation through
a life of piety and virtue, but also one by which they might also instil this in
others.
That is not to suggest that their academic advancement was insignificant.
Wesley encouraged his preachers to read ‘the most useful books, regularly and
constantly’; to rise at 4:00 a.m., and to study for five hours a day. In order to
assist their study, he recommended books contained within the curriculum of
Kingswood School. He told them that he would give them ‘as fast as you will
read them, books to the value of five pounds’. At the Methodist Conference in
1765, when asked, ‘Do not they in general talk too much, and read too little?’
66 Linda A. Ryan
Wesley responded, ‘They do. Let them retrench but half the time they spend in
talking, and they will have time enough to read.’80 When, at the Conference in
Leeds a year later, Wesley was asked ‘Why are we not more knowing?’ his reply
was characteristically robust:
Because we are idle . . . which of you spends as many hours a day in God’s
work, as you did formerly in man’s work? . . . We talk, or read history, or
what comes to hand. We must, absolutely must, cure this evil, or give up
the whole work.81
Indeed, Brantley suggests that Methodists, advised by Wesley not to waste time
in idleness, committed time to reading and the difference in degree of knowl-
edge between the poor Methodists and the poor in general was, as a result,
‘very remarkable’.82
Wesley’s preachers’ children tended to have more education than the major-
ity of the population since their parents laid more stress on it.83 Nevertheless, at
the Methodist Conference in 1766, Wesley declared, ‘Family religion is shame-
fully wanting, and almost in every branch . . . we must instruct them from
house to house. Till this is done, and that in good earnest, the Methodists will
be little better than other people’.84 He encouraged his preachers to establish
societies in Methodist preaching-houses where groups of children could meet
for instruction.85 Although there were occasions when Wesley himself noted
that meeting with children was ‘the most difficult part of our work’, 86 he told
his preachers, ‘gift or no gift, you are to do it, else you are not called to be
a Methodist preacher . . . pray earnestly for the gift and use the means of it’.
Preachers encouraged parents to work with their children on memorising parts
of Wesley’s Instructions for Children, and in doing so, parents gained greater reli-
gious understanding themselves.87
It seems something of a contradiction that although Wesley argued that
‘reading’ Christians would be ‘knowing’ Christians’,88 in the Minutes of the
Methodist Conference in Leeds on 12 August 1766, he advised his preachers:
Gaining knowledge is a good thing: but saving souls is better. By this very
thing you will gain the most excellent knowledge of God and eternity . . .
If you can do but one, either follow your studies, or instruct the ignorant,
let your studies alone. I would throw by all the libraries in the world, rather
than be guilty of the perdition of one soul.89
This declaration by Wesley demonstrates that, although intrinsic in the teleol-

ogy of education was individual salvation, its extrinsic value centred on evan-
gelism, and a desire for universal salvation.
Although Wesley understood the power of reading, writing and speaking
in the formation of faith, there was a caveat concerning the poor. Evangelicals
were concerned with reforming the character of the individual, not bringing
about social change. Educating the poor was designed to protect them against
the dangers of a non-Christian way of life, and to offer them a pathway to sal-
vation; it was not intended to give them aspirations above their station. In his
Instructions for Children, Wesley stated that children of the poor were to remain
submissive and obedient. He advised them to be content, even though they
had ‘little or nothing in the world’, for they had ‘more than they deserve’.
Children, he stated, should pray for a ‘humble, submissive, simple and obedient
heart’. They were to ‘obey without murmuring’ and to ‘think everyone bet-
ter than themselves’.90 Wesley’s views reflected eighteenth-century sentiments
that regarded education not merely as a way of expanding intellect, but also a
means by which order could be maintained. Religious instruction taught sub-
mission to authority and acceptance of the Establishment’s ordering of society.
Anglican charity schools were seen as a way of fashioning children of the lower
orders into good Christians and faithful servants, and teachers concentrated on
only the most basic accomplishments.91
Wesley encouraged Methodists to involve themselves in schemes of welfare
and education. His followers, many of whom were women, took on active
roles, including the instruction of children. Among Wesley’s wealthy followers
was Lady Darcy Maxwell, who in July 1770 opened a day school for children
of the poor in Edinburgh.92 In June 1782, Wesley noted that the forty chil-
dren in the school were ‘swiftly brought forward in reading and writing, and
learn the principles of religion’. It seems, however, that the involvement of an
aristocratic patron in the education of the poor was not without its complica-
tions. Wesley lamented: ‘I observe in them all the ambitiosa paupertas [ambitious
poverty]. Be they ever so poor, they must have a scrap of finery. Many of them
have not a shoe to their foot; but the girl in rags is not without her ruffles.’93
Wesley opened day schools for children of the poor in his preaching-houses,
where boys were taught reading, writing and arithmetic, and girls received
instruction in reading, writing and needlework.94 But his belief in the teleo-
logical nature of education meant that Wesley’s principal objective was that
children of the poor came ‘more especially (by God’s assistance) to know God,
and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent’.95 That Wesley did not categorise more
than half of the population as ‘outsiders’ as some of his wealthy friends did,
did not mean that Wesley regarded himself as a political or social reformer.96
Indeed, he argued that piety demanded a position of passive obedience and
submission to authority; the poor were told to await the time when ‘God must
arise and maintain his own cause’.97
Conclusion
Wesley’s educational work, whether individualistic, familial or evangelical, was
grounded in two fundamental and congruent tenets: his belief that the teleol-
ogy of education was salvation, and his Arminian conviction that salvation was
available to all. As a consequence, Wesley contended that it was every indi-
vidual’s responsibility to seek salvation by learning how to live a life of holiness,
built on self-awareness, self-denial and self-improvement.
68 Linda A. Ryan
Wesley’s belief in the teleological nature of education was demonstrated in
the strict rules he put in place for his boarding school at Kingswood. While he
was convinced that his educational programme provided pupils with rigorous
academic instruction, he also maintained that his regime offered a pathway to
the kind of religious conversion he himself had experienced. The evidence
suggests that despite the concern he expressed for pupils, Wesley failed to appre-
ciate the effect his regime had on impressionable adolescent boys.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the family was regarded as the seat of
virtue and piety, and Wesley frequently advised parents on the way their chil-
dren should be raised and educated. Despite this undoubted concern for their
upbringing, Wesley believed that parents’ love for their child was subordinate
to a concern for their souls. Parents were advised by him that their primary
duty was to ensure that their offspring received an education that would equip
them for ‘the world to come’. Although Wesley did not consider boys and girls
as educational equals, he encouraged female education. He actively promoted
small boarding schools for girls, and published ‘A Female Course of Study’.
Nevertheless, while he was anxious to provide girls with an opportunity to
expand their intellect, intrinsic in the teleology of Wesleyan female education
was the expectation of salvation through piety and virtue.
Among Evangelicals, thinking on education was complex and, in some ways,
contradictory. While the teleology of education was salvation, the nature of that
teleology varied considerably. Emphasising the authority of scripture, some
Evangelicals shunned intellectual pursuits, whereas others favoured intellectual
freedom in the pursuit of truth. Although Wesley promoted education for
all, arguing that self-improvement offered a pathway to salvation, he sought
to protect individuals from what he regarded as the dangers of Calvinist, or
unsuitable, reading material. His preachers were encouraged in their intel-
lectual advancement. Nevertheless, in order to safeguard their souls, Wesley
argued that learning beyond scripture and doctrine should be confined to his
own publications, edited works or those books recommended by him.
Intrinsic in the teleology of Wesleyan education was individual salvation;
its extrinsic value centred on evangelism and a desire for universal salvation.
Although Wesley demonstrated a desire to educate the poor, education was a
means by which they might seek salvation; it was not intended to give them
aspirations above their station. Learning how to live a life of holiness, built on
self-awareness, self-denial and self-improvement was designed to reform the
character of the individual, not bring about social change.
Notes
1 J. Wesley, Instructions for Children, London: Henry Cock, 1755, 4th edn., p. iii.
2 F. Baker, (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition: The Works of John Wesley, Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1983, vol. 3, pp. 335–7.
3 For a detailed, comprehensive and contextualised analysis of Wesley’s extensive edu-
cational programme, see L. A. Ryan, John Wesley and the Education of Children: Gender,
Class and Piety, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.
4 ‘As she was a woman that lived by rule, she methodized and arranged everything so
exactly, that to each operation she had a time; and time sufficient to transact all the busi-
ness of the family’. In A. Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family, Collected Principally from
Original Documents, New York: J. Collord, 1832, p. 174.
5 Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family, p. 281.
6 Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 3, pp. 335–40.
7 Elliott-Binns argued that Law exercised a deeper and more persistent influence on reli-
gion than any writer of the century. Although Wesley visited Law in Putney, he was later
to turn against his work, writing a condemnation in his Journal of 27 July 1749 of Law’s
tract The Spirit of Prayer, which had been published that year. See L. E. Elliott-Binns, The
Early Evangelicals: A Religious and Social Study, London: Lutterworth Press, 1953, p. 121.
8 A. Brown-Lawson, John Wesley and the Anglican Evangelicals of the Eighteenth Century,
Bishop Auckland: The Pentland Press, 1994, p. 142.
9 For example, Wesley published ‘A Short Account of Miss Sarah Butler’ who was born
in 1769 and who, at the age of eight, was said to be ‘very earnest with God’. J. Wesley,
The Arminian Magazine: Consisting Chiefly of Extracts and Original Treatises on Universal
Redemption, London: J. Paramore, 1787, p. 246.
10 Wesley’s emphasis on the spiritual significance of education, rather than its academic
value, was highlighted in the case of John Henderson. Henderson, a pupil at Kingswood
circa 1764, was at the age of eight teaching Latin to his peers, but was never commended
by Wesley for this academic prowess. A. H. L. Hastling, The History of Kingswood School:
Together with Register of Kingswood School and Woodhouse Grove School, and a List of Masters,
London: Charles H. Kelly, 1898, p. 54.
11 J. Wesley, ‘Letter to John Wesley from William Spencer Dated 9 August 1748,’ The
Arminian Magazine, 1778, pp. 533–4.
12 Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 21, p. 429.
13 John Rylands Library Manchester, J. Benson, Letter from Kingswood School to Unnamed
Correspondent, Dated 22 December 1766, ‘Joseph Benson Papers’ ref. GB 133PLP 7/6/1.
15 D. Tranter, ‘John Wesley and the Education of Children,’ in T. Macquiban (ed.), Issues in
Education: Some Methodist Perspectives, Oxford: Applied Theology Press, 1996, p. 22.
16 cited in Hastling, The History of Kingswood School, pp. 59–63.
18 Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 26, p. 279. John Wesley letter to Mrs Mary Jones
[12 Feb 1748].
19 J. Wesley, ‘A Plain Account of Kingswood School Near Bristol,’ The Arminian Magazine,
1781, p. 434.
20 J. Wesley, A Short Account of the School in Kingswood, Near Bristol, Bristol: Felix Farley,
1749.
21 J. Bailey, Parenting in England c. 1760–1830: Emotion, Identity and Generation, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 106–7.
22 P. Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Harlow: Longman, 2001, p. 65.
23 A. Guerrini, ‘A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-Century Britain,’
Eighteenth-Century Life, 23(2), 1999, p. 38.
26 Wesley, A Short Account of the School in Kingswood, Near Bristol, pp. 5–6.
27 Wesley, ‘A Plain Account of Kingswood School Near Bristol,’ p. 435.
29 On a visit to Dublin in April 1785, Wesley noted with joy the conversion of a number
of girls who were ‘as serious and staid in their whole behaviour as if they were thirty or
forty years old’. In Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 23, p. 349.
30 Cited in G. M. Best, Wesley and Kingswood, Bridgewater: Bigwood and Staple, 1988, p. 10.
31 Bailey, Parenting in England c.1760–1830, p. 184.
70 Linda A. Ryan
32 Wesley, A Short Account of the School in Kingswood, Near Bristol, p. 5.
33 J. Wesley, The Duty and Advantage of Early Rising, London: J. Paramore, 1783, pp. 2–9.
Writing in his diary in Feb 1745, Wesley claimed to have ‘I sunk into a gulf of sloth,
which got the dominion over me in such a manner that I . . . was content frequently to
lie in bed till eight . . . ’. In Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 20, p. 52.
34 Wesley, ‘A Plain Account of Kingswood School Near Bristol,’ p. 434.
35 Wesley, A Short Account of the School in Kingswood, Near Bristol, p. 5.
37 Anon, The New Whole Duty of Man, London: Edward Wichsteed, 1734, p. 364.
38 Ryan, John Wesley and the Education of Children, pp. 37–8.
39 P. Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008, p. 91.
41 J. Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, Edinburgh: W. Creech, 1774, pp. 31–2.
A Father’s Legacy was the best-selling female conduct book of the late eighteenth cen-
tury, selling 6,000 copies between 1774 and 1776 alone, and was frequently excerpted
in periodicals and miscellanies. M. M. Catherine, ‘Between the Savage and the Civil,’ in
S. Knott and B. Taylor (eds.), Women, Gender and Enlightenment, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005, p. 8.
43 John Gregory defined religion as a peculiarly feminine province, arguing that it was
‘rather a matter of sentiment than reasoning,’ and suggested that women were ‘pecu-
liarly susceptible to the feelings of devotion’. In Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His Daugh-
ters, pp. 10–13.
44 B. Glaser, ‘Gendered Childhoods,’ in A. Muller (ed.), Fashioning Childhood in the Eigh-
teenth Century: Age and Identity, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2006, pp. 191–2.
45 B. D. Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early
Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 72–320.
46 C. Wallace, ‘Charles Wesley and Susanna,’ in K. G. C. Newport and T. A. Campbell
(eds.), Charles Wesley Life, Literature & Legacy, Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007, p. 373.
47 R. Brantley, Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism, Gainesville: University
of Florida, 1984, p. 16.
49 Adam Clarke pronounced of John’s sister Hetty: ‘The pains taken with her education
were crowned with success, for at the early age of eight years she had made such pro-
ficiency in the learned languages that she could read the Greek text. She has naturally
a fine poetic genius, which, though common to the whole family, shone forth in her
with peculiar splendour and was heightened by her knowledge of the fine models of
antiquity.’ In Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family, pp. 466, 487, 511, 539.
50 C. Wallace (ed.), Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997, p. 150.
51 John Wesley letter to Mary Jones dated 12 February 1748 in Baker, BCE, vol. 26, p. 279.
52 Wesley drew up rules for the school specifically for girls, but unlike those for the boys,
they were never published. There were a number of substantial differences since girls
were instructed only in ‘such things as are needful for them’ that is, ‘reading, writing,
English grammar, arithmetic, sewing and needlework’. W. T. Graham, Wesley’s Early
Experiments in Education, Ilkeston: Moorley’s Publishing, 1990, pp. 11–12.
54 John Wesley letters dated 3 and 8 July 1751. In Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 26,
pp. 468–70.
58 N. Curnock, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, London: Charles H. Kelly, 1909–16,
vol. 6, p. 345.
59 H. D. Rack, Bi-Centennial Edition: The Works of John Wesley vol. 10 (The Methodist Societ-
ies, the Minutes of Conference), Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011, p. 432.
60 Curnock, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 6, p. 221.
61 Wesley, The Arminian Magazine, 1785, pp. 551–2.
62 J. Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, New York: J. & J. Harper, 1827, vol. 10, p. 36.
63 Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 10, p. 367.
64 J. Telford (ed.), The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, London: The Epworth Press, 1931,
vol. 7, p. 74.
65 Wesley, The Arminian Magazine, 1792, p. 51.
66 Telford, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 7, p. 228.
68 J. Wesley, ‘A Female Course of Study,’ The Arminian Magazine, 1780, pp. 602–4.
The list of subjects, although comprehensive for female education of the day, did not
include Classics taught to boys of a similar class in grammar schools or at home, and to
boys in Wesley’s boarding school at Kingswood. See Ryan, John Wesley and the Education
of Children, p. 40.
69 Telford, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 5, p. 221.
70 Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family, pp. 466, 487, 540–1.
71 Rosman argues that the ‘prejudice that operated against learning was deeply rooted in
the fundamental tenets of evangelicalism, and as such influenced the thinking of even
the most able men’. D. Rosman, Evangelicals & Culture, 1790–1833, Oregon: Pickwick
Publications, 2010, pp. 151–2.
72 D. L. Wykes, ‘Joseph Priestley, Minister, and Teacher,’ in I. Rivers & D. L. Wykes (eds.),
Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher and Theologian, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008, pp. 25–7.
73 S. Bygrave, Uses of Education: Readings in Enlightenment England, Lewisburg: Bucknell
74 E. Welch, Edwin, Spiritual Pilgrim: A Reassessment of the Life of the Countess of Huntingdon,
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995, p. 123.
75 S. B. Schlenther, Queen of the Methodists: The Countess of Huntingdon and the Eighteenth-
Century Crisis of Faith and Society, Durham: Durham Academic Press, 1997, pp. 65–75.
76 Laurence Sterne sneered that Methodist preachers were ‘much fitter to make a pulpit
than to get into one’. In G. Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity, London: Vintage
Books, 2008, p. 128.
77 Rack (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 10, p. 179.
78 Wesley advised preachers to ‘contract a taste for [reading] by use, or return to [their]
trade’. In Rack (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 10, p. 340.
79 Telford, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 6. p. 130.
81 Rack (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 10, pp. 340–2.
82 Brantley, Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism, p. 120.
83 J. Lenton (ed.), Vital Piety and Learning: Methodism and Education, Oxford: Wesley His-
torical Society, 2002, p. 113.
86 Curnock, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 6, p. 124; Baker (ed.), Bi-Centennial
Edition, vol. 23, p. 185.
87 Rack (ed.), Bi-Centennial Edition, vol. 10, p. 341, 313.
88 Letter to George Holder dated 8 November 1790 in Telford, The Letters of the Rev. John
Wesley, vol. 8, p. 247.
72 Linda A. Ryan
90 Wesley, Instructions for Children, 4th edn., pp. 14, 37.
91 Anon., An Account of Charity-Schools Lately Erected, London: Joseph Downing, 1708, p. 4.
92 Telford, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 5, pp. 181–2.
94 P. Sangster, Pity My Simplicity, London: Epworth Press, 1963, p. 97.
97 J. Wesley, Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions, London: R. Hawes, 1773, p. 22.
Bibliography
Anon, An Account of Charity-Schools Lately Erected, London: Joseph Downing, 1708.
Anon, The New Whole Duty of Man, London: Edward Wichsteed, 1734.
Bailey, J., Parenting in England c1760–1830: Emotion, Identity and Generation, Oxford: Oxford
Baker, F. (ed.-in-chief), Bi-centennial Edition: The Works of John Wesley Vol. 1–4 (Sermons),
Vol. 9 (Methodist Societies), Vol. 18–24 ( Journals & Diaries), Vol. 25–6 (Letters), Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1984–2019.
Best, G. M., Wesley and Kingswood, Bridgewater: Bigwood and Staple, 1988.
Brantley, R. E., Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism, Gainesville: University
of Florida, 1984.
Brown-Lawson, A., John Wesley and the Anglican Evangelicals of the Eighteenth Century, Bishop
Auckland: The Pentland Press, 1994.
Bygrave, S., Uses of Education: Readings in Enlightenment England, Lewisburg: Bucknell Uni-
versity Press, 2009.
Carter, P., Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Harlow: Longman, 2001.
Clarke, A., Memoirs of the Wesley Family, Collected Principally from Original Documents, New
York: J. Collord, 1832.
Curnock, N., The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M. Sometime Fellow of Lincoln College,
Oxford, London: Charles H. Kelly, 1909–1916.
Elliott-Binns, L. E., The Early Evangelicals: A Religious and Social Study, London: Lutterworth
Press, 1953.
Glaser, B., ‘Gendered Childhoods,’ in A. Muller (ed.), Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth
Century: Age and Identity, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2006.
Graham, W. T., Wesley’s Early Experiments in Education, Ilkeston: Moorley’s Publishing, 1990.
Gregory, J., A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters, Edinburgh: W. Creech, 1774.
Guerrini, A., ‘A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-Century Britain,’
Eighteenth-Century Life, 23 (2), 1999, pp. 34–42.
Hastling, A. H. L., The History of Kingswood School: Together with Register of Kingswood School
and Woodhouse Grove School, and a List of Masters, London: Charles H. Kelly, 1898.
Himmelfarb, G., The Roads to Modernity, London: Vintage Books, 2008.
Hindmarsh, B. D., The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern
England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Knott, S. and Taylor, B. (eds.), Women, Gender and Enlightenment, Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2005.
Lenton, J. (ed.), Vital Piety and Learning: Methodism and Education, Oxford: Wesley Historical
Society, 2002.
Mack, P., Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008.
Macquiban, T. (ed.), Issues in Education: Some Methodist Perspectives, Oxford: Applied Theol-
ogy Press, 1996.
Muller, A. (ed.), Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: Age and Identity, Aldershot:
Ashgate Press, 2006.
Newport, K. G. C. and Campbell, T. A. (eds.), Charles Wesley Life, Literature & Legacy, Peter-
borough: Epworth Press, 2007.
Rack, H. (ed.), Bi-centennial Edition: The Works of John Wesley Vol. 10 (The Methodist Societies,
The Minutes of Conference), Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011.
Rosman, D., Evangelicals & Culture, 1790–1833, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2010.
Ryan, L. A., John Wesley and the Education of Children: Gender, Class and Piety, Abingdon:
Routledge, 2018.
Sangster, P., Pity My Simplicity, London: Epworth Press, 1963.
Schlenther, B. S., Queen of the Methodists: The Countess of Huntingdon and the Eighteenth-
Century Crisis of Faith and Society, Durham: Durham Academic Press, 1997.
Telford, J. (ed.), The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., (8 volumes), London: The Epworth
Press, 1931.
Wallace, C. (ed.), Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Welch, E., Spiritual Pilgrim: A Reassessment of the Life of the Countess of Huntingdon, Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 1995.
Wesley, J., A Short Account of the School in Kingswood, Near Bristol, Bristol: Felix Farley, 1749.
Wesley, J., Instructions for Children, 4th edition, London: Henry Cock, 1755.
Wesley, J., Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions, London: R. Hawes, 1773.
Wesley, J., The Arminian Magazine: Consisting Chiefly of Extracts and Original Treatises on Uni-
versal Redemption, volumes 1–20, London: J. Paramore, 1778–1797.
Wesley, J., ‘A Female Course of Study, Only Intended for Those, Who Have a Good
Understanding and Much Leisure,’ in The Arminian Magazine for the Year 1780, volume 3,
London: J. Paramore, 1780.
Wesley, J., ‘A Plain Account of Kingswood School near Bristol,’ in The Arminian Magazine
for the Year 1781, volume 4, London: J. Paramore, 1781.
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Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher and Theologian, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008, pp. 20–48.
Section II
History
4 Teleology and race
Marius Turda
Introduction
Those strolling on High Street, Oxford’s inner-city artery, at the start of the
first decade of the twentieth century, would have noticed a new building being
erected by Oriel College, just opposite the University Church of St Mary the
Virgin. A number of old and much-beloved houses had to be demolished in
order to accommodate this new architectural addition, so it is not surpris-
ing that its construction displeased many. The Welsh travel writer Jan ( James)
Morris was still able to capture some of that feeling as late as 1965: “If you are
very old indeed, you are probably still fuming about the façade built in the
High Street by Oriel College [. . .], which most of us scarcely notice nowa-
days, but used to be thought an absolute outrage.”1 Old Oxonians may have
condemned the loss of the city’s distinctive quarters, but their discontentment
was rather aesthetic in nature. No criticism was voiced against the benefac-
tor. Named after Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902), the English mining magnate and
fervent believer in the British Empire’s historical destiny in Africa, the new
building was designed by celebrated architect Basil Champneys (1842–1935)
and completed in 1911.2
Cecil Rhodes was born into and lived in a world that viewed Western, white
culture and civilization through its racial history. He, as most Europeans at the
time, believed that the white race was the pinnacle of human evolution and,
as such, the most adaptive and successful of all human races.3 For instance, in
1877, while a student at Oriel College, he declared proudly: ‘I contend that we
are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the
better it is for the human race.’4 The belief in the intellectual hierarchy between
different races was paralleled by the confidence in the superiority of the ‘white
race’ and of its ‘civilizational’ mission,5 which was typical of European colonial
programmes and of European racism more generally.
The second part of the nineteenth century was a period of intense pro-
ductivity in the history of race, as well as one of profound changes in the
political landscape of Europe.6 These changes, prompted as much by political
events, such as revolutions of 1848 or the unification of Italy (1861) and Ger-
many (1871), as by trans-European imperialist collaboration, such as Berlin
78 Marius Turda
Conference on West Africa of 1884–1885,7 reflected the convergence between
racial and national ideas.8 To some extent, the growing importance of race in
shaping the West’s cultural perception of itself and of others was to be expected;
it had been frequently asserted since the early modern period, if not earlier.9
On the other hand, however, the ordering of the world into different races
and cultures, which the philosophers of the Enlightenment had already codi-
fied in their writings,10 turned increasingly racist and Eurocentric by the mid-
nineteenth century.
This new way of conceptualising race was fuelled by a complex cluster of
ideas about civilization, progress, social evolution and biological determinism,
put forward by a number of authors, including Immanuel Kant (1724–1804),
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), Auguste Comte (1798–1857),
Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Ernest Renan (1823–1892), Paul Broca (1824–
1880), Max Müller (1823–1900), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Her-
bert Spencer (1820–1903). Oriented and guided by the ‘Aryan model’ of
Western civilization, a new form of racial science emerged, which introduced
not only a biologised interpretation of human differences but also ‘a telos sup-
posedly exemplified in the history and developmental trajectory of Western
European peoples’.11 As Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) noted:
The result of this outburst was a new view of history revealing the rise and
fall of nations, the conquest of one people by another, the organization of
a conquered society by its new rules, the amalgamation of the conquerors
and conquered, and the gradual rise of a political society. The main phe-
nomenon which attracted attention was the period of the early migrations,
Greek and Teutonic, and the foundations of political units by conquering
peoples. It was into this pattern of history that the idea of races entered.12
At the same time, mid-nineteenth century theories of race also drew sustenance
from a tradition, often termed ‘anti-modern’13 or ‘anti-Enlightenment’,14 which
questioned the inevitability of human progress and its implicit teleology.
Conservative thinkers such as the Irish political theorist Edmund Burke (1729–
1797) and the French philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821), rejected
claims to universality made by those who, empowered by the historical changes
unleashed by the French Revolution, believed that modernity and its political
expression, the nation-state, would succeed in harmonising apparently irrecon-
cilable opposing cultural traditions and social relations. By blending conserva-
tism and scepticism, these thinkers sought to prevent what they perceived to
be the fragmentation of the body politic. They all drew upon philosophical
assumptions about human nature, which grew out of the experiences of the
French Revolution of 1789–1799, combined with a longing for the classical
culture of ancient Greece and Rome. One of the important features of this tra-
dition, and the one that I explore in this chapter, is the theory of racial decline
and its effect, the theory of racial renewal.
Teleology and race 79
Gobineau and racial fatalism
Arthur de Gobineau, who was born on 14 July 1816 and died on 13 Octo-
ber 1882,15 is credited with inventing modern racism in his Essai sur l’inégalité
des races humaines (usually translated into English as The Inequality of Human
Races), published in two volumes in 1853 and 1855.16 In many ways, this book
took those anthropologists, linguists, philosophers and historians, who were
interested in the ‘science of race’ at the time, by surprise.17 Gobineau was not
a trained scientist, although he was widely travelled and familiar with the rel-
evant scholarship. Perhaps this may explain why, in The Origins of Totalitarian-
ism, Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) described Gobineau as a ‘curious mixture of
frustrated nobleman and romantic intellectual who invented racism almost by
accident’.18
Although not a scientist, Gobineau put forward a racial vision of the world
that ‘integrated anthropological and scientific analyses attributing biological
superiority to “whites” with the broad literature asserting the cultural-historical
superiority of the West.’19 To be sure, like many European authors before and
after him, Gobineau too recognised the cultural and intellectual achievements
of the ‘white race’ and placed them high on the racial hierarchy of the world.
Yet his opinion of the contemporary Western culture was less flattering, calling
attention to the fact that in its current state, this culture was less impressive than
the ones that preceded it. If it managed to occupy a prominent place on the
map of universal history, Gobineau believed, it was rather as a negative than as
a positive example.20
The guiding principle of the book was spelled out in the dedication. Here,
Gobineau shares with the world his
conviction that the racial question overshadows all other problems of his-
tory, that it holds the key to them all, and that the inequality of the races
from whose fusion a people is formed is enough to explain the whole
course of its destiny.21
By the mid-nineteenth century, such views were not at all extreme. In 1850,
the Scottish physician and anatomist Robert Knox (1791–1862) published
his The Races of Men, in which he too declared ‘it is simply a fact, the most
remarkable, the most comprehensive, which philosophy has announced. Race
is everything: literature, science, art, in a word civilization, depend on it’.22
If the pre-eminence of race in human history was one argument, the decline
of civilization was another. ‘The fall of civilizations’ was for Gobineau
the most striking and, at the same time, the darkest of all phenomena of
history. It is a calamity that strikes fear into the soul, and yet has always
something so mysterious and so vast in reserve, that the thinker is never
weary of looking at it, of studying it, of groping for its secrets.23
80 Marius Turda
Race and civilization were intricately linked, the vitality of the former mea-
sured by the longevity of the latter. The decline of the race, in fact the gradual
degeneration of the ‘blood’ within the race, as Gobineau put it, brought with
it the fall of civilizations. The reasons for this outpouring of negative emo-
tions are explained by Gobineau’s deep dissatisfaction with the modern ideas of
democracy and liberalism, for which he blamed, in particular, the revolutions
that shook Europe in 1848.
Other authors, too, were concerned with the rise and fall of civilizations
throughout history, but it was Gobineau who offered an explanation based
on racial fatalism. For him, the history of human civilization is a history of
human decline, caused by miscegenation and degeneration. Gobineau’s reading
of human history was bleak and pessimistic. Having received the book, Alexis
de Tocqueville (1805–1859) remarked in a letter to him:
Your book is a sort of fatalism, or, if you like, of predestination – which,

of course, is different from the fatalism of St. Augustine, the Jansenists, and
the Calvinists, inasmuch as yours is based more upon the deterioration of
matter, or what you call race.24
Tocqueville was right: it was Gobineau’s insistence on the decline of the race,
combined with his ambition to explain this historical process in historical and
teleological terms, that stood out.
Described as a ‘tragic figure’25 of the mid-nineteenth century cultural land-
scape and as a ‘heretic’,26 Gobineau was a combination of both. His pessimistic
denouements of civilization struck a dissonant note, to be sure. Gobineau’s
racial fatalism was fuelled by his nostalgia for the ancient past and for the aris-
tocratic ancien regime but he was not simply a defender of tradition. He did not
want to return to the alleged roots and origins of a society, or to re-create a
racial utopia. His aim was to diagnose and to warn about the consequences
resulting from the continuous degeneration of the race. The Austrian-born
French psychiatrist Bénédict Augustin Morel (1809–1873) may have coined
the term dégénérescence in 1857,27 but Gobineau had already used dégénération
in his book. Several decades later, popular usage would convert the word into
a familiar eugenic epithet but its basic meaning had already been outlined by
Gobineau. ‘The word degenerate’, he explained,
when applied to a people, means (as it ought to mean) that the people has
no longer the same intrinsic value as it had before, because it has no longer
the same blood in its veins, continual adulterations having gradually affected
the quality of that blood. In other words, though the nation bears the name
given by its founders, the name no longer connotes the same race; in fact,
the man of a decadent time, the degenerate man properly so called, is a differ-
ent being, from the racial point of view, from the heroes of the great ages.28
Concerns with degeneration alongside urbanisation and modern progress, grew

in intensity by the mid-nineteenth century.29 Existing notions of biological
degeneracy were re-modelled by Gobineau to make a persuasive theory of
cultural decline caused by the disappearance of the superior racial elements
within the nation. Similar to Knox, Gobineau condemned racial mixing, as it
contributed significantly to the waning of ‘racial blood’. Yet contrary to Knox,
Gobineau was less impressed by biology, and his understanding of ‘blood’ was
premised not simply on medicine and physiology but, more importantly, on a
sense of historical destiny that a superior race once possessed.30
The notion of biological continuity between the past and present is thus
questioned. As members of the ‘primordial race-unit’ had either gradually
disappeared throughout history or their ‘blood’ had become mixed through
miscegenation, the purpose of their descendants is to prepare for the final dis-
solution. ‘The inappropriate metaphor of “blood” as the carrier of mental
and moral qualities, lent’, as Peter Gay remarked, ‘a veneer of uprightness to
coarsest prejudices’.31 Prejudiced he certainly was, but Gobineau looked at
‘blood’ as a biological entity and the supreme agent of his naturalist teleology.
The ultimate purpose of any race is to keep its ‘blood’ as pure as possible and
Gobineau invoked a number of ‘historical’ examples, including the Jews, the
Kurds, the Hungarians, the Romanians and Croats, ‘who feel a repugnance to
marrying outside their own village’. He then generalised, assuming that ‘the
human race in all its branches has a secret repulsion from the crossing of the
blood, a repulsion which in many of its branches is invincible, and in others is
only conquered to a slight extent’.32 Simply put, and in keeping with his belief
in ‘strong and weak races’, Gobineau asserts that there are two universal laws
governing relations between races:
one of repulsion, the other of attraction; these act with different force on
different peoples. The first is fully respected only by those races which can
never raise themselves above the elementary completeness of the tribal life,
while the power of the second, on the contrary, is the more absolute, as
the racial units on which it is exercised are more capable of development.33
Development, however, did not prevent fatalism and determinism. The teleo-
logical paradigm was again employed: once the race ‘has grown’, Gobineau
notes, ‘it has only two possibilities. One or other of the two destinies is inevi-
table. It will either conquer or be conquered’.34
This was the dichotomous trajectory along which human races had pro-
gressed in history, with a major focus on keeping the boundaries between the
conquerors and conquered unbroken. However, as these boundaries became
increasingly porous and as those conquered became more dominant culturally,
socially and politically, the superior race of the conquerors was doomed to
extinction. ‘I can say positively’, Gobineau remarked,
that a people will never die, if it remains eternally composed of the same
national elements. If the empire of Darius had, at the battle of Arbela,
been able to fill its ranks with Persians, that is to say with real Aryans;
if the Romans of the later Empire had had a Senate and an army of the
82 Marius Turda
same stock as that which existed at the time of the Fabii, their domination
would never have come to an end. So long as they kept the same purity of
blood, the Persians and Romans would have lived and reigned.35
Racial mixing, according to Gobineau, fundamentally disrupted the gene-

alogies of Western culture, with each major collapse of a civilization (e.g.,
ancient Greece and the Roman empire) representing a rupture in the history
of the ‘white race’. As Robert J. C. Young put it: ‘Each new racial ramifica-
tion of miscegenation traced an historical trajectory that betrayed a narrative
of conquest, absorption and inevitable decline.’36 Gobineau’s ‘lament for a lost
purity’37 echoed widely, particularly among those authors putting together the
racial claims of European cultural superiority.38 Notwithstanding their many
differences, the friendship with the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–
1883) proved decisive; indeed, ‘Gobineau and Gobinism first reached fame and
infamy as part of the Wagnerian movement.’39
The teleological philosophy of history in which Gobineau inserts his racial
fatalism does not allow for individuals to change their destiny. His racial fatal-
ism is matched only by his cultural pessimism. External factors, be they eco-
nomic, political or religious, do not count, as race is the sole custodian of
civilization. Gobineau rejects the possibility of the periodic regeneration of
history. Using this as his guiding argument, he then turns to discuss the differ-
ences between human races. These differences are understood teleologically in
terms of natural predispositions of ‘stronger’ and ‘weaker’ races, between those
‘capable’ and those ‘incapable’ of civilization. Predictably, he places the ‘white
race-the Aryans’ at the top of the hierarchy. In the same fashion, ‘the yellow
and the black races’ are described as ‘inferior’ and ‘always and everywhere’ try-
ing to contaminate ‘the pure white blood’. As only the branches of the ‘white
race’ were capable of creating civilization and high forms of culture, any dilu-
tion of its ‘blood’ was, in effect, another step towards the final demise.
Miscegenation is both affirmed and negated simultaneously. Racial mixing
between white and non-white races led to the degeneration of the first but to
the enriching of the latter. ‘The mixtures’, he concludes, ‘no doubt, have ben-
efitted the yellows and the blacks, and thus even these mixtures have created
something in the world’. This process consisting in fashioning a historically
specific drama: the continuous erosion of the racial axis around which human
civilization is built. Specifically, this means the end of history, or in Gobineau’s
words, ‘the Aryan blood, again and again rejuvenating inferior peoples, has
finally exhausted itself ’.40
The inferiority of the non-white races was asserted and promoted long before
Gobineau, and continued to dominate the discussion about racial difference
well into the twentieth century. Esteemed philosophers such as David Hume,
in his ‘Of National Characters’ (1748) and Immanuel Kant in his Observations
on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764) had written with unapologetic
ease about the intellectual inferiority of the ‘Negroes’. Tzvetan Todorov is right
in suggesting that in asserting the superiority of the ‘white race’, Gobineau did
not add much to the existing discussion of race. As Todorov further notes,
‘The interesting aspect of his speculation lies elsewhere: not in his views on
race, but in his ideas about what he calls civilization (as it relates to race, to be
sure).’41 But it proves difficult to confine Gobineau’s civilization to a simple
definition. Gobineau’s use of the word ‘civilization’ may not be as ‘new’ and
‘idiosyncratic’, as Todorov suggests, but its use is within the tradition of the
Enlightenment that established it. And if there was one idea that Gobineau
shared with other authors who contributed to the discussion about the nature
of ‘European civilization’ at the time, it was that such ‘civilization’ did certainly
exist. As François Guizot (1787–1874), author of a widely read Histoire générale
de la civilisation en Europe (translated into English as The History of Civilization
in Europe), first published in 1828, remarked: ‘I have used the term European
civilization, because it is evident that there is an European civilization.’ There
were, he continued, ‘various major contributors to this cultural reality, most
notably the Spanish, the Italians, the English and the Germans, but it was the
French and France who reigned supreme’.42
In this significant aspect, Gobineau, however, departs from Guizot. He cer-
tainly did not privilege the French over the Germans or the English, and when
he glanced upon the cultures of his time, he did not spare them the gaze of his
pessimism. Racial miscegenation was as inevitable in the West as it was in the
East, and Gobineau’s teleological reading of universal history allowed for no dif-
ferent outcome. Racial degeneration led ineluctably to the end of civilization.
Anxiety and renewal

Scholars who looked closely at Gobineau’s thinking acknowledge, however,
that if civilization were a reality rather than a construct, it was subtly strati-
fied, often in distinctly opposing categories, including mobility/ permanence,
male/female, strong/weak, and so on. Although his criticism is directed at
modern civilization, especially in its political form (as already noted, Gobineau
repudiates individualism, democracy and nationalism), its sources reach into
the distant past. This was the ancient past, to which all racial theorists returned
in order to overcome the anxieties of the present.
Gobineau’s theories fell on fertile ground. The nineteenth century was a
spawning ground for theories of development, growth and decay, ultimately
for a re-instatement of teleology. Few of them, however, were as pessimistic
as Gobineau’s racial fatalism, and even fewer saw no salvation ahead of them.
In fact, most theories of race put forward at the end of the nineteenth and
early twentieth century were exceedingly bold in promising their followers
not only contentment in this life but also the possibility of racial renewal in the
future. Yet even when disagreeing with his teleological diagnosis, these authors
endorsed Gobineau’s main racial warning, namely that miscegenation between
‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races was not to be permitted.
Take, for instance, Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), who, like
Gobineau, gravitated towards Wagner and his circle of German nationalists.
84 Marius Turda
Mostly known for his 1899 Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Foun-
dations of the Nineteenth Century), Chamberlain too proposed that the history of
the modern European nations was cyclical, punctuated by the periodic recur-
rence of regeneration and decline.43 Contrary to Gobineau, however, Cham-
berlain fancied himself as a scientist; he did, indeed, study under zoologist Carl
Vogt (1817–1895) in Geneva and under botanist Julius von Wiesner (1838–
1916) in Vienna. His interpretation of race, however, was simultaneously bio-
logical and cultural. Various scientific and historical assessments provided him
with compelling foundations upon which to establish his theory of race but,
ultimately, it was the intuitive, almost spiritual, definition that he preferred.
‘Nothing is so convincing as the consciousness of the possession of Race’,
Chamberlain suggested. ‘The man who belongs to a distinct, pure race, never
loses the sense of it’, and further, ‘Race lifts a man above himself: it endows
him with extraordinary – I might almost say supernatural – powers’.44
For Chamberlain, the individual’s intrinsic telos is to become complete and
fulfilled within the race or the nation. He believed that each individual has
something of the collective race itself, and it was within the national com-
munity and as a representative of that particular community that one could
achieve greatness. None of this eroded individual character, however, which,
if endowed with superior racial qualities, would flourish in any circumstances.
The relationship between the individual and the collective forms the basis upon
which Chamberlain attempts to construct his theory of racial renewal. Echoing
other authors – including Gobineau, Wagner and Nietzsche – Chamberlain
asserts that the philosophical articulations, forming the intellectual core of the
anthropological agenda of the project of modernity, were first problematised by
the ancient Greek philosophers. Much of Chamberlain’s racial promise is to be
found in his argument for reconciling their views. He thus criticised those who
embraced Aristotle’s ‘teleological theory of the universe’ but chastised Homer
for his anthropomorphism. According to him, Aristotle’s teleology,
that is, the theory of finality according to the measure of human reason, is
anthropomorphism in its highest potency. When man can grasp the plan of
the cosmos, when he can say whence the world comes, whither it goes and
what the purpose of each individual thing is, then he is really himself God
and the whole world is ‘human’; this is expressly stated by the Orphics
and – Aristotle.45
What Chamberlain, then, suggests, is a reworking of the notion of teleology

that could serve as a guide for his likewise revised notion of human perfect-
ibility. At this juncture, he inserts his request to re-evaluate Christianity’s Jewish
and Semitic origins, and perhaps there is no better indication of this disruptive
narrative than Chamberlain’s attempt to portray Jesus as ‘Aryan’. To carry out
this fusion of Aryanism with Christianity, European races and the Teutonic
ones, in particular, must – Chamberlain believes – excise the Jewish influence
from their history and thus weave a new racial future.
Much of the promise of racial renewal is to be found in Chamberlain’s effort
to reclaim and celebrate the classical roots of European civilization and, in so
doing, to counteract Gobineau’s racial fatalism. The recovered telos is then used
to guide the transformation of the political, social, cultural and intellectual life
of the modern Teutons (die Germanen). To translate this idea into action was
not an easy thing to do, but it won growing support from various cultural and
political groups, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, who greatly appreciated Cham-
berlain’s work.
Racial renewal was many things to many people, and Chamberlain was not
immune to the overall fin-de-siècle pessimism and ‘the politics of cultural
despair’ characterising Germany and Central Europe at the time.46 It is, then,
not surprising that he reiterated some of Gobineau’s alarmist predictions. Yet
Chamberlain’s racial interpretation of history is different from Gobineau’s: ‘The
sound and normal evolution of man’, he argues, ‘is not from race to raceless-
ness, but on the contrary from racelessness to ever clearer distinction of race’.47
Paul Gilroy has fittingly described Chamberlain’s racial world view ‘as a strong
bridge between Kant and Hitler over which that noble hero, the Teutonic
Plato, could drive his historic battle chariot through the chaos of racelessness’.48
For Gobineau, racial perfection existed in the past; it was replaced by
racial fatalism. Chamberlain projects racial perfection into the future, still to
be attained he describes a process of human perfectibility as yet unfinished,
and as such, he is following Immanuel Kant’s teleological imperative: men
must become what they are meant to be!49 As Michael Biddiss aptly notes,
Chamberlain’s ‘discourse is not of racial perfection already attained, but of a
process of perfectibility as yet unfinished – a process of Volkwerdung (or ethnic
fulfilment)’.50
A corollary to the importance of race in shaping the cultural history of man-
kind was the necessity of refuting the importance of racial purity – an argument
which anguished many racial theorists at the time. Chamberlain employed a
different technique: he argued that the mixing of races could have both nega-
tive and positive consequences. This was even a necessary process, since it con-
tributed to the augmentation of superior racial qualities. Darwin’s laws on the
obliteration of racial characters by perpetual cross-breeding under controlled
conditions asserted that a race originated as a result of the specific combina-
tion of geographical and historical conditions, which in turn ‘ennobled’ racial
essence through inbreeding and artificial selection. Chamberlain highlighted
the concepts of ‘crossing’ and ‘breeding’ as the two most important factors in
determining the character of race. Yet uncontrolled racial mixing – especially
between races of different origin – would jeopardise the qualities of the supe-
rior race. It was this insistence on racial degeneration that inspired many of
Chamberlain’s followers in East-Central Europe, for instance.51
Consequently, Chamberlain established five principles meant to keep racial
qualities from degenerating, or in Chamberlain’s stylistic phrasing, ‘the pros-
titution of the noble in the arms of the ignoble’. The superior ‘quality of the
material’ (the first principle) in a race could be assured only by a carefully
86 Marius Turda
orchestrated ‘inbreeding’ (the second principle) and ‘artificial selection’ (the
third principle). However, ‘racial crossing’ (the fourth principle) would not
be fortuitous, and Chamberlain advocated ‘the necessity of strictly limiting
these crossings both in respect of choice and time’ (the fifth principle).52 Only
the race successfully combining these five principles was destined for survival
and historical achievement. In modern times, Chamberlain thought the Teu-
tons (die Germanen) were such a race. Die Germanen extolled by Chamberlain
included numerous modern European nations, from Italians to Bulgarians.
Another significant difference between Gobineau and Chamberlain is that
of anti-Semitism. When it came to Jews, and the alleged danger they posed
to contemporary Europe, Chamberlain’s narrative is punctuated by references
to ideas of Jewish racial inferiority, whereas Gobineau’s remains constant in its
judgment of all contemporary Europeans. As known, Chamberlain portrayed
the history of the West as an incessant conflict between the spiritual and culture-
creating Aryans and the mercenary and materialistic Jews.53 Chamberlain pre-
sented Christianity as a ‘moral revolt against decadence and degeneration’, with
modern Germans as the heralds of the new world order – the saviours of
Europe and the creators of the modern mind, on account of luminaries such
as the theologian Martin Luther (1483–1546) and, of course, Immanuel Kant.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, anti-Semitism and racism had
grown in intensity. European nations were in need not only of protection but
also of sound racial genealogies. The effort to invent these is discernible in the
writings and thinking of those intellectuals, writers and politicians who had
taken part in the construction of a world view based on race since the eigh-
teenth century, if not earlier.
To be sure, no ideology or political movement could be simply traced to
one individual or a single idea. Accordingly, to assume that Gobineau’s theory
of racial fatalism and Chamberlain’s theory of racial renewal led directly to
National Socialism is certainly an exaggeration. Yet it must be stressed here that
both Gobineau and Chamberlain contributed to the emergence of a European
racial teleology based on the purpose of the ‘Aryan/white race’ in history. In
many ways, this sense of purpose perfectly embodies the belief in the superior-
ity of Europeans, demonstrating the intimate relationship between race, culture
and civilization. Both Gobineau and Chamberlain glorified the ‘Aryans’ as the
finest racial types that ever existed. Yet while they agreed that the ‘Aryan’ civili-
zation was living out its last moments in the personification of the ‘Germanic/
Teutonic races’ in Europe, they saw different historical trajectories for these
races, in the present and the future.
If racial anxiety prompted Gobineau to give in to his natural pessimism, in
Chamberlain’s case, it fuelled his belief that racial renewal was ultimately pos-
sible. It was not too late, Chamberlain believed, to redirect Gobineau’s telos of
history towards a positive outcome; positive, of course, for the die Germanen
he so much admired. Gobineau’s prophesies of racial doom echoed widely, but
few racial authors after him advocated resignation. On the contrary, as the his-
tory of racism in the twentieth century proves only too tragically, Gobineau’s
many admirers were later to be found amongst many German nationalists and
anti-Semites, and not only there.54 None other than Élie Faure, (1873–1937),
the French art historian, confessed in 1923 that
since I read the Essai, every time some conflict stirred up the hidden
sources of my being, I have felt that a relentless battle went on in my soul,
the battle between the black, the yellow, the Semite and the Aryans.55
His words signify the indisputable link between race and modernity, but also,
much more importantly for our purpose here, how this link legitimised the
revival of a teleologically infused narrative about the existence of a superior
European culture. This claim is, in other words, a historical narrative which
attributes the ‘white race’ the chimerical right to dominate and control the
others.
Conclusion
The language of fatalism and renewal pervades the modern literature on race.
At the same time, the concept of race was central to processes of national devel-
opment and nation building engendered by modernity. Those who embraced
it proudly claimed to have established a new historical tradition that projected
the nation into the future without denying it its past. As Chamberlain proudly
claimed: ‘We had to begin to rear the edifice of an absolutely new philosophy,
which should answer to the requirements of the Teutonic horizon and the
Teutonic tendency of mind.’56
Race, in various permutations, shaped the debate on the nation and national
character. Writers engaged in the sacred mission of keeping the ‘soul’ of the
nation alive were all too aware that the fear of racial decline could activate
strategies of defence and protection. As the history of the twentieth century
demonstrates, these strategies failed as often as they succeeded (mostly in the
guise of ethnic nationalism), producing new anxieties in their turn. The natural
response to the sense of loss and finitude that racial fatalism planted into the
nationalist rhetoric and discourse during the early decades of the twentieth
century was often the embrace of radical forms of ideology, most notably fas-
cism, Nazism and communism.
For almost two centuries, Gobineau’s and Chamberlain’s racial world view
appealed to those entertaining the idea of Europe’s ‘superior civilization’. Equally
important, it fit perfectly with the growing crisis of cultural confidence and its
multiple reconfigurations exploited so vigorously by twentieth-century politi-
cal regimes. Today, in a world that was becoming increasingly fragmented,
the belief in the superiority of the ‘white race’ continues to attract supporters
in so many different countries, from Europe to New Zealand and Austra-
lia. Gobineau’s conviction that racial mixing leads to the decline and ultimate
demise of a civilization persists still, accompanied by a similar sense of disillu-
sionment about the current state of Western politics.
88 Marius Turda
This coincides with a developing anxiety about the failure of culture and
education as an engine of inclusive integration and of the open dialogue across
religious and ethnic divisions more generally and an awareness of the reluctance
of many ‘white majorities’ to accept the demographic change of their com-
munities. One measure of this is the outpouring of sentiments about national
identity and particularly its ‘protection’ that one hears daily across Europe, the
UK and the USA.
To return to controversial historical figures such as Cecil Rhodes, there is
rich material to be explored in the history of European racism’s enduring appeal
to contemporary sensibilities, not only in Britain and certainly not only in con-
nection to empire but also in relation to the crisis of collective identity many
countries are experiencing at the moment. In response to an ever-increasing
sense of crisis, many ‘white’ British, Europeans and North Americans tend to
adopt a racist language and posture (which often translates into practice!) that
is boldly set against the alleged ethnic nightmare proclaimed by some politi-
cians and populist demagogues. We are witnessing a resurgence of the idea of
‘race’, expressed in a political vocabulary that utilises strategies of coping with
an identity, which, allegedly, is under threat by ‘enemies’ without and within
the nation. The use of such language reflects the enduring legacy of racial
fatalism and determinism put forward by nineteenth-century authors such as
Gobineau.
Longing for a national, heroic past has also brought forward a yearning for
racial solidarity, similar to the one described by Chamberlain. The idea of
‘race’ has always lived off those moments in history in which Europe reigned
supreme, culturally, intellectually and politically. To be sure, current defend-
ers of national ‘values’ do not refer directly to Gobineau or Chamberlain
(both authors discredited by the Nazi ideology); nonetheless, the idea of ‘race’
remains embedded in their conceptualisation of their own country as ‘white’
and Christian. In the twenty-first century, the assumption is that ‘race’ has
been de-scienticised, de-ritualised and de-politicised, but the truth is that ‘race’
continues to lend itself to theories of social, cultural and political inequality.
We are, in some cases, witnessing the return to more aggressive forms of racial
fatalism, which echo the pessimistic cultural warnings put forward by Gobineau
in the nineteenth century. To trace the impact of these ideas and to document
their lingering effect on current political proclivities means also to document
the relationship between teleology and race in all its meandering ramifications.
Notes
1 J. Morris, Oxford, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 133 [first published in
1965].
2 At the same time, Oriel College also commissioned a statue of Rhodes. The existence
of his statue in one of the world’s most prestigious universities is, as expected, seen as an
affront to current cultural and political sensibilities. A few years ago, students in Oxford
have petitioned to have the statue removed, prompted by the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ protest
movement, established in March 2015 in South Africa, and which successfully cam-
paigned for the removal of a statue of Rhodes from the University of Cape Town.
3 See L. Mitchell, The Life of the Rt. Hon: Cecil John Rhodes, 1953–1902, 2. vols., London:
Edward Arnold, 1910.
4 Quoted in J. E. Flint, Cecil Rhodes, London: Hutchinson, 1976, p. 248.
5 From a vast literature, see A. L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of
Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997;
R. Mohanram, Imperial White: Race, Diaspora, and the British Empire, Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 2007; M. B. Jerónimo, The ‘Civilising Mission’ of Portuguese
Colonialism, 1870–1930, New York: Palgrave, 2015; D. Gilmour, The British in India:
Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience, London: Allen Lane, 2018; and R. Gildea,
Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present, Cambridge: Cam-
6 L. Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, New
York: Basic Books, 1974. See also M. Turda and M. S. Quine, Historicizing Race, London:
Bloomsbury, 2018, esp. pp. 33–48.
7 L. James, Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa, 1830–1990, London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016.
8 See L. A. Ureña, Valerio Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of
Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920, Athens, OH: Ohio University
Press, 2019.
9 The premises of this world view are shallow, to say the least, but the notion that ‘white
Europeans’ were endowed with remarkable qualities had a long history. Some argue that
it went back to the ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle; others suggest that it was
connected to historical events accompanying the creation of the first European colonial
empires. See D. M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003 and F. Bethen-
court, Racisms From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
10 See E. C. Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
11 L. T. Outlaw, Jr., On Race and Philosophy, New York and London: Routledge, 1996,
p. 55.
12 E. Voegelin, ‘The Growth of the Race Idea,’ The Review of Politics, 2(3), 1940, pp. 297–8.
13 A. Compagnon, Les antimodernes: de Joseph de Maistre à Roland Barthes, Paris: Gallimard,
2005.
14 Z. Sternhell, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, tr. D. Maisel, New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2010. See also C. Paligot, La République raciale: Paradigme racial et idéologie
républicaine (1860–1930), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006.
15 On Gobineau, see J. Buenzod, La formation de la pensée de Gobineau et l’Essai sur l'inégalité
des races humaines, Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1967; A. Smith, Gobineau et l’Histoire Naturelle,
Geneva and Paris: Droz, 1984; and M. D. Biddiss, Father of Racist Ideology: The Social and
Political Thought of Count Gobineau, New York: Weybright and Talley, 1970.
16 Celebrated French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss speaks of Gobineau as ‘the father
of racial theories (see Race et histoire, first published 1952, republished Paris: Éditions
Denoël, 1987, p. 10). Similarly, Michael D. Biddiss calls him the “Father of Racism” in
his introduction to Gobineau: Selected Political Writings, ed. and introd. M. D. Biddiss,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1970, p. 13.
17 See M. Turda and M. S. Quine, Historicizing Race, London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
18 H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Cleveland and New York: A Meridian Book,
1958, 2nd edn., p. 172.
19 G. Blue, ‘Gobineau on China: Race Theory, the “Yellow Peril,” and the Critique of
Modernity,’ Journal of World History, 10(1), 1999, p. 98.
20 As remarked also by Gregory Blue: ‘Gobineau considered the modern West inferior
overall to early Aryan civilizations and [. . .] denied it pre-eminence in politics, morals,
and the arts.’ In his ‘Gobineau on China,’ p. 103, n. 35.
21 A. de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, tr. A. Collins, London: William Heine-
mann, 1915, p. xiv.
90 Marius Turda
22 R. Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment, Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1850, p. 7.
23 Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, p. 1.
24 Quoted in O. Levy, ‘The Life Work and Influence of Count Arthur de Gobineau: An
Introductory Essay,’ in A. de Gobineau (ed.), The Renaissance, New York: G. P. Put-
nam’s Sons, 1927, pp. xxii–xxiii. Gobineau was Tocqueville’s secretary when the latter
served as France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1849. See M. D. Biddiss, ‘Prophecy and
Pragmatism: Gobineau’s Confrontation with Tocqueville,’ Historical Journal, 13(4), 1970,
pp. 611–33. See also, E. Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race: New Racisms and the
Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010, esp. pp. 44–62.
25 J. Boissel, Gobineau (1816–1882): Un Don Quichotte tragique, Paris: Hachette, 1981.
26 S. Kale, ‘Gobineau, Racism and Legitimism: A Royalist Heretic in Nineteenth-Century
France,’ Modern Intellectual History, 59(1), 2010, pp. 33–61.
27 B. A. Morel, Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine
et des causes qui produisent ces variétés maladives, Paris: Masson, 1857. See also, J.-C. Cof-
fin, ‘Le thème de la dégénérescence de la race autour de 1860,’ History of European Ideas,
15(4–6), 1992, pp. 727–32.
29 See S. C. Gilman, ‘Degeneracy and Race in the Nineteenth Century,’ Journal of Ethnic
Studies, 10(4), 1983, pp. 27–50 and B. Luckin, ‘Revisiting the Idea of Degeneration in
Urban Britain, 1830–1900,’ Urban History, 33(2), 2006, pp. 234–52.
30 See J. Nale, ‘Arthur de Gobineau on Blood and Race,’ Critical Philosophy of Race, 2(1),
2014, pp. 106–24.
31 P. Gay, Schnitzler’s Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815–1914, New York:
W. W. Norton, 2002, p. 112.
36 R. J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London and New
York: Routledge, 1995, p. 169.
37 M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1: The Fabrica-
tion of Ancient Greece, 1785–1985, London: Vintage Books, 1991, p. 344 [first published
in 1987].
38 The first Gobineau Society was established in Germany in 1894. Not surprisingly, per-
haps, Gobineau’s thinking also influenced Friedrich Nietzsche. See E. J. Young, Gobineau
und der Rassimus. Eine Kritik der anthropologischen Geschichtestheorie, Meisenheim: Anton
Hain, 1968, pp. 270–84.
39 M. D. Biddiss, ‘Introduction,’ in Gobineau: Selected Political Writings, London: Jonathan
Cape, 1970, p. 30. See also M. P. Steinberg, ‘Race and Richard Wagner,’ in A. Morris-
Reich and D. Rupnow (eds.), Ideas of ‘Race’ in the History of the Humanities, Cham:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 195–214.
40 Quoted in Levy, ‘The Life Work and Influence of Count Arthur de Gobineau,’ p. xv.
41 T. Todorov, On Human Diversity: On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism and Exoticism
in French Thought, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 131.
42 F. P. G. Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe, tr. W. Halitt, New York: The Colonial
Press, 1899, revised edn., p. 2. For a good discussion of such ideas see G. Varouxakis,
Victorian Political Thought on France and the French, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, esp. pp.
31–56.
43 H. S. Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., tr. J. Lees, London:
John Lane, 1910 [first published in 1899].
44 Chamberlain, Foundations, vol. 1, p. 269.
45 Chamberlain, Foundations, vol. 1, pp. 78–9.
46 As discussed by F. R. Stern in his The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the
Germanic Ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 [first published 1961].
48 P. Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race, London: Penguin
Books, 2000, p. 63.
49 Chamberlain published a major study on Immanuel Kant entitled Immanuel Kant. Die
Persönlichkeit als Einführung in das Werk in 1905. According to Lord Redesdale (1837–
1916), who wrote the introduction to the English edition of Die Grundlagen, Chamber-
lain considered his study on Kant to be the most important of his works.
50 M. Biddiss, ‘History as Destiny: Gobineau, H. S. Chamberlain and Spengler,’ Transactions
of the Royal Historical Society, 7, 1997, p. 81.
51 See, for example, M. Turda, ‘Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism in
Early-Twentieth Century Romania,’ Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 9(4),
2008, pp. 437–53.
52 Chamberlain, The Foundations, vol. 1, p. 288.
53 G. G. Field, Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
54 See P. A. Fortier, ‘Gobineau and German Racism,’ Comparative Literature, 19(4), 1967,
pp. 341–50.
55 Quoted in Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 175.
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5 Charles Darwin and the
argument for design
David Redvaldsen
The argument for design, also known as the teleological argument, finds rea-
sons for the existence of God in the purposeful way the universe is ordered.
Teleology, the doctrine of ends, implies that the universe or human society
progresses over time towards a goal. The theory of evolution, which has change
at its core, might, therefore, seem to be well aligned with a teleological con-
ception of the universe, especially because it is often interpreted to mean that
human beings gradually get better. In this chapter, we investigate Charles Dar-
win’s ideas concerning religion and ask whether his theory lends any support
to the teleological argument.
The nineteenth century witnessed Great Britain’s rise from being simply a
great power to being the pre-eminent power.1 The Victorian era was one of
optimism and significant material progress. It was also a time of uncertainty, as
scientific discoveries challenged the self-satisfied and complacent world view
of the bourgeoisie. Possibly the most startling of these was the concept of geo-
logical time. Sir Charles Lyell published three volumes of his Principles of Geol-
ogy between 1830 and 1833. It showed how the principal features of the earth
had been made gradually from small shifts over an immense period of time, a
theory that was known as uniformitarianism. More importantly, it buttressed
the truth that was already known among geologists: Earth was not thousands
but millions of years old. Lyell suffered a crisis of faith on the basis of seeing
for himself what a puny part humans had in the cosmos. How was it possible
to square just seventy-six generations of our species from the beginning of the
world to the common era, as claimed in The Gospel of Luke, with the Oligo-
cene era perhaps 65 million years ago? If Luke was right, humankind had been
on the planet for little more than 4,300 years. It seemed unlikely that humans
could be the pivot around which everything revolved under such conditions.
Charles Darwin and his religious views

Charles Darwin was also a supporter of uniformitarianism. Lyell’s theory involv-
ing slow change in the natural features of the earth by processes which were
still operational was an inspiration for his own analogous theory on animals and
plants later. On board the Beagle in 1833, his sister Catherine asked whether
Charles Darwin and the argument for design 95
he had received Volume 3 of Principles of Geology, since she had been told that
Charles had independently hit upon the same theory as Lyell.2 Darwin, who
was born in 1809 and died in 1882, would be entangled in scientific discover-
ies and controversies throughout his life. At the outset of his life, though, he
was not particularly studious. Not making much progress in his medical studies
at Edinburgh University, his father suggested he might like to be a clergyman
instead.3 Darwin was attracted to the lifestyle of a country parson, but was
unsure whether he could publicly identify with all aspects of the Anglican faith.
He solved this dilemma by reading several books on divinity, including Pearson
on the Creed, and satisfied himself that he was ready. He quickly accepted the
literal truth of everything in the Bible.4 He had shown some interest prior to
this, writing to his sister Caroline from Edinburgh in 1826, thanking her for
her advice on the Bible and saying that the Gospels were his favourite part.5
Darwin spent some time taking Greek lessons, preparatory to matriculating
at Cambridge University. Upon arrival at this ancient seat of learning, he found
that the set syllabus for the bachelor’s degree included William Paley’s Evidences
of Christianity and his Moral Philosophy. These he enjoyed and studied very assidu-
ously along with Paley’s Natural Theology, which he said helped him to cultivate
his mind.6 Apart from these and Euclid’s geometry, the other course texts were
wasted on him according to his own account. Although Darwin continued
describing himself as not much of a scholar, his training made him a relatively
intellectual Christian when he was a young man.
Darwin was still a (somewhat opportunistic) Christian when he joined an
expedition circumnavigating the globe aboard the rebuilt brig the Beagle. He
was laughed at by the ship’s officers for quoting the Bible as the final word
on some moral matter.7 In fact, he was becoming more critical of revealed
religion at this time and the first doubts set in which in due course were to
overturn the whole edifice of Darwin’s Christianity. The first sticking point
was the Old Testament, which he could not believe, neither in its portrayal of
God as a cruel and revengeful tyrant, nor in its obviously mistaken history of
the world. He could not accept that the Old Testament had any more truth in
it than the sacred books of the Hindus or the beliefs of any barbarian. This led
to his having a debilitating thought-experiment: suppose that God gave a new
revelation to the Hindus. Would He allow it to be connected to the Hindu
deities? For Darwin, the answer to that was in the negative and it logically fol-
lowed that neither would God allow a revelation about Himself to be clothed
in the nomenclature of the Old Testament.
Doubts were also assailing Darwin with regard to the New Testament. The
fixity of the laws of nature, of which he was convinced, meant that miracles
simply were not possible. The Gospels had been written down long after the
events which had supposedly occurred, were not by eyewitnesses and differed
in important respects. Men living at the time must be superstitious to a degree
almost incomprehensible to modern, rational persons. Moreover, religions now
universally admitted to be false had formerly spread like wildfire. It had hap-
pened gradually, but Darwin had lost his faith once and for all.8
96 David Redvaldsen
Thus, concurrent with the research that would in time make Darwin the
most famous naturalist of all time, he abandoned Christianity. He would later
answer his cousin Francis Galton’s enquiry for the volume English Men of Science
(1874), saying that he had given up common religious beliefs on the basis of
independent reflection.9 However, he was relatively cagey about the con-
clusions to which he had come, and this continued after his death when his
wife Emma wished to suppress the part of his autobiography which was most
critical of Christianity. He continued to employ conventional phrases with a reli-
gious content, though not to the same extent. In 1829, when Darwin was still
a believer, his second cousin Mary Ann Bristowe died. In his letter of con-
dolence to her brother, William Darwin Fox, a close friend from his time in
Cambridge, Charles was fulsome in the comforts offered by religion in such
adverse circumstances.10 Fox was a fellow Christian and went on to become
a clergyman. But contrast this letter with another to Fox written twenty-two
years later, announcing the death of Darwin’s favourite child, Annie, at the age
of ten. In this letter, Darwin used only the phrase ‘Thank God she suffered hardly
at all, & expired as tranquilly as a little angel. [. . .] Poor dear little soul. Well it
is all over.’11 Other than this, there is no reference to the Bible, God or other
religious imagery. Five years later, Fox wrote to Darwin about Annie’s grave,
and Darwin did not mention God at all in his reply.12
Although no longer a Christian, Darwin never set out to challenge people
of faith and indeed tried to mollify them as much as possible. When he pub-
lished his ground-breaking theory On the Origin of Species in 1859, he kept
humans out of it, mentioned the Creator at several places in the work and
linked Providence to natural selection through the book’s subtitle The Preser-
vation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The second edition included an
extract from a letter the Christian Socialist and vicar Charles Kingsley had sent
Darwin, approving of evolution:
I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity,

to believe that He created primal forms capable of self development into all
forms needful pro tempore & pro loco, as to believe that He required a fresh
act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He himself had made.13
But even so, Darwin was attacked by theists for the implications of his theory.
Having no choice, he defended evolution, and his dismissal of the various
theologically grounded objections is a basis for non-belief today. He also gained
confidence as evolution was accepted by the scientific community, which may
have made him less emollient.
The follow-up to the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man and Selection in
Relation to Sex, published in 1871, contained answers to the various objections
which had been made to evolution from either a scientific or theological point
of view. But while Darwin sought to show that his theory was reasonable in the
face of these challenges, he still did not wish to promote atheism. The Descent
of Man stated that while humans were indeed the descendants of animal-like
creatures, this need not cause any concern. At some point, Darwin stated, humans
had become immortal beings and exactly how that had happened was not
material.14 It is worth noting that Darwin himself did not believe humans were
immortal, but he wrote this to avoid ruffling feathers when he openly declared
what was already implicit in the theory of evolution. The anxiety on the part
of theists was caused precisely by the problem that Christianity saw animals as
not having souls, which made it harder to imagine how humans might have
received souls if we share common origins. Some even turned the matter on
its head and argued that since humans have souls and animals do not, evolution
simply could not be correct.
The argument for design

As an undergraduate, Darwin had been completely convinced by the argument
for design, which he had read in William Paley’s Natural Theology. In the sec-
ond sentence of the book, a watch is found on a heath while Paley is crossing it:
This is atheism; for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation

of design which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature, with
the difference on the side of nature of being greater and more, and that in
a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean, that the contrivances of
nature surpass the contrivances of art; in the complexity, subtility and curi-
osity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them
in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently
mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommo-
dated to their end or suited to their office, than are the most perfect pro-
ductions of human ingenuity.
I know no method better for introducing so large a subject, than that
of comparing a single thing with a single thing; an eye, for example, with
a telescope. As far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is pre-
cisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the
telescope was made for assisting it.15
This is a powerful argument, which is still influential or ought to be. But as

Darwin gained greater knowledge of the natural world, he came to believe it
was mistaken. In his autobiography, Darwin stated that the argument for design
was defunct as a result of natural selection becoming known.16 Although the
features possessed by a creature had been selected over time to be useful and
were often fascinating, they were not in the same category as anything man-
made. The analogy fell down for reasons of teleology. Whatever has been made
by humans has always been made with a purpose in mind: a spear for hunting
or fighting, a watch for telling the time and coordinating events with other
humans better. The working of nature was due to variability and in accordance
with fixed laws. It is very difficult to see design behind organic beings because
they come into existence in many different forms. Species themselves were not
98 David Redvaldsen
even designed but were instead the result of the agglomeration of thousands of
different characteristics, whereby variants of species over time turned into new
species. Darwin’s analogy was that it was not designed that the wind would
blow in any particular direction (but all).
In the Origin of Species, Darwin freely admits that an organ as complicated
and perfect as the eye was difficult to conceive of as being the result of natural
selection. But if the intermediary stages whereby the transition took place
were considered, starting with a nerve which was sensitive to light and appre-
ciating that less perfect versions were also useful to their possessors, it was more
comprehensible that natural selection could, in fact, create such an organ.17 All
it required was heritability and variability. Natural selection would, over time,
produce an eye, by promoting the lines where the organ was most developed
and hindering the simultaneous lines where the organ of perception was less
well developed. It was a similar process to an individual climbing up a ladder
and then pushing it to the ground. So although on the face of it, the gradual
coming into being of the eye was hard to fathom, by understanding that the
process was very slow, requiring a stupendous number of generations, it was
indeed possible to imagine that natural selection could create the eye.
The process could also be reversed. This Darwin discussed in the context
of the use and disuse of organs. He believed that organs could be trained to
become better and such improvement was passed on to the offspring. Equally,
organs which were not used would atrophy or disappear in steps. Thus, for
some subterranean species, the eye conferred no advantage and was not, in
fact, in use. The effects of this disuse would shrink the eye over generations.
As Darwin wrote:
The eyes of moles and some burrowing rodents are rudimentary in size,
and in some cases are quite covered up by skin and fur. This state of the
eyes is probably due to gradual reduction from disuse but aided perhaps
by natural selection. [. . .] As frequent inflammation of the eyes must be
injurious to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not indispensable to ani-
mals with subterranean habits, a reduction of their size with the adhesion
of the eyelids and the growth of fur over them, might in such cases be an
advantage; and, if so, natural selection would constantly aid the effects of
disuse.18
Given this, could it still be argued that eyes were made for seeing? That would
be teleology within natural selection. Clearly, every organ in an animal’s body
has a purpose in its fully developed form. The analogy between the eye and
a watch is perhaps not as far-fetched as Darwin made it sound. The watch
was also created in stages, rather than suddenly appearing out of nothing.
The watchmaker may have started with the dial and then added the hands of
the watch and the mechanism behind the dial which made the hands rotate. The
only difference would be that the watchmaker had a clear intention of creating
the watch, whereas it is undecided whether there was any purpose or motive
whatsoever behind the fact that the nerve sensitive to light appeared. Natural
selection could be God’s method of creating animal and plant species whereby
every variation which is serviceable to its possessor would tend to allow the
extension of that individual’s life. However, since organs do not appear sponta-
neously, but emerge over a great many generations, it is difficult to argue that
there is design behind each little step. The eye is for seeing, but the nerve that
was sensitive to light did not appear with the purpose of becoming an eye, in
Darwin’s judgment, but instead happened randomly. Thus, he reckoned there
was no teleology and for this reason he, as a mature naturalist, rejected Paley’s
argument for design.
It is not, however, correct to say, as Richard Dawkins does, that ‘Darwin
blew [the argument from design] out of the water’.19 He disputed only the
biological argument for design, whereas Paley had argued that the entire universe
showed evidence of a Creator. The eye being likened to a watch was merely
an example of how creation had worked. We now know that the eye, or the
powerful human brain, can be explained by natural selection, but that still begs
the question of how natural selection or any other biological or physical law
came to exist in the first place. Miracles, far from affirming the existence of
God if they have ever happened, would be evidence of poor design. Since all
of nature is a single system, such bugs in the system would have a number of
repercussions beyond itself and would tear at the fabric of part of the universe.
The sum of 2 + 2 cannot be anything other than 4 and similarly no miracle can
ever come about if it is defined as a deviation from a law of nature. Dawkins
admits that no equivalent theory to natural selection exists for the physical
world, but believes that one will be discovered in the future.20 It may involve
the existence of a multiverse whereby the apparent act of creation was a spill-
over from a different universe to which we do not have access. He has been
able to explain why life may have started without recourse to a divinity, but not
why the environment in which life originated came to exist.
Moreover, Darwin never claimed to know the origins of life itself, which
his theist detractors see as conferring hope on their preferred version of the
facts, but it is clear from his theory that simple forms of life gradually evolved
into more complex beings. Dawkins postulates that life may have originated
in a primordial soup when atoms formed molecules that began to move on
their own account.21 Darwinism is able to explain why a multitude of different
forms of plant and animal life can exist in succeeding geological eras without
ever having been created directly. The theory is powerful, particularly in how
a simple rule can have such momentous consequences and how life apparently
happens by itself. But the physical universe had to be conducive to life or life
would never have come into existence and there is still a mystery as we do not
know how matter came to be, nor the laws of nature.
That the laws of nature are unaccounted for is an argument in favour of
why teleology may be guiding natural selection. If this is in fact so, life may
be both created and have evolved at the same time. The laws of nature may
have been created by God. And that they are extremely well designed may be
100 David Redvaldsen
seen from natural selection as an example. The law itself is so simple that any
schoolboy or schoolgirl may understand it: in nature, the number of progeny
an individual has is proportional to the length of its life. And an organism
which is well adapted to the environment in which it finds itself lives longer
than an organism which is poorly adapted. Therefore, over time, a species will
gain desirable characteristics which aid it and shed undesirable characteristics
which hinder its members. This is the mechanism of evolution whereby a
species changes over time. The five senses which humans have – sight, hearing,
smell, taste and touch – are replicated by simpler animals and even fish. This
shows that they have existed for millions of years. Once in place, they would
never disappear unless through disuse, as explained earlier.
Now, for the sake of providing an example, let us divide one of the sense
organs into 100 parts of potency. Let us, still to make the example clear, say that
the nerve which is sensitive to light constitutes 1% of the fully developed eye.
The organism which has this particular nerve would, on average, live longer
than another organism which does not and would reproduce more. Over time,
most organisms within this species would thus possess the nerve. In addition,
the ability to sense light is not binary. Because of heredity and variation, some
would possess more sensitive nerves, constituting perhaps 1.5% of the potency
of the fully developed eye. Over time, with natural selection and an inordinate
number of generations, the average potency of the species in this regard would
continue increasing. Let us now say that over time the average member of the
species comes to possess 3% of the potency of the fully developed eye. Pro-
vided that the effects of natural selection would outweigh regression towards
the mean, the average potency would continue rising, very slowly. Thus, the
average member of the species would continue to accrue higher sensitivity over
time and the eye would come into being. Now the insight from this is as fol-
lows: the law of natural selection and the laws of probability (heredity) together
make this the only possible outcome. The creation of the laws, therefore, imply the
creation of the eye. And the same observation can be made for all the other
senses and their associated organs.
Thus, we have a result from science alone that shows creation. For a teleo-
logical universe, we need humans to be in existence too. Time would still be
in existence without humans, but history would not, as there would be no-one
to measure time, to pass on cultural inheritance and to remember the past.
Any purpose to the universe must involve humans because our species alone is
capable of deciphering such a meaning. Darwin recognized that the astound-
ing ability of humans was something of a mystery and acted as an argument for
there being a divinity with a mind behind the universe:
Another source of criticism in the existence of God, connected with

the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more
weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of
connecting this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his
capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind
chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look for a
First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of
man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.22
Is it possible to see humans as an essential evolutionary creation? Can it be

argued that other species were in a sense precursors to a type of being which,
alone in the animal kingdom, is able to discover the rules whereby life and
the universe came into existence? This is the anthropic principle, which states
that the universe could not have been fashioned in such a way that no humans
would emerge to observe it. Although counter-intuitive, it does have some-
thing going for it. What would be the purpose of a universe created with such
forethought and elegance if virtually all of its features were hidden and unap-
preciated? That would be a bit like a composer writing a beautiful symphony
and never giving it to an orchestra to have it performed.
The anthropic principle is related to the question of whether God exists.
One the one hand, the human species is not a precondition for the function-
ing of the planet on which we live or the universe, since mammals are a late
addition. If humans were essential, there could be no meaning to Amazonian
rainforests as yet unexplored, but home to the thousands of species which live
there. To argue for the anthropic principle of necessary observation seems no
more logical at face value than the solipsistic belief that things extraneous to the
self come into existence again only at the moment the observer places himself
or herself among them. Nature is the ultimate system and we have to accept
that its laws as well as those of mathematics, logics and physics existed before
humans were able to understand them. That we are masters of the universe is a
purely subjective point of view which has no meaning beyond ourselves since
animals would not be able to understand this and would not agree if they could
be presented with the idea. Many animals would instead observe that humans
are relatively puny. To make the world objective and to make humans seem
different to all other species, the anthropic principle, therefore, requires that
God exists and has a mind like ours but even more powerful. This objectivity
requires an omnipotent omniscient observer because otherwise it would not
be possible to put different versions of subjectivity up against each other and
find our world view to be better than whatever an animal has discovered. If the
anthropic principle is not accepted, Paley’s watchmaker analogy falls down at
once. An animal would not recognize a watch as having a designer and would
not see nature as marvellous either but simply as a fact.
However, if the anthropic principle is not accepted, we need to find an expla-
nation for why humans are able to inquire into the very nature of things and
often find answers. Reality is created in such a way that it is observable and
describable. If there is no creator, how can the universe hang so well together,
and if there is a creator, how can He be indifferent to the only species which
is able to appreciate His design and with whom in principle He could have
a conversation? This is quite a strong argument for design and suggests both
that there is a creator and that the anthropic principle is correct. Furthermore,
from inside, the universe has no shape because it encompasses everything and is
constantly expanding, but if it could be observed from the outside at any given
moment, it must have a shape. This means that there is a concept of ‘outside
the universe’ and what might we find there? (Theoretically, it may also be pos-
sible to reach the end of the universe which would have to hold one back like a
hidden glass ceiling as it is undefined what happens if one leaves the universe.)
Although not defined, it must somehow be real. This something must also be
the anterior cause for the existence of the universe and we call it God. Because
God exists outside the universe, the laws that were created inside our uni-
verse do not apply to Him. So although He is the First Cause, He does not
require an anterior cause because He exists outside the universe. There may be
other laws outside the universe, but they can never be known to us.
Without humans, the universe would essentially be static, apart from the
climatic conditions and the fauna which inhabit it, though all behaving in
accordance with simple principles. Darwin thought that nature was essen-
tially friendly and reasoned that if animal life had been forced to endure too
much pain, they would have become depressed and not taken steps to protect
their lives or to breed.23 This was self-referential: animals continued to exist
because life was worthwhile for them and in this way he got out of claiming
that God had designed the earth in a beneficent manner. As for predation, he
wrote in the Origin of Species that no fear and little pain was felt by the animal
which was killed and that this system ensured that the happy and successful
animals were able to continue their lives.24 But Darwin was aware of certain
cruel practices instituted by nature, and these formed part of his reason for not
believing in God.
Philosophical considerations
Natural selection is also self-referential: those organisms that are able to survive
and breed are the successful ones. The purpose of life is to live it and to pass
on one’s inherited characteristics to offspring in an unbroken chain. However,
this seems somewhat limited to many who would like to introduce a grander
purpose. They have interpreted evolution to mean that it involves humankind
getting better over time. Darwin believed that there had indeed been a great
moral improvement since the dawn of humanity. This was due to humans
coming together in societies and agreeing on rules for behaviour which made
life less precarious and protected the physically weaker members of humanity,
for example, women and children, so that they could continue to contribute
to the well-being of their societies. The first moral codes prohibited whatever
was detrimental to the tribe. Solidarity with fellow members of it was crucial
for survival. However, this was only a start and what characterised superior
members of humanity was that they felt compassion beyond the people closest
to them. Sympathy was extended to the infirm and disabled members of the
community and other races at higher levels. The most superior type cared even
about other species (animals).25 Darwin also contrasted ‘civilized man’ with
‘savages’. Some of the latter were indifferent to, or in fact delighted in, seeing
the misfortune of others outside their tribe.26 But even ‘civilized man’ was in
need of moral improvement. Darwin considered slavery a great evil, yet it had
been abolished in the British Empire only in 1833.
It was thus possible to add a teleology to natural selection. But in the 1860s,
there were also people who believed that natural selection had stopped work-
ing and needed to be supplemented by decisive action in order for humanity to
continue improving. Among these were the aforementioned scientist Francis
Galton and the journalist William Rathbone Greg, who later became the edi-
tor of The Economist. Their observation was that the weak in mind and body
had previously been weeded out by the sharpness of the daily struggle. Now
they were surviving and reproducing owing to better medical care and char-
ity. Darwin incorporated this observation into The Descent of Man in several
places. He accepted that it was true, but could not see how it could be rectified
without letting go of sympathy, one of the most valuable traits of humanity.
Darwin hoped that people with hereditary illnesses would renounce breed-
ing voluntarily, but is not on record as ever promoting any use of coercion to
ensure this outcome.
The belief that evolution had stopped working due to the amenities of
civilization would in the late nineteenth century lead to the new doctrine of
eugenics. Particularly, British eugenicists were obsessed with the differential
birth rate whereby educated and wealthy people (judged by them ‘the best’)
were having fewer children than the unskilled and poor (judged by them ‘unde-
sirable’). The result, they thought, was that Britain would decline as a nation.
In fact, social structure in Britain resembled a pyramid whereby it was expected
that there would always be far more poor than rich and therefore it had little
effect that working-class people were more fecund. In those days of laissez-faire
liberalism, much of the population was thrown onto the scrapheap anyway.
There would always be fewer positions at the top than there were people to fill
them. But did this in reality negate evolution? If a nation allowed lawless con-
ditions and a state of nature, such as we find in slums, to exist within its borders,
the most ‘fit’ people in that environment were precisely those who relished cut-
throat competition and were devoid of morals. Organised criminals, pimps,
fences and professional gamblers were all highly ‘fit’ denizens of slums. It is
not the ‘best’ who survive, but those who are most suited to the environment
in which they find themselves. Evolution contains no value-judgments about
the quality of people other than that proved by natural selection (and sexual
selection, but those who make the choice are usually motivated by the same
traits which make for success in natural selection). Undue scruples would as
much be a hindrance to the survival of an animal as it would be to the denizen
of a slum. The best way to raise the quality of the population is, therefore, to
provide healthcare, education and reasonable living standards to as many people
as possible. Denying healthcare or charity to the poor does indeed increase
their death rate, and therefore decreases the number of slum dwellers, but as
such people are closer to being a statistic than being full members of society
anyway, what good does it do?
Many of these conclusions were drawn by the author H.G. Wells in the early
twentieth century. Society as it existed at that time promoted the ‘survival of
the fitter’ not the ‘survival of the fittest’, because the very best people found
it difficult to gain a position in life and breed under the conditions in place.27
It was, for instance, illogical and heartbreaking to raise able and compassion-
ate children who would merely end up as cannon fodder in another war. A
businessman who paid his workers above the going rate in order to improve
their prospects in life was soon gobbled up by one who was profit maximizing.
And successful criminals could have highly valuable characteristics which, if
they had been born into better material conditions, could have promoted the
interests of society by channelling these into legitimate avenues.
Eugenics and intellectual socialism in Britain were both highly influenced
by evolution. Although the story about Karl Marx wishing to devote a volume
of Das Kapital to Darwin is a myth, many socialists drew parallels between how
animals changed over time to become more efficient with how society was
progressing towards better conditions for all.28 This was another application
of Darwinism. That a single theory can be utilised for subjects ranging from
helping to decide whether God exists to planning the best possible society is
testament to its brilliance and influence. Progression towards better human
beings, a utopia and knowledge of God are all teleological outcomes somehow
connected with the theory of evolution.
The argument for design is separate from the moral pondering of theodicy.
However, the proponent of design also needs to explain why terrible things
happen in such a finely crafted universe and, unlike Christianity, cannot do
so through the doctrine of the Fall. Darwinism has a few things to say about
this aspect of design. For a start, life has always been a struggle and no animal
or human has ever enjoyed perfect, harmonious conditions. Carnivores are
designed to hunt other creatures and natural disasters cannot be interpreted, as
in Scripture, as evidence of God’s wrath towards humankind. In a letter to the
botanist Asa Gray in 1860, Darwin wrote:
There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade

myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created
the Ichneumonidae [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their
feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play
with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye
was expressly designed.29
Thus Darwin expressly linked problematic moral dimensions on the planet to

design.
The argument for design is more closely linked to the deist God, who is imper-
sonal, than the Christian God, who is the Father of his followers. The deist
God does not intervene in the universe He has created, unlike the Christian
God, who sends messengers to humankind at periodic intervals and performs
miracles. It is, however, possible to determine the moral rules of the deist
God through using common sense and asking whether an action seems to be
in accordance with nature. His responsibility to us is harder to fathom. Many
natural disasters and catastrophes are simply the result of particular constella-
tions of events coming together in such a way that they are harmful to humans.
Where a particular human has performed acts that are unspeakably evil, the
responsibility lies with him or her if the will is free or another such constella-
tion of factors if the will is determined. In both cases, the fault lies partly with
God for having allowed the evil acts to happen, as both the deist God and the
Christian God are capable of intervening.
The first thing that should be said about such cases is that they are rare. They
might not have been if humanity had forborne to form societies and agree on
rules which protect us all. According to Steven Pinker, humans are becoming
less violent across the board with fewer wars and murders as well as less tor-
ture and genocide. One of the reasons he identifies is precisely the formation
of nation-states with a monopoly of violence.30 Specialized law enforcement
through the formation of the police must also have helped. Nevertheless, there
are very upsetting cases reported in the media. Humans, like other animals, rou-
tinely use violence or have violent thoughts and with a spectrum of morality in
existence, it is inevitable that some deranged individuals will commit the most
heinous crimes. Darwin explained the conscience as internalised rules which
society agrees upon and explained extreme acts of altruism such as sacrificing
one’s life for others as a consequence of possessing much greater conscience
than usual. Equally, there are some individuals who possess no conscience at
all or who have weak characters and are easily led astray. Because humans have
greater cognitive powers than animals, we also have greater capacity to commit
acts of sustained violence or those which are outré. The main insight, however,
is that life is by nature violent, dangerous and often disappointing. As Darwin
wrote in the Origin of Species:
Hence we may confidently assert, that all plants and animals are tending to
increase at a geometrical ratio, that all would most rapidly stock every sta-
tion in which they could any how exist, and that the geometrical tendency
to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life. Our
familiarity with the larger domestic animals tends, I think, to mislead us:
we see no great destruction falling on them, and we forget that thousands
are annually slaughtered for food, and that in a state of nature an equal
number would have somehow to be disposed of.31
Violent death, including when it happens to humans, is therefore natural and

must be accepted as part of the argument for design. As humans, we have set
up arrangements which make it much less common, but when someone slips
through the safety net and is murdered, this is no more an unnatural act than if
a bird devours a worm in the victim’s garden. And though the human victim
may have been murdered in a far more grizzly way than the worm lost its life,
this is a consequence of humans having greater brainpower, which in a differ-
ent context, allows us to do wonderful things such as communicating instantly
between continents. The mystery is why God did not create a world in which
all his creation might enjoy life and live it peacefully to its end, not why what
we see as evil is allowed to happen.
Intelligent design
In the 1990s, there was an upswing in a biological theory which bases itself on
the argument for design. The idea is that many living organisms contain fea-
tures which are so complex that they could not have appeared by blind chance,
but instead require an intelligence to have designed them. Proponents of this
theory do accept evolution and natural selection in most cases. However, they
also study phenomena to determine the level of what they call ‘complex and
specified information’ contained in these. They do so through imagining if the
parts of the organism explain the functioning of the whole. Where the parts
do not, they have found ‘irreducible complexity’, which can also be described
as a very high level of ‘complex and specified information’. Thus, they use the
argument for design as a method within science. They have resuscitated Paley’s
watchmaker analogy.
One of the main objections to intelligent design is that it has no model of
reality.32It can detect ‘irreducible complexity’ and through it the footprint of
a designer, but it cannot explain how the phenomena it studies came to exist.
Darwinism does have an explanation for how the various forms of life origi-
nated, namely in less complex organisms. A possible way forward for intelligent
design is to adopt the cognitive-theoretic model of the universe (CTMU), a
highly teleological attempt at a unified theory of physical reality. The CTMU
is the brainchild of Christopher Michael Langan, an independent scholar who,
like Darwin, has no academic affiliation.33
Neo-Darwinism is the belief, not shared by Darwin himself, that acquired
characteristics cannot be inherited by offspring and that otherwise inexplicable
inheritance takes place through mutation. If these appear through acausality,
there is a gap in their theory of biological reality which is no less startling than the
gap evident through inexplicable design inherent in the ‘irreducible complex-
ity’ of proponents of intelligent design. If mutation instead happens according
to laws which are not yet known, neo-Darwinism probably has the advantage
over intelligent design. Neo-Darwinism’s insistence that acquired characteris-
tics are not inherited is based on August Weismann’s experiments, published in
1885, whereby he cut the tails of mice and then bred them. The next genera-
tion of mice had tails equal in length to their parents, meaning that inheritance
was not affected. Neo-Darwinism is the current orthodoxy among biologists,
whereas intelligent design is not highly regarded. However, the CTMU gives
intelligent design a possible way out of its difficulty.
The CTMU postulates that creation occurs gradually through the universe
self-replicating features of itself within itself.34 Thus, the ‘irreducible complex-
ity’ occurs not from the bottom up with simple features becoming complex,
but instead top down with a holographic image of the universe being incul-
cated into organisms which are in a sense new, rather than modified versions
of previous life. Natural selection still takes place in the sense that the uni-
verse chooses which of its features to replicate in the new design. Intelligence
appears in animals and humans, but it must already have existed in the universe
before life capable of cognition appeared.35 If laws are used to explain condi-
tions, then the laws themselves must be explained. This links well to the argu-
ment for design because the physical laws of the universe must have appeared
from somewhere before they began to be used in shaping the universe.
The CTMU is described in brief here only as a curiosity. Such a metaphysi-
cal theory, although based on science, can probably not be proved or disproved,
and therefore does not advance us much in explaining the universe and how it
came into existence. Its connection to intelligent design and the latter theory’s
use of the argument for design is what justifies inclusion here. However, the
CTMU argues that the universe created itself, and therefore makes God redun-
dant as an entity outside the universe. To be sure, it still holds that God exists
inside the universe and proposes the idea that cyclic creation is preferable to
a layer of causes that continues to infinity or a Prime Mover that is not itself
caused. The laws of the universe explain the creation of the universe and the
creation of the universe explains the laws of the universe. In the CTMU, reality
itself is the designer, and therefore intelligent design must occur.
The CTMU is reminiscent of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and differs
primarily from the latter in being based on cosmological and mathematical lan-
guage. Hegel explained the universe through his model thesis–antithesis which
led to a synthesis, which would itself have an antithesis and so on. The universe
exists and expands because the synthesis of being and nonexistence is becom-
ing. Although Hegel’s system pre-dates Darwinism, it is compatible with sim-
ple life forms giving rise to more complex ones. Hegel calls this stage in the
chronology of the universe ‘pure indeterminate being’ and it leads onwards
towards a clear goal which is ‘the end of history’, where humans are mostly in
agreement and conflict has ceased. The world-spirit (equivalent to the intel-
ligent designer) gains in knowledge of itself as time passes and reaches the
stage where ‘thought thinks itself ’, as Hegel unveils his system, which is an
explanation of the universe. His system has a clear arrow of progress, towards
ever increasing freedom. Since thoughts are free, slavery is an illogical institu-
tion and systems of government are put in place whereby, in whatever is the
dominant part of the world, more people enjoy freedom than was the case in
what was previously the most significant area. Hegel’s philosophy is perhaps the
ultimate teleology because all facts and theories are marshalled towards a clear
goal and nothing is redundant.
Conclusion
Using Charles Darwin’s work and observations as well as our musings in this
chapter, let us revisit the whole debate. Suppose we walk across a heath and
find a watch lying on the ground. We are able to see at once that the watch has
a maker, as chance alone could not have made such a marvel. This maker must
be a human, as other species could not make an object of such complexity. We
next turn our attention to the human or animal eye. How could an organ of
this kind, able to turn in different directions and see objects far way or at close
hand, come to exist? Can this be explained by natural selection and evolution
alone, or does it require a design specifically for this complex object? Evolu-
tion is by itself a tentative process whereby nature makes different versions and
destroys those which are not fit for purpose (or less fit for purpose) through
natural selection. Because it took nature an inordinate number of generations
to move from the nerve sensitive to light to the developed eye, the eye then
remaining in place for all types of creatures for millions of years afterwards, it
should have been possible to create the eye by very small steps of biological
change, that is, variation and heredity. It is possible to arrive at vastly complex
systems through simple equations which are re-iterated many times.36 There-
fore, it seems redundant to diagnose the eye as being of ‘irreducible complexity’
and suggesting that it required a fresh action of creation. Out of two solutions
to a logical problem, the simplest is preferable and more in accordance with
nature provided that it is able to account for all features observed. The CTMU
explains how the fresh act of creation occurs, but like intelligent design which
it supports, its status is currently unproven, whereas evolution concurs with
hundreds of observations noted by Darwin and thousands noted by others.
In choosing the theory of evolution as the by far most likely explanation
for the existence of the eye, does that mean that the eye was not created but
appeared at random? Although it is difficult to identify a teleology to each
of the small steps whereby the eye as we know it came to exist, it may still
have been created. Given the number of generations involved, given that the
potential creator of it was not confined to a particular time frame and given
that natural selection would diminish the number of animals with less perfect
versions existing contemporaneously, it could still be created. If we had the full
information for how the eye originated, this could be shown mathematically.
The chances that it would come into existence could be made to be 100%
through extending the number of generations until it was certain that it would
be there (i.e., so close to 100% that the difference is negligible). This is a slow
but certain method of creation.
Having discovered how the eye and other complex organs were created, Dar-
win no longer believed in the biological argument for design. He saw whatever
happened in nature as entirely separate from human workings and because no
teleology was detectable in natural selection, he did not envisage a God behind
the existence of the eye. If the eye had been created, so had the parasitic wasp
that laid its eggs inside a caterpillar whose offspring would eat the caterpillar
from inside while still alive or the cat which by nature made the deaths of its
mouse victims a long, drawn out one by playing with them. Darwin was, how-
ever, a little swayed by the argument relating to a First Cause as being necessary
for the world to come into existence, and also that it was inconceivable that
such a wonderful world, including humans with their great thinking powers,
could come into existence from blind chance or necessity. Thus he described
himself as an agnostic, not an atheist.
And what is reasonable to believe given the grounds we have encountered
related to the argument for design? It is difficult to believe in entire systems
of thought with virtually no evidence to back them up, but the absence or
presence of teleology would be crucial in determining whether God exists.
The absence of teleology and the dismissal of the anthropic principle probably
leads, at the most, to an impersonal God. Such a divinity would be the God of
the deists and would see both human and animal suffering as irrelevant in the
big picture of the universe He had created. It could also lead to agnosticism or
atheism, though the latter has the difficulty of accounting for the beginning of
the world or that prior causes are not infinite.
The acceptance of the anthropic principle, on the other hand, leads towards
a solution whereby God could potentially be in communication with humans
and see our existence as somehow important to His plans. If He has plans, there
is a teleology inherent in the world. If the plans are simply to create a better
world for some, the question becomes why He did not do so in the first place.
If the anthropic principle is correct, but there is no teleology behind creation,
we are somehow participants in forming the outcome for this planet and the
rest of the universe in due course.
Notes
1 See N. Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, London: Penguin, 2003,
Chapter 1.
2 Catherine Darwin to Charles Darwin 27 November 1833. The Correspondence of Charles
Darwin, Volume 1: 1821–1836, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 356–7.
3 N. Barlow (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, London: Collins, 1958, p. 56.
4 Barlow (ed.), The Autobiography, p. 57.
5 Charles Darwin to Caroline Darwin 8 April 1826. The Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 39.
9 Charles Darwin to Francis Galton 28 May 1873. University College London: Galton
Archive, GALTON/1/1/9/5/7/15.
10 Charles Darwin to W.D. Fox 23 April 1829. The Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 83–4.
11 Charles Darwin to W.D. Fox 29 April 1851. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume
5, 1851–1855, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 32.
12 Charles Darwin to W.D. Fox 3 October 1856, The Correspondence, vol. 5, pp. 237–8.
13 Charles Kingsley to Charles Darwin 18 November 1859. The Correspondence of Charles
Darwin, Volume 7: 1858–1859, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 379–80.
14 C. Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: John Murray,
1871, vol. 2, p. 395.
15 W. Paley, Natural Theology, New York: American Tract Society, 1881, p. 20.
17 C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life, London: John Murray, 1859, pp. 186–7.
18 Darwin, On the Origin of Species, p. 137.
19 R. Dawkins, The God Delusion, London: Bantam, 2006, p. 79.
20 Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 158.
21 R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe with-
out Design, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996, p. 148.
22 Barlow (ed.), The Autobiography, pp. 92–3.
23 Barlow (ed.), The Autobiography, pp. 88–9.
25 C. Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: John Murray,
1871, vol. 1, p. 103.
26 Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. 1, p. 94.
27 F. Galton, ‘Eugenics, Its Definition, Scope and Aims,’ American Journal of Sociology, 10(1),
1904, pp. 10–11.
28 R. Colp, Jr., ‘The Myth of the Darwin-Marx Letter,’ History of Political Economy, 14(4),
1982, pp. 461–82.
29 Charles Darwin to Asa Gray 22 May 1860. F. Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles
Darwin, London: John Murray, 1887, vol. 2, p. 312.
30 S. Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, New York: Viking,
2011.
32 C. M. Langan, ‘The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Real-
ity Theory,’ Progress in Complexity, Information and Design, 1(2–3), 2002, p. 49.
33 For a biography of Langan, see M. Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, London: Pen-
guin, 2009, Chapter 4.
34 Langan, ‘The Cognitive-Theoretic,’ p. 50.
35 Langan, ‘The Cognitive-Theoretic,’ p. 51.
36 See I. Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos, London: Penguin,
1990.
Bibliography
Barlow, N. (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, London: Collins, 1958.
Colp, R., Jr., ‘The Myth of the Darwin-Marx Letter,’ History of Political Economy, 14 (4),
1982, pp. 461–82.
Burkhardt, Fr. and Smith, S. (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 1, 1821–
1836, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Darwin, C., The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life, London: John Murray, 1859.
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Murray, 1871.
Darwin, C., The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, volume 2, London: John
Murray, 1871.
Darwin, F. (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, volume 2, London: John Murray,
1887.
Dawkins, R., The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without
Design, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Dawkins, R., The God Delusion, London: Bantam, 2006.
Ferguson, N., Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, London: Penguin, 2003.
Galton, F., ‘Eugenics: It Definition, Scope and Aims,’ American Journal of Sociology, 10 (1),
1904, pp. 1–25.
Gladwell, M., Outliers: The Story of Success, London: Penguin, 2009.
Langan, C. M., ‘The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality
Theory,’ Progress in Complexity, Information and Design, 1 (2–3), 2002, pp. 1–56.
Paley, W., Natural Theology, New York: American Tract Society, 1881.
Pinker, S., The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, New York: Viking,
2011.
Stewart, I., Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos, London: Penguin, 1990.
6 Teleology and Jewish heretical
religiosity
Nietzsche and Rosenzweig
David Ohana
Introduction
This chapter will focus on a particular dimension that is not generally con-
nected with the name of the philosopher of Zarathustra: the heretical religious
dimension both of Friedrich Nietzsche and Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929).
His heretical cry, ‘God is dead!’ proclaimed the coming of an age in which
teleological judgments were no longer ‘hidden’ in the ‘backworlds’. Nietzsche
did not put an end to the questions asked about the purpose of existence or the
meaning of transcendental order, the dimension of the sacred in the modern
age and the religious basis in men’s lives. In the following, I intend to examine
this unique phenomenon in Nietzsche himself and Rosenzweig.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s historic proclamation of the death of God has opened
the gates of traditional metaphysical doctrines and popular world views to a
new kind of criticism. All ‘objective’ teleological concepts, from the medieval
transcendental God to Hegel’s Geist were shown to be predicated upon no more
than human will. Aristotelian teleology was designed to explain the movement
of living beings, medieval teleology was designed to support the Bible’s claims
for providence and modern teleology (from Leibniz to Kant) was meant to
secure our knowledge of the world by showing that the world enables reason-
able investigation of itself. With Nietzsche, for the first time, all ‘objective’ tele-
ology has been discredited. All that remains is the will of individuals: no longer
one will for the whole species, but different wills, different ends.
Heretical religiosity
With Nietzsche, a new kind of religiosity has opened, heretical religiosity.
Heretical religiosity signifies the possibility of an existence without metaphys-
ical telos. A major precondition for the existence of heretical religion is a
consciousness of the absence of God. Yearnings for God bear witness a thou-
sandfold to the absence of the transcendental Being. The individual no longer
had an a priori acceptance of the existence of God, a self-evident entity whose
existence was reflected in conditionings, commandments and habits expressed
Teleology and Jewish heretical religiosity 113
in precepts, prohibitions and prayers. An implicit faith in the transcendental
Being was replaced by the longing for God. The non-presence of God was
shown up by his disappearance, his Being was proclaimed by his nullification.
What if God does not exist, if there is nothing transcendental or transcendent?
What if God is dead? What then? Does his absence put an end to the possibility
of any belief or hope in the future? What is to be of the religious pathos which
still remained after God’s nullification? The pathos was a transition to a form
of rhetoric which appears in its nakedness without the religious metaphysical
purpose. The pathos demonstrated an unrealised religious passion which took
the form of lofty and exalted expressions.
What we have here is a sort of ‘inner’ religion, something that lies outside
the phenomenology of religion, an internalisation of states of soul that may be
considered a religious manifestation.1 In this phenomenon, one’s attention is
drawn away from the social and institutional aspects of things to the inner life of
the individual. The individual’s conviction of God’s existence through his rep-
resentatives has gone, but the longing for God who delays his coming remains.
There are no outward signs such as commandments and prohibitions, and there
is no religious institution requiring belief in God’s existence.2 His existence is
a matter of ‘inner’ religion.
The longing for God cries out in the inner religion. This was not, in the
literal sense, an atheistic or secular point of view. This heresy is not unbelief,
as heresy is not indifferent to God’s existence. Atheism and secularism, for their
part, are indifferent to God’s presence or absence. The atheist’s or secularist’s
attitude to religion is one of apathy. The nonexistence of God does not cause
him to cry out or feel pain or longing; the existence of God is a matter of indif-
ference. The fact of his existence or nonexistence is irrelevant for modern man.
An approach of this sort is contradictory to that of Nietzsche, who did not only
make the ontological claim that ‘there is no God’, but furthermore he cried out
the existential claim that ‘God is dead’.3
The existence of God was the greatest prevalent illusion, whose repercus-
sions were still to be found in his time as a permanent threat. Section 125 of
The Gay Science is one of the best-known passages in Nietzsche’s work: the
madman who proclaimed the death of God in the marketplace was evidence
of the nihilistic significance of the fact, or, perhaps it would be more exact to
say, the lack of significance of the fact. Man lost his orientation in his universe
as soon as it became clear that it was a universe with no purpose. He realized
that, just as it was possible to create God with one’s own hands, so it was eas-
ily possible to murder him. The concept of ‘God’, said Nietzsche, continuing
the tradition of the Young Hegelians, eliminates man’s individual freedom and
his existential being.4 The believing man reduces all that is significant, instinc-
tive, strong, to something infinite and abstract which man has created. Man,
fearing his own power, transfers it onto God.5 In a confused world, man seeks
self-justification, religious or moral legitimation which will endow his life with
significance, even at the price of self-nullification.6
114 David Ohana
‘Nihilism stands at the door’
‘Nihilism stands at the door’,7 said Nietzsche, and explained its coming by the
internal logic of European history until that time, by the cultural development
of Europe with its Christian morality. The questioning of the moral explana-
tion of the world in the modern period undermined the foundations of the
Christian edifice. Secularisation opened up a chasm, seeing that until then,
Christian morality had served as a bulwark against nihilism by endowing man
with a definite purpose in the face of the fortuitous nature of the forces of cre-
ation and destruction.8 Morality gave existence a meaning and man something
to strive for. But now it is reasonable to ask, what was the significance of nihil-
ism as a counter-movement, or, to be more exact, as a movement acting against
itself? The answer is: ‘The highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lack-
ing; “why” finds no answers.’9 Morality served as a tool for the continuation of
existence and prevented one from gazing into the depths of nothingness, but
it also contained the truths which worked against it: the fiction was revealed
as an illusion and the golem turned on its creator. Every phenomenon which
Nietzsche examined – religion, morality, alienation, decadence – contained the
seeds of its own ruin and destroyed itself.
Where, then, can one place the Nietzschean concept of telos in the philo-
sophical tradition? All the philosophies tried to search for objective purpose:
in Descartes, one has the ideal of apodictic sciences; in Leibniz, the kingdom
of wisdom, in Kant, the normative ideal of reason as the transcendental unity.
Nietzsche, however, claimed that certain conditions of existence determined
certain forms of life. These forms of life required certain forms of knowledge. In
the Nietzschean epistemology, Nietzsche rejected the intellect and its norms. If
the intellect was rejected, the norms of the intellect – truth and morality – were
also rejected. Kant thought that there were norms in the moral dimension,
and he widened them to include the cognitive sphere. The assumption that
there was knowledge was parallel to the assumption that there was morality:
this was Kant’s method according to Nietzsche, who called for the mask to be
removed. Faith, in Nietzsche’s view, was a psychological problem, just as posi-
tions, truths, values and norms were also projections. Likewise, scientific or
moral beliefs were not different, from the point of view of their validity, from
religious or political beliefs. In the cognitive sphere, Nietzsche shifted truth
from the objective to the perspectivistic, and, in the moral sphere, the norm
was rejected in favour of power manifested in individual creativity.
Nietzsche recognised two kinds of nihilism: ‘active’ nihilism and ‘passive’ or
‘weary’ nihilism: ‘Nihilism. It is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased
power of the spirit: as active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of
the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism.’10 Active nihilism is a manifestation
of strength, in that it is a force that destroys alienated ideals and questions the
validity of normative values: ‘It reaches its maximum of relative strength as a
violent force of destruction.’11 ‘Weary’ nihilism, like Buddhism, is a manifesta-
tion of weakness, a force that is self-destructive: ‘Attempts to escape nihilism
without revaluating our values so far.’12 The release from religious faith and
alienation from Christian morality led to the uprooting of man from his world,
while he continued to search for a point of support outside himself. Man took
hold of any super-human authority, such as the dominion of reason, social
conformity or the worship of history. In another context, Nietzsche said that
‘extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme posi-
tions of the opposite kind.’13 Man, who lost these higher purposes, reached
total despair: they were its other face. In both cases, man renounced his inner
will and transferred it onto the external will by which he was dominated,
whether it was a religious tyranny of God, an intellectual tyranny of histori-
cism or political religions. External tyranny and denial of self are two faces of
alienation, the flight of man from himself.
I agree with Arthur Danto’s basic premise that Nietzsche’s ‘nihilism never-
theless, is not an ideology, but metaphysics’.14 Danto distinguished between
Nietzsche’s ‘metaphysical’ nihilism’ (‘reality itself has neither name nor form’)
and the ‘St. Petersburg style of nihilism’, that is, a nihilism which rejects and
destroys a whole series of religious, moral and political principles. My claim is
that Nietzsche’s nihilism was not ideological nihilism but metaphysical nihil-
ism. Metaphysical nihilism is confined to the here-and-now, or to put it in
Ofelia Schutte’s words: ‘Nietzsche would like to see the metaphysician rooted
in the earth.’15 Its meaning is not the rejection of the significance of the uni-
verse, and not ‘eternal recurrence’ as found in the Stoics and Ecclesiastes, but a
horrified, yet courageous, glance at a universe without a purpose.
According to Kant, without the status of reason, the Copernican revolu-
tion would not have taken place and there could not have been any categori-
cal imperative. According to Nietzsche, however, the attributes of a lawgiver
belonged to a philosopher and not to reason, to an individual and not to a
method. This represented a personalisation of philosophy and of the idea of
reason. The legislation of a philosopher, thought Nietzsche, was his creation.
Nietzsche thus used history as a starting point for a reorientation of philosophy,
which had established itself as a philosophy of deceit: in his radical investigation
and in the genealogy of his fundamental concepts, man had discovered that
the idols which he himself had created – God, morality, reason, truth – were
revealed as a broken reed and as a golem which turned on its maker. Nietzsche
was the genealogist of human history who revealed the naked values as he saw
them: as superstructures, narcotic drugs or energy pills which gave taste and
purpose to a world which had no taste or purpose. He looked at nihilism as
it was and diagnosed history in its nakedness. Historical man discovered that
his God was an image which man had created with his own hands out of
self-protection, reason was deceptive and a falsification of the evidence of the
senses; morality, all in all, was institutionalised habit, and objective truth was
not possible. Historical man was naked, a leaf tossed in the wind. Disillusioned
with theology and disappointed with progress, he was suddenly conscious of
the gaping chasm which threatened to swallow every-thing up. Nihilism lay at
the door!
116 David Ohana
Among other interpretations of Nietzsche’s nihilism, one can draw the
following conclusion from his positive philosophy: beyond nihilism, there is
doubt which denies everything or freedom which affirms everything. It is pre-
cisely the meaninglessness of recurrent existence which gives affirmation to
destiny. Nietzsche ‘saw himself as a phenomenon of fate rather than as a wish
to be other than he was’. Spinoza’s ‘love of God’ (amor dei) gave way to the
Nietzschean ‘love of fate’ (amor fati).16 Instead of subservience to an external
and abstract entity, there was a great love of existence, of life-as-it-is. Schopen-
hauerian passivity was rejected by Nietzsche because it conferred a purpose for
reality, just as the Buddhist approach which rejected existence was also denied.
Both approaches were contrary to the Nietzschean principle that one had to
adapt oneself to the rhythm of the dynamic reality. Nietzsche affirmed the
Heraclitean approach which led to an acceptance of reality-as-it-was without
turning one’s back to it. The various projections – the religious and political
churches, science, philosophy, the state – all sought, according to Nietzsche,
to make cosmetic improvements to reality. The affirmation of reality-as-it-is
without preconditions and without any pretension to reason, purpose or sig-
nificance, was the Nietzschean response to the recognition of the true situation
and to liberation from the veils of illusion, a liberation from any sort of teleo-
logical order.
To discuss Nietzsche’s critique of teleological metaphysics and its relation
to the presence of God in modernity, I shall next examine the case-study of
the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), and his reception and
critique of Nietzsche’s enterprise. Rosenzweig is arguably the most celebrated
Jewish thinker of the first half of the twentieth century. His work encompasses
a variety of important subjects, from his renowned critique on German and in
particular Hegelian idealism to interpretations of key Jewish scriptures. In 1913,
he almost converted to Christianity, but in the end he reversed his decision and
strengthened his commitment to Judaism. In the First World War Rosenzweig
served in the German army. During his service, he continued to deepen his
relationship to Judaism, as is evident from his published correspondence from
that time. His magnum opus The Star of Redemption (1921) is considered as one
of the greatest achievements of Jewish systematic thought in modern times. In
what follows, I shall attempt to reconstruct Rosenzweig’s approach to the pur-
pose of human beings through his re-evaluation of Nietzsche’s understanding
of human beings and their purpose.
The revelation according to Nietzsche

Rosenzweig’s reconstruction of the teleological project, as exemplified in
German idealism’s teleological notions of history and human beings, is what
will be considered in the following pages. His examination of Nietzsche and
his philosophical thought was connected to his transition from a metaphysical
idealist philosophy to an existential, and religious mode of thinking. Rosen-
zweig emphasized the philosopher rather than the metaphysical system, the
individual rather than his metaphysics, contemplation rather than omniscient
reason, personal teleology rather than metaphysical.
Rosenzweig’s recognition that his understanding of the metaphysical God
is indebted to Nietzsche drove him to the conclusion that Nietzsche was a
philosopher to reckon with because he saw God face to face, and not because
he denied him.17 Rosenzweig’s appreciation of the philosophy of Nietzsche,
then, seems to take place not merely beyond good and evil, but also beyond the
traditional discussions about the existence of God, that is, beyond the truth and
falsehood of the matter. Rosenzweig commented on the ‘secular existentialism’
of Nietzsche:
The history of philosophy had not beheld an atheism like Nietzsche’s.

[. . .] [H]e [Nietzsche] is the first thinker who, in the theological sense of
the word, very definitely ‘denies’ him or who, more precisely still, curses
him. For that famous proposition: ‘If God existed, how could I bear not to
be God?’ is as mighty a curse as the curse with which Kierkegaard’s experi-
ence of God began.18
Rosenzweig’s God beyond all metaphysical teleology is the product of his

dialogue with the philosophy of Nietzsche, precisely because it was the only
philosophy able to encounter God. Nietzsche’s God, contrary to the previ-
ous philosophies, is not mere metaphysical fiction designed to base the meta-
physical or ethical ends of man, but rather an existential God, alive, a God to
pray to:
The first real human being among the philosophers was also the first who
beheld God face to face – even if it was only in order to deny him. For
that proposition is the first philosophical denial of God in which God is
not indissolubly tied to the world. [. . .] The living God appears to the
living man. It is with a consuming hatred that the defiant self views divine
freedom, devoid of all defiance, which drives him to denial because he has
to regard it as licence – for how could he otherwise bear not to be God?
[. . .] Thus the meta-ethical, like the meta-logical before it, disposes of the
metaphysical within itself and precisely thereby renders it visible as divine
‘personality’, as unity, and not like the human personality as unicum.19
Only as an individual with no metaphysics to hide behind and without a con-

ceptual escape from the gravity of the questions human beings face, accord-
ing to Rosenzweig, could Nietzsche have looked God in the face, even if it
was only in order to decide that his existence is without value. Nietzsche, for
Rosenzweig, was first and foremost a philosopher fully capable of embracing
the total complexity of human beings, an individual as well as a philosopher.
Nietzsche rejected the common conception of nihilism of his time in favour of
an essential nihilism or, as Martin Heidegger put it, ‘nought and nothing [. . .]
are concepts of essence and not of value’.20
118 David Ohana
Wherein, in Rosenzweig’s opinion, did Nietzsche’s uniqueness lie? Rosenz-
weig had a good perception of inner workings of the philosophical revolution
that Nietzsche brought about in Western civilization. Nietzsche gave nihilism
an ontological grounding; nihilism was no longer a denial of the existing order,
an opposition to being, a destructive impulse, but a creative phenomenon which
belonged essentially to being as such:
Poets had always dealt with life and their own souls. But not philosophers.
[. . .] Here, however, was one man who knew his own life and his own
soul like a poet, and obeyed their voice like a holy man, and who for all
that was a philosopher. [. . .] The fearsome and challenging image of the
vasselage of soul to mind could henceforth not be eradicated. For the great
thinkers of the past, the soul had been allowed to play the role of, say, wet
nurse, or at any rate of tutor of Mind. But one day the pupil grew up and
went his own way, enjoying his freedom and unlimited prospects. [. . .] For
the philosopher, philosophy was the cool height to which he had escaped
from the mists of the plain. For Nietzsche this dichotomy between height
and plain did not exist in his own self; he was of a piece, soul and mind a
unity, man and thinker a unity to the last.21
From perspectivism to revelation

The celebrated historian Jacob Burkhardt (1818–1897), in a letter to Nietzsche
from 1882, wrote: ‘Basically, it is clear that you always teach history.’22 Nietzsche,
said Rosenzweig, was an historian at least as much as he was a philosopher. In
his diary on 29 February 1908, Rosenzweig observed: ‘Nietzsche was a terrible
philosopher simply because he was a good historian.’23
What typified the old rationalistic systems, said Rosenzweig, was their one-
dimensionality.24 Without real-life conflicts, contradictions and a passion for
life – everything that creates a living philosophy – the old philosophies were all
doomed to ghost-like existence, bringing about death-like character to every-
thing which becomes connected to them. What was lacking in Hegel’s system,
for instance, was ‘the ever-multiple appearance of being,’ this multiple char-
acter of being was lost in the singularity of the teleology it offered.25 Rosen-
zweig sought to rescue Western philosophy. If philosophy wants to stay alive,
he asserted, it should ‘proceed another step beyond this crag without plunging
into the abyss, we have to change the fundamentals and a new concept of phi-
losophy must arise’.26 What he offered was derived from Nietzsche’s perspec-
tivism, a new Weltanschauung, a lively exegetical approach, the reintroduction of
the narrative of the individual, ‘the idea with which an individual mind reacts
to the impression which the world makes on it’. The attack on the old philoso-
phies, and especially on the metaphysical conceptions of human purpose and
teleological structure, ‘happened in the philosophical period that begins with
Schopenhauer, continues via Nietzsche, and whose end has not yet arrived’.27
A reaction to the metaphysical teleology on the one hand, and to scientific
indifference to human ends on the other hand, would be ‘philosophizing by
means of aphorisms’ – a clear reference to Nietzsche’s style of philosophising –
multi-dimensional contemplation that advances various human considerations
and perspectives, and is kept alive not by consistency and clarity, but rather
by mimicking the movement of life itself. Only such a new method of phi-
losophising could deal with the gap created by Nietzsche’s rejection of the
metaphysical nature of human purpose. Instead of ‘the old type of philosopher,
impersonal by profession, a mere deputy of the naturally one-dimensional his-
tory of philosophy’, the philosophers of the future would acquire the nature of
‘the philosopher of the Weltanschauung, the point of view’.28
However, Rosenzweig was not completely satisfied with Nietzsche’s account
of philosophising. Two central issues in the new style of philosophising con-
cerned him deeply: was this new way of philosophising ‘still science’?29 Could
it stand up to the scientific enterprise of the age? According to Nietzsche, ‘It is
certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable.’30 Furthermore, the
new style of philosophising lacked a ground to stem from; the old metaphysical
systems provided man with a sense of purpose in the universe; could the new
philosophy achieve something similar?
In Nietzsche’s purposeless universe, in which there is no attunement between
existence and thought, in which, as he claimed, there is no objective truth of
things and hence not a normative structure embedded in reality as well, there
is every danger that philosophy would eventually collapse and cease to be a
driving force in western civilization. Nietzsche’s dangerous gamble was that a
perspectivist philosophy could stand up to the challenge.31
It was precisely these tendencies of Nietzsche’s philosophy that Rosenzweig
came to reject, as he put it, ‘the philosophical aspect or the scientific aspect’.
The new philosophy had nothing to support it. It was, as it were, dependent
upon the tradition which he aimed to overthrow: ‘Thus, its support’, he claimed,
‘must come from another source’.32 Only an authentic rethinking of the philo-
sophical foundation of perspectivism itself could save ‘the most extreme subjec-
tivity’, and ‘at the same time achieve the objectivity of science’.33 Rosenzweig’s
solution was a new system of thought that grounded itself within the religious
traditions. In his opinion, the presence of God could eventually bridge the gap
between scientific objectivity and moral egoism. Rosenzweig’s fear concerning
the Nietzschean type of philosophy, and, in fact, concerning his own philoso-
phy as well, was that denial of the rational basis of philosophy would cause the
ground to give way beneath the objectivity of truth.
The Nietzschean conclusion is that objective truth, like a normative moral-
ity, is not a possibility. The elimination of the pair of concepts ‘truth’ and ‘false-
hood’ does not eliminate the truth for Nietzsche any more than the elimination
of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ eliminates the good34: Nietzsche questions only the right of
certain people (the majority in a decadent situation) to determine the ‘objec-
tive’ significance of this pair of concepts. Nietzsche removed the concepts ‘good’
120 David Ohana
and ‘truth’ from the traditional normative context and evaluated them accord-
ing to modern criteria of power, intensity and authenticity.
The Star of Redemption: Rosenzweig’s teleology

Rosenzweig called the third and last book of The Star of Redemption, the crown
of his monumental work, ‘The Star, or the Eternal Truth’. The work begins
with a private individual living with the consciousness of death, a secular indi-
vidual with an ‘outlook on life’. But the purpose of the ‘New Thinking’ and
the aim of the revelatory book was by linking philosophy to theology to find
an absolute truth, not a relative or personal one. Revelation exposes the indi-
vidual to his Maker through a dialogal experience in which he receives the love
of God. This experiential theology represented man in the face of God in the
act of revelation as the most grounding and significant of human experiences.
Absolute truth is revealed in the experience of revelation, in contrast to pagan
relativity. In adopting Hermann Cohen’s argument in his Religion of Reason
that ‘by the concept of truth we indicate the concept of God [. . .] truth is the
essence of God’,35 in promoting a God of ideas, Rosenzweig stressed the reality
of God. If revelation in Cohen emphasised the rational, true and ethical nature
of God, in Rosenzweig it is seen as an act of pure love, an erotic, not a sym-
bolic act, a mutual dialogic affinity. Rosenzweig said that one should not deny
the reality of truth: ‘Truth is from God, God is its origin. If truth is illumination,
then God is the light whence springs the illumination [. . .] God is himself the lucid
light which elucidates the truth.’36 The characteristics of God are the inclusive
unity of the All, light and truth. Rosenzweig nevertheless asks, ‘Truth – what
is it?’ and the scholar Yehoyada Amir explains,
Nietzsche already answered this question in his provocative way, saying,

Let us assume that truth is a woman – and so? Is there no basis to the
suspicion that all the philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatic, did not
understand women?37
There is a chasm between the answers of these two existentialists, but the
search for truth, whatever its interpretation was common to both. If in Hegel
objectivity embodies the truth, and if in Nietzsche subjectivity is the essence of
truth, Rosenzweig declares that ‘God is truth’.38
The rise of modern paganism

In the introduction to the third part of The Star of Redemption, Goethe and
Nietzsche are set off against each other. Goethe, who was a lifelong idol-
worshipper, goes up to the edge of the abyss but does not enter it. Like his hero
Faust, he was challenged by fate but escaped unharmed: ‘Let someone match
it if he can!’39 These words of Goethe, regarded by Nietzsche as one of the
ideal meta-historical figures, are quoted by him in support of the Nietzschean
approach that demands a form of history that intensifies life: ‘I hate any-
thing that merely adds to my knowledge without increasing or stimulating
my actions.’40 The common denominator between Goethe and Nietzsche was
their use of the Übermensch concept, their rejection of suicide and their affirma-
tion of life. And now, Rosenzweig comes along and portrays Nietzsche as the
opposite of Goethe (depicted in a positive light), the negative mirror-image
of the Nietzschean figure that philosophises in the first part of The Star of
Redemption. Nietzsche and his hero Zarathustra are now described in a state of
perdition, sinfulness and delusion:
A votive tablet is erected on the precipice. It illustrates, through the exam-

ple of Zoroaster’s decline and fall, how one can become a sinner and a
fanatic in one person, an immoralist who smashes all the old tablets, and
a tyrant who overpowers his neighbour as well as himself for the sake of
the next-but-one, his friend for the sake of new friends. The tablet fur-
thermore warns every traveller who has ascended the ridge not to try to
retrace Goethe’s steps on Goethe’s path, like him alone hopefully trusting
the tread of his own feet, without the wings of faith or love, a pure son of
this earth.41
The Nietzschean world has no universalist teleological pretensions, whether

sacred, rational or moral. Perspectivist philosophy thus reached nihilist conclu-
sions: it is not finding out the purpose that must be the primary ambition of
modern philosophy, but creating the world with a new purpose.
Rosenzweig analysed the two faces of Nietzsche’s paganism: the essential
contemplative spirit of the eternal recurrence, and the accidental, inhumanity
of the Übermensch. In Zarathustra, two different accounts of time were given.
The cyclical concept of time expressed in the eternal recurrence: ‘“Every-
thing straight lies” [. . .] “time itself is a circle”,’42 and linear time which he
borrowed from the Heraclitean flow: ‘O my brothers, is everything not now
in flux?’43 The flux of the river described by Nietzsche expressed perpetual
becoming, while the eternal recurrence was akin to Plato’s conception of ‘the
moving shadow of eternity’ as he described it in the Timaeus. An analysis of
Nietzsche’s scheme of the river reveals a concept of time that is cyclical, even
when Nietzsche speaks about the Heraclitean river: ‘Behold a river that flows
back to its source through many meanderings!’44 As against Nietzsche, Rosen-
zweig’s concept of temporality was ecstatic, human time:
Eternity is not a very long time; it is a Tomorrow that could as well be

Today. Eternity is a future which, without ceasing to be future, is none-
theless present [. . .]. More exactly, the growth has no relationship at all
to time.45
Rosenzweig places revelation as the sole source for the world’s telos: ‘While
man was created to be a superman, the world only becomes superworld in the
122 David Ohana
revelation of God to man.’46 But one should remember that God’s eternity is
meta-historical: ‘God himself, however, plants the sapling of his own eternity
neither into the beginning of time nor into its middle, but utterly beyond time
into eternity.’ The eternal phenomenon of the kingdom of heaven is redemp-
tive and beyond time. Man makes the kingdom of heaven closer through his active
participation in the world, and God is the one who legitimises man’s enterprise
through the revelations. Revelation contradicts the concept of progress. Eter-
nity, then, is revealed not through and for reason, but is an act of divine love.
The Nietzschean revolution was that of abandoning the idea of teleological
progress in favour of the idea of a process as teleological for itself. The main
thing, the thing which brought satisfaction, was the pursuit of power, but the
achievement of one’s goal was hollow and unsatisfying. Satisfaction and dis-
satisfaction were ‘ontologised’. Nietzsche wanted to detach modern man from
social norms and to adapt him to the rhythm of his private world which he had
created. Ethics was no longer a matter between man and his fellow man, but
between man and the cosmos. Thus, the will to power could be understood as
a search for authenticity, that is, as a desire to find a correlation between man
and the rhythm of his world.
Traditional metaphysics claimed that, if the chain of cause and effect was
not infinite, one has to assume a first cause. As against this, Nietzsche remained
within the sphere of the immanent, claiming that the will to power was a per-
manent cause, unfulfilled continuous becoming, and that it was consequently
eternal. This was contrary to the cosmological vision of the medieval ages,
which maintained that if the reality of the universe was not determined by a first
cause outside the chain of cause and effect, one would find oneself in a situation
of infinite regression. It was likewise contrary to Hegel’s concept of progress,
according to which the unfolding of time was one of the revelations of the Geist,
and that therefore progress was revealed in history. In distinction from these two
concepts of regression and progress, Nietzsche identified eternity with the infi-
nite duration of becoming or, in other words, with eternal recurrence.
Thus, what, one may ask, were Nietzsche’s ideas concerning time and prog-
ress? The idea that the duration of time is infinite served, among other things,
as the basis for the concept of human progress. If time was infinitely open, then
there was a possibility of continual improvement: that is to say, there was no
obstacle from the point of view of the framework of time. The idea of progress
was based on the assumption of improvement: in the idea of progress, an infe-
rior primordial situation is hinted at as a starting point which needs to be tran-
scended for the sake of some higher purpose. This burden of natural teleology
was totally rejected by Nietzsche. The idea of progress was for him a variant
of the attempt to give an inner significance to process. If the main thing in the
revelation of the will to power was the process rather than the purpose, then
no importance could be attached to the conclusion of the historical process,
but only to its development.
Nietzsche said that one had to deny any significance to the process itself and
to divest it of any sense of direction, either positive or negative. The end of
the process, its purpose, was unimportant, only the intensity of the process.
Nietzsche proclaimed a total nihilism based on eternal recurrence: ‘This is the
most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the “meaningless”), eternity.’47
Against mythology
The followers of Zeus and Apollo in ancient Greece were real people, not
tragic heroes.48 They were situated in historical reality and their modes of under-
standing are relatable to us as human beings. For the Greeks, said Rosenzweig,
the Olympian Gods were objects of devotion and representations of important
human matters. Rosenzweig thought the Greek conceptions of the Olympian
Gods was a necessary stage for the preparations of human beings for the appear-
ance of the revelations on the historical stage. The biblical revelation was a
progress of the human spirit; both Buber and Rosenzweig saw the revelation
as the bringing forward of the relationship of the human ‘I’ and the divine
‘Thou’: the encounter that was a real event, a lively happening. The biblical
text, according to them, is an outstanding testimony of the kinship of God with
man – a text of monotheistic myth.
The conclusion of The Star of Redemption about Nietzsche’s philosophy is:
the denial of God, love, and the Other. Self-love is deemed sinful because of its
origins in idolatry and self-deception. In the movement from Hegelian ideal-
ism to Nietzschean idolatry, love is estranged and loses its ontological status.
It becomes an abstract affection, without a place in the world, an affection
of self-deception which is directed to the ego and not to the other, to the
finite individual and not to humanity as such. The admiration of Nietzsche
in the beginning of The Star of Redemption due to his critique of metaphysi-
cal and abstract philosophising in general and Hegelian idealism in particular
is replaced by the opposite self-delusional tendency of the human heart, from
rationalism to paganism.
In the Nietzschean perspectivism, the image of God (the form of Zarathus-
tra) overshadows God himself, the likeness overshadows its creator, paganism
eclipses monotheism and sovereign man, the Sovereign of the World. The act
of revelation in The Star of Redemption is revealed in a fragmentary, broken,
sometimes self-contradictory manner (it seems that Rosenzweig was saying that
the very existence of a system of thought is philosophical hubris). Rosenzweig
appears as someone who climbs up Nietzsche’s ladder to see from one place
what cannot be seen from another, to ask critical questions and philosophise,
not with a hammer but with phylacteries. When one cannot climb any further,
the ladder is liable to become a wall, the method an obstacle and the means an
end. Rosenzweig climbed for a moment up the ladder and then peeped behind
the curtain to be present at revelation like a stowaway on a ship discovering
unknown continents or like someone present at the giving of the Law at Sinai.
Conclusion
It is a philosophical irony that the most ‘pagan’ philosopher of modern times
(in the eyes of Rosenzweig), became the key through which Jewish theology
124 David Ohana
in the twentieth century rejuvenated itself. With Rosenzweig, one can men-
tion other heretical religious Jewish thinkers such as Martin Buber, Gershom
Scholem and Walter Benjamin. All of whom owe a debt to Nietzsche, the
‘pagan’ philosopher.
Nietzsche’s critique on traditional metaphysics and its teleological structures
advanced a new mode of thinking about human nature and its implications.
Rosenzweig is one response among many to Nietzsche’s critique of modernity,
a response which tries to capture Nietzsche’s mode of thinking without losing
key enterprises of Western Civilization: the religious dimension, the validity of
the sciences and the importance of ethics. For Nietzsche, the absence of meta-
physical teleology paves the way for the will of the philosopher to shape the
world in its image. For Rosenzweig, the destruction of metaphysical teleology
and modern idols opens the possibility for a religious encounter with God that
is not filtered through metaphysics: a possibility of an encounter with a live God.
Notes
1 R. Margolin, Inner Religion, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011. [in Hebrew].
2 S. Kirkegaard, Fear and Trembling, tr. A. Hannay, London: Penguin, 1986.
3 D. Ohana, Nietzsche and Jewish Political Theology, New York: Routledge, 2019.
4 S. Houlgate, Hegel, Nietzsche and he Criticism of Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
5 F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, tr. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, New York: Vin-
tage Books, 1968, p. 135.
6 F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, tr. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, New
York: Vintage Books, 1969, p. 28.
7 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p. 1.
8 G. Vattimo (ed.), La Sécularisation de la pensée, tr. C. Alunni, et al., Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1986.
14 A. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, p. 30.
15 O. Schutte, Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984, p. 50.
16 Y. Yovel, ‘Nietzsche and Spinoza: amor fati and amor dei,’ in Y. Yovel (ed.), Nietzsche as
Affirmative Thinker, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986, pp. 183–203.
17 B. Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2009, p. 145.
18 F. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, tr. W. W. Hallo, New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1971, p. 18.
19 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, pp. 18–19. On Nietzsche’s influence on Rosenz-
weig, and the latter’s affinity to Nietzsche, see C. Hufnagel, ‘Nietzsche im “Stern der
Erlösung”,’ in M. Brasser (ed.), Rosenzweig als Leser, Kontextuelle Kommentare zum ‘Stern
und Erlösung’, Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 2004, pp. 291–303; R. Cohen, ‘Rosenzweig
versus Nietzsche,’ Nietzsche Studien, 19(1), 1990, pp. 346–66.
20 M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, ed. D. F. Krell, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982, vol. 3–4,
p. 18; K. Löwith, ‘M. Heidegger and F. Rosenzweig: A Postscript to Being and Time,’ in
A. Levinson (ed.), Nature, History and Existentialism, Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1966, pp. 51–78; E. P. Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and Ger-
man Philosophy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
21 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 9. Nietzsche does generally not appear in the
academic literature about Rosenzweig, and in two important studies, his name is not
even mentioned. See, for example, P. Bouretz, ‘From the Night of the World to the
Blaze of Redemption: The Star of Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929),’ in P. Bouretz, Wit-
nesses for the Future, tr. M. B. Smith, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
pp. 84–165; S. Mosès, System and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, tr. C.
Tihanyi, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.
22 W. Hayden, ‘Nietzsche: The Poetic Defence of History in the Metaphorical Mode,’ in
W. Hayden, Metahistory of the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University, 1973, p. 332.
23 F. Rosenzweig, ‘Diary,’ in F. Rosenzweig, Selected Correspondence and Diary Entries (Mivhar
Iggerot ve-Kitei Yoman), ed. R. Horowitz, 29th February 1908, Jerusalem, 1987, p. 24.
[in Hebrew].
24 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 12; E. Levinas, ‘Foreword,’ to Mosès, System
and Revelation, pp. 13–22; E. Levinas, ‘Franz Rosenzweig,’ tr. R. A. Cohen, Midstream,
29(9), 1983, pp. 33–40.
25 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 104.
27 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 8. See also E. R. Wolfson, ‘Facing the Effaced:
Mystical Eschatology and the Idealistic Orientation in the Thought of Franz Rosenz-
weig,’ Journal for the History of Modern Theology, 4(1), 1997, pp. 39–81.
30 F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, tr. W. Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books, 1966,
p. 18.
31 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 34.
35 F. Pierfrancesco and H. Wiedebach, ‘Hermann Cohen im Stern der Erlösung,’ in Brasser
(ed.), Rosenzweig als Leser, pp. 305–55; H. Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of Sources of
Judaism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972 [first published 1919]; M. D. Jaffe,
‘Liturgy and Ethics: Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig on the Day of Atonement,’
Journal of Religious Ethics, 7(2), 1979, pp. 215–28; R. Horowitz, ‘Hermann Cohen and
Franz Rosenzweig,’ in A. Cohen (ed.), Franz Rosenzweig: The Star and the Man: Collected
Studies, Beersheva, 2010, pp. 231–50 [in Hebrew].
36 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 386; E. Meir, Star of Jacob: Life and Works of Franz
Rosenzweig, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994 [in Hebrew].
37 Y. Amir, Believing Knowledge: Studies in the Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, Tel-Aviv: Am
Oved, 2004, p. 260 [in Hebrew].
40 F. Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, tr. A. Collins, New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1957, ‘Introduction’.
41 Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, pp. 286–7; P. Ricoeur, ‘The “Figure” in Rosen-
zweig’s The Star of Redemption,’ in P. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and
Imagination, tr. D. Pellauer, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995, pp. 93–107.
42 F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. W. Kaufmann, New York: Random House,
1997, p. 158.
43 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 201.
126 David Ohana
44 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 167.
48 F. Rosenzweig, Naharaim, tr. Y. Amir, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1960, p. 226 [in Hebrew].
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University of California Press, 2003.
Hayden, W., ‘Nietzsche: The Poetic Defence of History in the Metaphorical Mode,’ in W.
Hayden, Metahistory of the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University, 1973, pp. 331–75.
Heidegger, M., Nietzsche, volume 3–4, ed. D. F. Krell, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982.
Horowitz, R., ‘Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig,’ in A. Cohen (ed.), Franz Rosen-
zweig: The Star and the Man: Collected Studies, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2010, pp. 231–50
[in Hebrew].
Houlgate, S., Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
Hufnagel, C., ‘Nietzsche im “Stern der Erlösung”,’ in M. Brasser (ed.), Rosenzweig als Leser, Kon-
textuelle Kommentare zum “Stern der Erlösung”, Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 2004, pp. 291–303.
Jaffe, M. D., ‘Liturgy and Ethics: Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig on the Day of
Atonement,’ Journal of Religious Ethics, 7 (2), 1979, pp. 215–28.
Kirkegaard, S., Fear and Trembling, tr. A. Hannay, London: Penguin, 1986.
Levinas, E., ‘Franz Rosenzweig,’ tr. R. A. Cohen, Midstream, 29 (9), 1983, pp. 33–40.
Levinas, E., ‘Foreword,’ in S. Mosès, System and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenz-
weig, tr. C. Tihanyi, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992, pp. 13–22.
Löwith, K., ‘M. Heidegger and F. Rosenzweig: A Postscript to Being and Time,’ in A.
Levinson (ed.), Nature, History and Existentialism, Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1966, pp. 51–78.
Margolin, R., Inner Religion, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011 [in Hebrew].
Meir, E., Star of Jacob: Life and Works of Franz Rosenzweig, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994 [in
Hebrew].
Mosès, S., System and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, tr. C. Tihanyi, Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1992.
Nietzsche, F., The Use and Abuse of History, tr. A. Collins, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957.
Nietzsche, F., The Will to Power, tr. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, New York: Vintage
Books, 1968.
Nietzsche, F., On the Genealogy of Morals, tr. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, New York:
Vintage Books, 1969.
Nietzsche, F., Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. W. Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1997.
Ohana, D., Nietzsche and Jewish Political Theology, New York: Routledge, 2019.
Pierfrancesco, F. and Wiedebach, H., ‘Hermann Cohen im Stern der Erlösung,’ in M. Brasser
(ed.), Rosenzweig als Leser: Kontextuelle Kommentare zum “Stern der Erlösung”, Tübingen:
Niemeyer Verlag, 2004, pp. 305–55.
Pollock, B., Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge
Ricoeur, P., ‘The “Figure” in Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption,’ in P. Ricoeur, Figuring
the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination, tr. D. Pellauer, Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1995, pp. 93–107.
Rosenzweig, F., Naharaim, tr. Y. Amir, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1960 [in Hebrew].
Rosenzweig, F., The Star of Redemption, tr. W. W. Hallo, New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1971.
Rosenzweig, F., Selected Correspondence and Diary Entries (Mivhar Iggerot ve- Kitei Yoman),
ed. R. Horowitz, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1987 [in Hebrew].
Schutte, O., Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984.
Vattimo, G. (ed.), La Sécularisation de la pensée, tr. Charles Alunni et al., Paris: Editions du
Seuil, 1986.
Wolfson, E. R., ‘Facing the Effaced: Mystical Eschatology and the Idealistic Orientation in
the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig,’ Journal for the History of Modern Theology, 4 (1), 1997,
pp. 39–81.
Yovel, Y., ‘Nietzsche and Spinoza: amor fati and amor dei,’ in Y. Yovel (ed.), Nietzsche as
Affirmative Thinker, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986, pp. 183–204.
Section III
Philosophy
7 Can the sciences do without
final causes?
Stephen Boulter
Few ideas in the history of philosophy have come in for the sustained criti-
cism meted out to Aristotle’s notion of final causation. Indeed, it was a truth
universally acknowledged amongst canonical early modern philosophers that
teleological thinking was part and parcel of a discredited and outmoded cos-
mology and metaphysics.1 And the standard historiographical studies have it
that philosophy and the sciences took a great leap forward only when teleolog-
ical thinking was finally banished from the natural order in favour of a mecha-
nistic world view. Although criticism of final causation has softened somewhat
over time – mainly because the biological sciences have found house room
for notions like function and purpose – the expectation remains that respect-
able philosophers and scientists operate with only a severely curtailed notion
of causation,2 effectively confining themselves to what the scholastics would
consider a broken-backed version of ‘efficient causation’.3 This fêted transition
from teleological to mechanistic modes of thinking is perhaps the outstanding
instance of ‘heroic’ philosophy in the orthodox canon.4 But can the sciences
really do without final causation? In this chapter, I lay out some reasons for
thinking they cannot.
Such a proposal will bring many up short. Why would one want to resurrect
final causation? The short answer is that the cost of abandoning final causes is
too great. And the basis for this claim is the seldom noticed but nonetheless
systematic connection between Hume’s analysis of ‘efficient’ causation and the
rejection of final causation, the former being the consequence of the latter.
According to Aristotle and the scholastics, final causes are not just one kind of
cause among many, but the very ‘cause of causes’. Remove the cause of causes
and one removes efficient causation proper. Combine this with a failure to
recognise material and formal causation, similarly dependent upon final causa-
tion, and it is but a further short step to the Humean inspired re-combination
thesis according to which any re-arranging of the elements of the natural order
is realisable short of those implying a logical contradiction.5 But to uphold the
recombination thesis is to deny that the natural order is indeed an order at all,
and so an essential precondition of success in the natural sciences is under-
mined. Thus, Hume’s approach to causation is nothing short of a reductio of the
132 Stephen Boulter
rejection of final causation. Contrary to prevailing orthodoxy, final causation,
when understood aright, is indispensable to the scientific enterprise.
Telling this less familiar story is the main business of this chapter.6 The prin-
cipal burden is largely expository: to lay out precisely what the scholastics mean
and do not mean by the phrase ‘all things act for an end’. But the best way
to achieve this is to begin with what everybody knows, that is, with what
Armstrong calls the ‘fatal legacy’ of Hume’s account of causation.7 For the
unwitting genius of Hume’s account lies precisely in exposing the full impli-
cations of abandoning final causation in the natural order. I begin then with
some reminders of the difficulties bequeathed to us by Hume. Appreciating
why such problems do not arise within the Aristotelian context is crucial to
understanding precisely what final causation was taken to be by the scholas-
tics themselves, and what they meant, and what they did not mean by the
claim that ‘all things act for an end’. The next section outlines the Aristotelian
account of causation in general, and efficient and final causation in particular,
as understood by the scholastics themselves, the essential point being to show
how this account avoids the problems associated with Hume while providing
the framework necessary for the successful prosecution of the scientific enter-
prise. I end by considering what the scholastics themselves took to be prob-
lematic in final causation. As we shall see, the problems that worried them are
associated primarily with the role of final causes in the explanation of human
action – precisely where moderns are most inclined to admit final causation
without demure.
Final causation and natural agents

To understand scholastic thinking on final causation in natural agents, one must
begin with an introductory semantic point. Aristotle and the scholastics did
indeed claim that every agent acts for an end, and so they did indeed sign up
wholeheartedly to what has been called teleological thinking. But as the scho-
lastic tag has it, action follows being, by which they meant that an agent’s actions,
manner of acting and the ends the agent can pursue, depend on what sort of
being it is. And the scholastics recognised three fundamentally distinct sorts of
beings:
• God (the creator and sustainer of all other entities)

• Human beings and angels (creatures endowed with rationality and so able
to act voluntarily)
• Natural agents (animate and inanimate creatures lacking rationality)
While all agents, regardless of their kind, act for an end, they do so in very
different ways because they are very different kinds of beings. Thus, what it
means to act for an end varies depending on the kind of agent involved. This
is an example of the widely used notion of analogy in Aristotelian thinking.
There is a focal sense of ‘acting for an end’ which anchors a set of systematically
Can the sciences do without final causes? 133
related analogous senses of the same phrase. To take the standard example used
to illustrate this semantic point, the term ‘health’ has a focal sense drawn from
the good condition of organisms. But the term ‘health’ can also be applied to
diets, lifestyles, attitudes and samples insofar as these are either causes of health
or signs of health in an organism. The semantic point is that to understand the
term ‘health’ one needs to know that while it does not have the same meaning
in all instances, its meanings are not equivocal either, for the analogous senses
are systematically related to the focal sense. The same applies to the phrase ‘act-
ing for an end’. The focal sense is drawn from the case of human free agency
because this type of action is best known to us, and means (roughly) intention-
ally doing something for a reason. Now neither God nor rational creatures
act in this way, but only analogously. This is important if one is to understand
what the scholastics meant when they say that natural agents act for an end.
There is no suggestion that natural agents act intentionally. Nor is there any
suggestion that one must know God’s intentions with respect to a natural agent
in order to know that it is acting for an end. The common element of ‘acting
for an end’ across all agents is the far less demanding notion of being oriented
or inclined in a particular direction. But there are importantly different ways of
being oriented or inclined.
This semantic point granted, what are we to say about natural agents act-
ing for an end? What is meant by the claim that oxygen, say, ‘acts for an end’,
and why would one want to say this? To answer both questions, it is best to
begin with Hume’s analysis of causation and its attendant problems. And this
is so because Hume’s analysis of causation is the systematic consequence of
abandoning final causation in the natural order. So to understand what the
scholastics meant by final causation in natural objects, it helps to bear in mind
that final causation shields Aristotle’s account of efficient causation from the
challenges afflicting the Humean account.
Recall, then, that according to Hume all there is to efficient causation is (a)
the constant conjunction of putative causes and effects, (b) their spatiotemporal
contiguity, and (c) the temporal priority of causes to effects. There is no neces-
sary connection between causes and effects themselves because (a) there is no
logical or conceptual connection between cause and effect, and (b) there is no
impression of necessity arising upon our perceiving causes giving way to their
effects. Hume’s Fork forces the claim that the ‘necessity’ in such instances is a
mere projection of ours arising out of our expectations given our past experi-
ences. This is the basis of the Humean claim that there are no necessary con-
nections between distinct existences.8
This approach to causation has since become philosophical orthodoxy. But,
as is well known, this analysis of causation has proved problematic for the sci-
ences. Scientific experiments, as opposed to observational studies, are designed
specifically to identify real, that is, mind-independent causal relationships in
the natural order. In particular, the sciences run experiments (when they can)
to determine empirically whether a causal relationship obtains between As and
Bs once a correlation between As and Bs has been noticed or is suspected. We
134 Stephen Boulter
want to know if the correlation is just a coincidence, or whether we can count
on it continuing in the future because the relationship between As and Bs is
somehow written into the nature of things. But Hume’s historically effective
analysis undermines the very notion of there being a genuine causal order to
discover in the first place. This becomes most apparent when the difficulties
with his analysis of causation are made explicit. The following is a catalogue of
the most commonly discussed difficulties:9
(a) The distinction between correlations (constant conjunction) and causation

is lost. But distinguishing between real causation and mere correlations is
precisely the point of scientific experiments.
(b) Thunder follows lightning regularly, similarly night follows day. But light-
ning does not cause thunder, and day does not cause night. Hume’s analysis
does not allow us to discriminate between a case of a cause A causing effect
B and a case where a cause C is responsible for both A and B.
(c) Sometimes an earlier event brings about a later event only if another event
does not occur. This is the problem of pre-emption.
(d) It is difficult to distinguish in a principled manner between background
conditions and causes. Both regularly precede the later event. So how do we
identify one item as the cause and relegate others to the status of condition?
(e) It is difficult to explain why we should think that a later event B is the
specific effect of an earlier event A as opposed to all the other events C, D,
E and F that regularly follow events of kind A. Innumerable events are later
than the putative cause, so how do we identify what is a genuine effect of
the cause as opposed to an unrelated but contemporaneous and contiguous
event?
(f ) Before the invention of the microscope we knew nothing about germs. But
presumably microscopic organisms have been causing diseases from time
immemorial. But there was no regularity noticed in such situations. What
is a Humean to say about causal relations that go undetected and conse-
quently unprojected?
(g) Finally, there is a related temporal ordering problem. Hume says that causes
and effects are ordered temporally as earlier and later, and so uses the tem-
poral order to identify causal relationships. But many metaphysicians want
to use causal relationships to ground the temporal order.
Now it is clear that if the sciences are to be viable they need an understanding
of causation that provides answers to these challenges. And modern metaphysi-
cians and philosophers of science have been working industriously to repair the
damage done to the idea that Hume’s empiricism is the natural philosophical
partner of the sciences. But this salvage operation has not succeeded. And this
is because Hume’s analysis of causation, in fact, does away with causation alto-
gether. In Hume’s world, anything can follow from anything, and all existing
entities can be recombined in any logically conceivable configuration. There
is no non-logical way natural entities have to be ordered; they just happen to
be found in this particular configuration, and there is no reason why they are
in this configuration rather than another. But this is to make the natural order
unintelligible per se and not merely to limited minds like ours. No amount of
tinkering with this analysis of causation is going to rectify the situation.
It is here that one can begin to understand the role of final causation. It is
precisely to preserve the intelligibility of the natural order that final causes are
necessary. As Aquinas points out in the Summa Contra Gentiles,10 if there are
no final causes, then efficient causes would be indifferent to any specific effect, so
an efficient cause would not cause anything at all. Or, if somehow an efficient
cause managed to produce an effect, the effect would follow merely by chance,
and certainly not in the regular fashion which we find in the natural order. As
the scholastics never tire of repeating, in a world without final causes, either
nothing would follow from anything, or anything could follow from anything
else because efficient causes are blind without final causes directing them onto
some specific effect. This is the clue to understanding final causation aright.
On the intelligibility of the natural order and causal realism

To appreciate the connection between final causes and efficient causes, it is use-
ful to gather a few reminders of the Aristotelian approach to causation in gen-
eral. Central to the Aristotelian metaphysical and epistemological framework
is the notion of order. An order is a collection of entities in a set of systematic
relations. The presence of such relations is a precondition of the intelligibil-
ity of an order per se, for understanding an order, or understanding an entity
or process within an order, amounts to no more and no less than tracking
these systematic relations. Now of all the relations to be found in the natural
order perhaps the most important is the relation of causation, for it is the rela-
tion most relied upon to explain the outstanding feature of the natural order,
namely, change.11
The Aristotelian notion of causation in general has two essential compo-
nents: (a) a cause is that on which something depends in itself, and (b) a cause
is a principle in itself influencing being in another.12 Now the scholastics follow
Aristotle in assuming that there are four distinct kinds of cause, each of which
meets these two criteria in distinct ways. These are:
• Material Cause: the stuff X is made of

• Formal Cause: the arrangement or internal organisation the stuff of X takes on
• Efficient Cause: that which brings about the arrival of the arrangement in
the stuff of X
• Final Cause: that which causes the efficient cause of X to bring about this
arrangement in the stuff of X rather than some other arrangement, and in
X rather than in Y or Z
For the scholastics, the effort to understand the natural order is in large part a
matter of identifying these causes in the phenomenon under investigation. One
136 Stephen Boulter
understands X – better, one understands why X is the way it is – when one
has identified all of X’s four causes. These causes are assumed to be real, mind-
independent features of the natural order. Moreover, crucial to the doctrine of
the four causes is the claim that a hierarchical relationship obtains between
these different types of cause: final causes move efficient causes to bring about
certain arrangements rather than others in parcels of matter. This is why the
final cause is called the ‘cause of causes’. Indeed, on this view, nothing can be
an efficient cause if it is not moved by a final cause.13
Lying behind this catalogue of causes and their interrelations is the doctrine
of hylomorphism, itself intimately linked to the act/potency distinction which
Aristotle found essential to the explanation of the very possibility of change in
the natural order. Hylomorphism is the view that every compound entity is a
combination of matter and form. To take a simple example from chemistry, the
matter of an oxygen atom is electrons, protons and neutrons (as it is for all of
the chemical elements), while the form of an oxygen atom is the number and
configuration of the material components (eight protons, eight electrons and
eight neutrons in a particular arrangement). If one wants to understand what
oxygen is, it is essential to know both the matter and form of oxygen. When
hylomorphism is then combined with the act/potency distinction, we have
the conceptual machinery needed to account for the characteristic interactions
of this element. An item’s form grounds the essential and actual nature of the
item (the actuality of an item), while the item’s matter is the ground of that
item’s ability to change its state (matter is by definition that which can take on
different arrangements). But the form of an item also grounds its powers and
liabilities, thus setting limits to what sorts of changes an item can undergo, and
what sorts of changes that item can bring about in another item.
This brings us to a crucial point for present purposes: powers and liabilities
do not exist in isolation. In virtue of their form, entities have characteristic
dispositions, inclinations or tendencies in virtue of which they can bring about
certain changes in some other entities but not in others. There is, therefore, a kind
of directedness built into the nature of things.14
With these ideas in place, we can consider the scholastic account of efficient
causation in greater detail and precision. The settled scholastic view is that
efficient causation, at the highest level of abstraction, is a matter of ‘reducing
potentiality to actuality’. A first approximation is that A is an efficient cause
of B if A’s activities (themselves grounded in A’s powers, which are in turn
grounded in A’s form) actualise the possibility of B (a potentiality grounded
in the liabilities of what ontologically supports B). This can be formalised as
follows:
Efficient causation df = The communication of some sort of being to a

substance by an agent via an action.15
It is causation via an action that distinguishes the efficient cause from the mate-
rial, formal and final causes.16 An illustration will help. Applying this formula
to the case of iron rusting, we get:
• ‘substance’ = the iron
• ‘agent’ = oxygen
• ‘action’ = oxidisation (oxygen reacting with iron)
• ‘being communicated’ = rust (iron oxide)
In this case of efficient causation, we have oxygen as the agent which com-
municates rust to iron via its action, thereby actualising a latent potentiality of
the iron.
Some important points to emphasise: first, the background picture is of a
natural order populated with hylomorphic entities. In virtue of their form,
entities have characteristic dispositions, inclinations or tendencies in virtue of
which they can bring about certain changes in some other entities but not in
others. This is the kind of directedness one finds in the natural order per se. To
continue the example, there are certain things that oxygen can do, and certain
things it can’t. Oxygen can bring about the oxidisation of iron, but it cannot
produce rust in gold, say, for gold’s atomic structure precludes it from this activ-
ity of oxygen. Even with respect to iron, there are certain things oxygen can do
and certain things it can’t. Oxygen cannot melt iron at room temperature, for
example. Similarly rust cannot be ‘communicated’ to iron by gold or hydro-
gen. Notice too that, in virtue of its form, iron has the ability to be involved
in the generation of rust, but it can’t generate rust on its own. The possibility/
potentiality of iron rusting is actualised by something else, namely, the action
of oxygen on the iron. And these powers and liabilities are specific to oxygen
and iron. But the crucial point is that all the features of these chemical changes/
reactions are explained by the atomic and molecular configuration, that is,
forms, of the entities involved.
Second, note also that these directed powers and liabilities require certain
background conditions to be present in order for them to be manifested, and
that these powers and liabilities can be impeded. For example, the presence of
water is a necessary condition of oxidisation, and oxidisation can be impeded
if the iron has been galvanised. This is why efficient causation is deemed to
be ‘for the most part’, that is, what happens naturally unless the connection
between powers and liabilities has been disrupted.
Third, it is the business of the natural sciences to investigate the natural order
to identify precisely these ‘connatural’ pairings of corresponding powers and
liabilities. The scientific experiment, run to identify causal relations, is simply
the most sophisticated method we have yet devised to identify these pairings in
a causally complicated world.17
Fourth, every hylomorphic substance, in virtue of existing, and being the
sort of thing that it is, has causal powers and liabilities. Being a possible causal
agent is part of what it is to be a real entity.
Finally, the example of oxidisation can be easily misconstrued. Notice that
oxygen is not the efficient cause of rust. Strictly speaking, the efficient cause of
the rust is the action of oxygen, not oxygen per se. This is important because the
action of an agent is identical to the patient’s being affected. Although a precon-
dition of efficient causation is the obtaining of a real distinction between agent
138 Stephen Boulter
and patient, there is no real distinction between cause and effect in the natural
order, although there is a distinction of reason.18 And this means that cause
and effect are not related as earlier/later because they are strictly simultaneous.
What is more, the metaphysical connection between cause and effect could not
be tighter, because the connection is one of identity. Thus, to say there is no
necessary connection between cause and effect, as Hume does, is a mistake by
scholastic lights because it suggests that one and the same thing can be sepa-
rated from itself. The error is most probably born of conflating an agent with
its actions.
‘This is all very interesting’, one might say, ‘but where does final causation
enter the picture? What about the idea that everything acts for an end?’ And
this is perhaps the most surprising thing, from a modern point of view, about
the notion of final causation as applied to the natural order as understood
by the scholastics themselves. There need be no more to final causation than
what has already been written into the account of efficient causation, namely,
the pairing of corresponding powers and liabilities grounded in the forms of
agents and patients.19 Acting for an end in the case of natural objects is nothing
more than being oriented towards, being inclined towards or having a natural
bias to act in certain ways and not others, and this amounts to being in potency
to some things but not others. As Ockham says, ‘To be inclined is nothing
other than to be in potency with respect to another thing in the absence of
any inclination or activity to the contrary.’20 In his On the Principles of Nature,
Aquinas writes about final causes as follows:
Note that every agent, whether it acts by nature or by will, tends towards a
goal, though it doesn’t follow that every agent is aware of a goal or deliber-
ates about it. Something that hasn’t a fixed way of acting but can go either
way – as willing agents can – must consider a goal and use that to decide
how to act; but natural agents act in fixed ways and don’t need to choose
the means to their goals . . . natural agents can tend to goals without
deliberating, where tending towards is simply having a natural bias towards
something.21
And in a similarly deflationary vein, Aquinas points out that
three of these causes – form, goal and agent – can coincide. When fire
produces fire, fire is the agent cause (the producer), the form that realises
the potentiality, and the goal that the agent tends towards in which its
activity is fulfilled.22
But the crucial point is that nothing can be an efficient cause without first
being the effect of a final cause. Ockham explains this as follows: ‘It seems
necessary on the basis of natural reason to posit that every effect has a final
cause . . . otherwise all agents would act by chance’.23 The idea is that every
efficient cause is inclined to or directed towards a particular, determinate end.
If this were not the case, then what an efficient cause ‘communicates’ would be
entirely a matter of chance, and there would be no accounting for the regulari-
ties found in the natural order.
Aquinas goes one further. It is not just that the effect would follow by
chance, as Ockham puts it. Efficient causation would not happen at all. For if
a substance were not directed, oriented, inclined via its powers and liabilities
towards other substances in the way described earlier, every substance would be
indifferent to all other substances, and so do nothing at all. But this is not what
we see in the natural order.
Answers to Humean puzzles

Consider now how availing ourselves of the notion of final causality allows one
to avoid the Humean puzzles [aforementioned (a) – (g)] while providing an
account of causation that makes sense of scientific activity.
(a) There is no problem distinguishing in principle between mere correlations

and genuine efficient causation. Events are merely correlated if there is
no actualisation of a potentiality obtaining between them. If potentialities
are actualised via an action of an agent, then we have efficient causation.
(b) Regarding the common cause problem, on the scholastic account of effi-
cient causation day is not an agent, and does not reduce the potentiality of
night to actuality. Similarly, lightning does not actualise thunder, so there
is no efficient causation between these items.
(c) Interference in the manifestation of powers and liabilities is to be expected
in a causally messy world. Efficient causation is not automatic, but happens
‘for the most part’, and it is possible that some powers and liabilities are
only rarely manifested.
(d) Background conditions do not actualise potentialities by means of their
actions. The background conditions are just that, the conditions under
which the powers and liabilities of the patient and agent can be manifested
because they are not blocked or interfered with.
(e) A later event that is not actualised by an earlier event is not an effect of that
earlier event.
It is precisely the linking of corresponding powers and liabilities that allows one
to distinguish the effect of the agent’s actions from all the events that happen
after those actions. The agent does not have the power to realise all potentials
indiscriminately, only a few specific ones grounded in the liabilities of the
effected substance. Similar considerations apply when distinguishing the cause
of an effect from all the other events obtaining at the same time.
(f ) Undetected efficient causal relations are to be expected on the scholastic

analysis. Efficient causation has nothing to do with what has been observed
on a regular basis since it is entirely mind-independent.
140 Stephen Boulter
(g) Cause and effect are not related as earlier/later, but are, in fact, simultane-
ous because identical. The upshot of this is that the temporal and causal
orders are not related in the manners commonly assumed by contempo-
rary metaphysicians.
A final word to underscore the general point. The rules of experiment design
in the sciences are followed in order to give us a purchase on certain questions:
is the correlation between As and Bs strong enough to warrant investigating? If
so, is there causation between As and Bs, or might there be a common under-
lying cause? Could we be missing a real causal relationship because it has been
interfered with? How do we distinguish background conditions from causes?
Dealing with these sorts of questions is standard scientific fare, and within the
Aristotelian framework this activity makes perfect sense.
Final causation and human agency

So far, we have been considering final causation in natural agents. But as
remarked earlier, this is only one form of final causation. Final causes in the
case of intentional agents are rather different, although the general definition
of a final cause remains the same. Final causes were characterised earlier as ‘that
which moves an efficient cause to bring about a certain arrangement in mat-
ter rather than another’. In the case of natural agents, the final causes are the
forms of the agent and patient which ground the relevant pairings of powers
and liabilities. This is how the natural agent is directed towards the patient in
characteristic ways. In the case of intentional agents, however, the story is dif-
ferent. Humans and angels can act deliberately for reasons. They can choose to
act in one way rather than another because, by their lights, the chosen action
is a rational response to a possible good, other options being deemed inferior
in one way or another.
Now it is one of the odd features of early modern discussions of final cau-
sation that while it was rejected in the case of natural agents, it was accepted
without qualm in the domain of intentional action. The situation was precisely
the reverse for the scholastics themselves. Of course, there was no doubting the
existence of purposive action in human beings. But it was not entirely clear
how the end for which a human agent acts could be understood to be a real
cause.
The problem stems from the fact that all causes, including final causes, are a
kind of principle, and principles are sources or origins of one kind or another.24
But this raises an obvious difficulty: how can the end of an action be the origin
or source of that action? Suarez puts the difficulty as follows:
[E]ither the end has an influence before it exists or after it already exists.
But not the former, for what sort of real influence can something that
does not exist have, given that being is the foundation of all activity and
similarly of all causality? Nor can the latter be affirmed, since once the end
exists, the action and causality of the agent cease at just that time.25
In short, the end of an action does not appear to exist at the time necessary
to be a source of that action. So in what sense can it be called a cause? At first
blush, it seemed as though human ends could be understood in one of two
ways. The end is either that which draws the agent to action (end as motive), or
it is a state of affairs towards which the action tends (terminus). But in neither
case can the end be a real cause. For a terminus is an effect, not a cause. And an
end understood as a motive causes only ‘metaphorically’ because it exists only
in the intellect and not in rem.
These were the sorts of issues that plagued the scholastics regarding final
causation. And there were various ways in which they could be handled, none
being entirely satisfactory. One could try to suggest that the end of all human
action is beatitude, and beatitude is found in a return to God. Since God, our
true end, exists at all times, and draws us to Him like moths to a flame, there is
a sense in which the ends of human acts do exist at the right time in order to
qualify as a source of our actions. Now, however satisfactory this response might
be from a theological point of view, it is not viable in a strictly philosophical
context. Might Eudaimonia stand in for God? If human beings act in order to
achieve Eudaimonia, and Eudaimonia is conceived as being the full achieve-
ment of one’s potentialities based on one’s form, and one’s form always exists at
the time that one acts, perhaps we can say that our end so-conceived can be a
source of our actions. Here, one’s ends are construed as real possibilities which,
though not actual, are taken with all ontological seriousness as being denizens
of the natural order. But how are possibilities able to be causes in the real order
when, by definition, they are not actual? Possibilities are brought into existence
by something else, rather than themselves bringing about something else.
How did the scholastics handle issues like these? Getting clear about the
nature of ends was obviously paramount. Suarez’s efforts are indicative of the
lengths to which the scholastics had to go to find something sensible to say
on these matters. By his time it had become customary to make the following
distinction: end as intended state to be achieved vs. end as beneficiary. An end might
be understood to be a possible state of affairs that one wishes to bring about in
the external world. But the end might also be conceived of as the beneficiary
of the state to be brought about, that is, the person, say, for whom one wishes
to bring about a certain state of affairs. Health, for example, can be an intended
state, while the person whose health is to be achieved is the beneficiary. Health
does not exist in rem at the right time to be a source of the action which brings
about health, but the person whose health is to be achieved does. So this is one
sense in which the end might be construed so as to get around the problems
associated with temporal order.
But Suarez was not entirely happy with this. The final cause, he thought,
ought to be an intended state of some sort. But this leaves the temporal
ordering problem unresolved. Undeterred, Suarez continued to further subdi-
vide the end as intended state as follows. There is: the intended state as an action
vs. the intended state as a result of an action or operation. Here, one is distinguishing
between an act of building, say, and the house built. If the intended end is the
action itself, rather than the result of the action, then the end is brought closer
142 Stephen Boulter
in time to the realm of real causes. This is particularly so if one further subdi-
vides actions as follows: formal end (finis formalis) vs. objective end (finis objectivus).
A common example here might be an act of contemplating (formal end)
vs. God as the object of that act of contemplation (objective end). Suarez used
these distinctions to state his ‘all things considered’ position on final causation
in human agency. Suarez claimed:
• Final causes in human agency are an intended state to be achieved (not the
beneficiary)
• The intended state is an act (not its result)
• The intended action is the formal (not the objective) end of the action
The leading idea here was that this is the kind of end that has the power to draw
a human agent into action, and so qualify as a source or principle. This end is
simply a possible future act of ours. This act as thought of can lead an agent to
perform it, and so act as a kind of cause.
If that is what a final cause is in cases of human agency, what is its effect? For
Suarez, there were thought to be two kinds of effects, those internal to the will
and those external to the will. Those internal to the will are further subdivided
into means and ends, with ends subdivided again into ends as present enjoy-
ment vs. ends as future acts. The upshot of these distinctions was the claim that:
• The effect of a final cause in human beings is a desire to perform an action

in the future
Now the result is that final causes in the case of human agency exist only in
apprehension, not in rem. Because the end must exist in some sense prior to the
efficient cause, there must be a sense in which the end is first at least in inten-
tion, or in apprehension, while being last in execution. And this is the general
line taken: it is as apprehended that the end influences. But the result is that
final causality in the case of human agency has to be taken analogically, even
metaphorically. For final causes in cases of human agency are, in the last analy-
sis, only ens rationis, namely, beings of reason.26 But since many indispensable
philosophical notions were routinely accorded the modest ontological status of
ens rationis by the scholastics,27 it is perhaps not surprising that this answer to
the puzzle was deemed sufficient. What is curious is that final causation in the
case of human agency should have found favour with the non-scholastic early
modern philosophers, for it is here that final causation is at its most vulnerable.
Notes
1 Gathering quotations on this point is endless. Suffice to mention only a few: Molière’s
quip about the dormitive powers of opium is the stock example of the alleged vacuity
of final causation. Spinoza’s Appendix to Part I of The Ethics, tr. R.H.M. Elwes, New
York: Dover Publications, 1955, provides an extended disparaging assessment of the
Aristotelian ‘cause of causes’. In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes says: ‘I consider the
customary search for final causes to be totally useless in physics; there is considerable
rashness in thinking myself capable of investigating the impenetrable purposes of God’
(R. Descartes, The Philosophical Writing of Descartes, tr. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and
D. Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, vol. 2, p. 39). The last
lines of Chapter 10 of Hobbes’s De Corpore read: ‘A Final Cause has no place but in
such things as have Sense and Will; and this also I shall prove hereafter to be an Efficient
Cause’ (T. Hobbes, ‘De Corpore,’ in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, London: C.
Richards, 1969, vol. 2).
2 D. Armstrong writes: ‘Many analytic philosophers still cripple themselves with the heavy
burden of a sceptical or Regulatory theory of causation and law. It is Hume’s fatal legacy’
(A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. x).
3 Of course, reality is more complicated than our histories. Many early modern thinkers
continued to employ the notion of final causation, Leibniz, Gassendi, Boyle and New-
ton being only the most illustrious. See M. Osler’s ‘From Immanent Natures to Nature
as Artifice: The Reinterpretation of Final Causes in 17th Century Natural Philosophy’,
The Monist, 79, 1996, pp. 388–407, for a study on how final causation was often re-
interpreted rather than abandoned in early modernity.
4 Burtt’s account of the transition to early modernity shaped how many continue to see
the issue of final causation: ‘Medieval philosophy, attempting to solve the ultimate why
of events instead of their immediate how, and thus stressing the principle of final causal-
ity . . . had its appropriate conception of God. Here was the teleological hierarchy of
the Aristotelian forms, all heading up in God or Pure Form, with man intermediate in
reality between him and the material world. The final why of events in the latter could
be explained mainly in terms of their use to man . . . Now, with the superstructure from
man up banished from the primary realm, which for Galileo is identified with material
atoms in their mathematical relations, the how of events being the sole objects of exact
study, there appeared no place for final causality whatsoever. The real world is simply
a succession of atomic motions in mathematical continuity. Under these circumstances
causality could only be intelligibly lodged in the motion of atoms themselves, every-
thing that happens being regarded as the effect solely of mathematical changes in these
material elements.’ (E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science,
London: Kegan Paul, 1925). Two elements of this account remain firmly embedded
in the thought of non-specialists: first, that teleology is inseparable from a theological
context; second, that final causes were commonly construed in terms of a thing’s useful-
ness to humans. Both are serious distortions of scholastic thinking.
5 For the Humean origins of this thesis, see Lewis and Armstrong. D. Lewis writes: ‘I
suggest we look to the Humean denial of necessary connections between distinct exis-
tences . . . I require a principle of recombination according to which patching together parts
of different possible worlds yields another possible world. Roughly speaking, the prin-
ciple is that anything can coexist with anything else, at least provided that they occupy
distinct spatiotemporal positions’ (On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1986, pp. 87–8). Armstrong makes extensive use of precisely the same principle himself:
‘Lewis suggests that we should appeal to a Principle of Recombination. This principle draws
its inspiration from Hume’s principle that there are no necessary connections between
distinct existences. Any two distinct existences may be found together, or found one
without the other, in a single world. Think of our world as like a patchwork quilt, with
the individual patches as the distinct existences. Any recombination of the patches will
be a possible world . . . It seems to me a correct principle’ (A Combinatorial Theory of
Possibility, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 20–1).
6 This story is not new, being standard fare amongst those versed in scholastic metaphys-
ics. For a recent extended discussion, see D. Oderberg’s ‘Finality Revived: Powers and
Intentionality,’ Synthese, 194, 2017, pp. 2387–425.
144 Stephen Boulter
7 Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory, p. x.
8 For Hume’s account of causation, see A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989, Book 1, Part 3. Hume scholars will notice that I am setting aside the sug-
gestion that Hume is making only a psychological point about the content of our idea of
causation and not a metaphysical point about the nature of causal relations in the natural
order. If he is not making the metaphysical point, then his analysis is far less interest-
ing than it has historically been made out to be. But the metaphysical point has a good
foundation in Hume’s texts, particularly when he says: ‘Upon the whole, necessity is
something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form
the most distant idea of it, consider’d as a quality of bodies’ (Treatise, pp. 165–6). It is
natural to take these words to mean that causal necessity in the natural order is without a
foundation in things themselves beyond mere constant conjunction. And this reading of
Hume is plausible because, as I will be at pains to show, precisely this metaphysical point
follows upon the rejection of final causation, and no one doubts that Hume rejected
final causes. For those interested in pursuing these interpretative matters, see J. Harris,
Of Liberty and Necessity, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005; P. Millican’s ‘Humes Old and
New: Four Fashionable Falsehoods and One Unfashionable Truth’, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Supp. 81, 2007, pp. 163–99.
9 This compilation of problems is taken from P. Humphrey’s ‘Causation’, in W. Newton-
Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p. 33.
10 In T. Aquinas, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. A. C. Pegis, Indianapolis: Hack-
ett, 1997, pp. 6–7.
11 Other important examples include the relation of composition and the relation of onto-
logical dependency, as well as spatial and temporal relations.
12 ‘[P]er se influens esse in aliud’ as F. Suarez puts it. In Metaphysical Disputations: Metaphysi-
cal Disputation 23, tr. S. Penner, 2015, available at sydneypenner.ca/dm23.shtml, 2015
(accessed 28 March 2019).
13 Scotus’s De Primo Principio summarises this nicely: ‘The end is the first cause in causing.
Wherefore Avicenna says that it is the cause of causes. . . . It is for this reason [namely,
the end] that the efficient cause effects the form in the matter. . . . The end is therefore
essentially the first cause in causing’ (J. Duns Scotus, The De Primo Principio of John Duns
Scotus, tr. E. Roche, Louvain: The Franciscan Institute, 1949). Suarez is equally plain:
‘The efficient cause does not act unless it is moved by the end. This is why the final
cause is commonly said to be the first among all the causes.’ In On Efficient Causality:
Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18 & 19, tr. A. J. Freddoso, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1994, p. 7.
14 This is a point that contemporary metaphysicians have rediscovered. G. Molnar, Powers:
A Study in Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 60 writes: ‘Powers, or
dispositions, are properties for some behaviour, usually their bearers. These properties
have an object towards which they are oriented or directed.’
15 Suarez, Metaphysical Disputation, p. 17, sec. 1, p. 9.
16 By contrast, the material and formal causes ‘communicate’ or ‘influence’ being in their
effects by their own being’s inclusion in the effect itself.
17 For extended discussion see Chapter 3, S. Boulter, Why Medieval Philosophy Matters,
London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
18 Consider a brick’s breaking of a window and the window’s being broken. The brick is
really distinct from the window (agent and substance), but one cannot have the brick
breaking the window without the window being broken because they are one and the
same thing. For an extended discussion of the various kinds of distinction recognised by
the scholastics, see F. Suarez, On the Various Kinds of Distinction: Metaphysical Disputation
7, tr. C. Vollert, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007 and Chapter 5 of my
Why Medieval Philosophy Matters.
19 ‘Patient’ is the term used to refer to the object or substance on which an agent acts. Of
course, the scholastics would say that the directedness of natural agents and patients is
ultimately due to God’s creative intentions. But in so doing, the scholastics would rec-
ognise that they were moving into the realm of theology. There is an interesting paral-
lel here with the natural law theory. Aquinas and other scholastic natural law theorists
recognised that the dictates of natural law are identifiable via unaided human reason,
although they would also say that natural law is ultimately grounded in divine law. But
one need not know divine law to discern natural law. Just as natural law theorists need
not invoke theology, although it is compatible with it, so too one need not invoke the-
ology in order to make sense of final causation in natural agents. Nor does one need
to say that the end of a natural agent is its usefulness for humans. All one needs is the
Aristotelian doctrine of characteristic powers and liabilities.
20 W. Ockham, Quodlibetal Questions, tr. A. J. Freddoso and F. E. Kelley, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 4th Quodlibet, q. 1, 1991, p. 241.
21 T. Aquinas, ‘On the Principles of Nature,’ in Selected Philosophical Writings, tr. and selec-
tions by T. McDermott, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 72.
22 Aquinas, On the Principles of Nature, p. 76.
23 Ockham, Quodlibetal Questions, 4th Quodlibet, q. 1, pp. 247–8.
24 The scholastic notion of a principle is intimately connected to the notions of order and
causation. Principles come in two main varieties: there are principles of things, and prin-
ciples of cognition. Axioms, definitions and premises are examples of principles of cogni-
tion as they are the starting points of arguments leading to conclusions. The principles of
things are subdivided into principles of order (e.g., earlier/later than) and connection (the
source of a river, say) and principles of ‘intrinsic habitude’. In a case of intrinsic habi-
tude, something influences being in another because of the linking of their correspond-
ing powers and liabilities, so there is something over and above a mere temporal ordering
of the principle and what follows from it. It is only here that one finds causation per se,
and so only principles of intrinsic habitude were deemed to be of scientific interest. A
scholastic might say that the Humean recognises all of these principles except those of
‘intrinsic habitude’, and so is deprived of the notion of causation.
25 F. Suarez, Metaphysical Disputation XXIII, sct. 1, tr. S. Penner, available at www.
sydneypenner.ca/su/DM_23_1.pdf (accessed 28 March 2019).
26 The other option was to reduce final causality to formal causality, as we see Aquinas
doing in his Principles of Nature. In this case, there is no real distinction between formal
and final cause, only a distinction of reason. This results in the same conclusion that final
causes in human agency are mere beings of reason.
27 See F. Suarez, On Beings of Reason: Metaphysical disputation 54, tr. J. P. Doyle, Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 2010, for full discussion.
Bibliography
Aquinas, T., ‘Summa Contra Gentiles,’ in A. C. Pegis (ed.), Basic Writings of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, volume 2, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997.
Aquinas, T., ‘On the Principles of Nature,’ in Selected Philosophical Writings, tr. and selections
T. McDermott, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Armstrong, D. M., A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989.
Boulter, S., Why Medieval Philosophy Matters, London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
Burtt, E. A., The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, London: Kegan Paul, 1925.
Descartes, R., The Philosophical Writing of Descartes, volume 2, tr. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff
and D. Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Harris, J., Of Liberty and Necessity, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.
Hobbes, T., ‘De Corpore,’ in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, volume 2, London: C.
Richards, 1969.
146 Stephen Boulter
Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Humphrey, P., ‘Causation,’ in W. Newton-Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Sci-
ence, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2001.
Lewis, D., On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Millican, P., ‘Humes Old and New: Four Fashionable Falsehoods and One Unfashionable
Truth,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. 81, 2007, pp. 163–99.
Molnar, G., Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Ockham, W., Quodlibetal Questions, tr. A. J. Freddoso and F. E. Kelley, New Haven: Yale
Oderberg, D., ‘Finality Revived: Powers and Intentionality,’ Synthese, 194, 2017, pp. 2387–425.
Osler, M., ‘From Immanent Natures to Nature as Artifice: The Reinterpretation of Final
Causes in 17th Century Natural Philosophy,’ The Monist, 79, 1996, pp. 388–407.
Scotus, J. D., The De Primo Principio of John Duns Scotus, tr. E. Roche, Louvain: The Fran-
ciscan Institute, 1949.
Spinoza, B., The Ethics, tr. R. H. M. Elwes, New York: Dover Publications, 1955.
Suarez, F., On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputation 17, 18 & 19, tr. A. J. Freddoso,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Suarez, F., On the Various Kinds of Distinction: Metaphysical Disputation 7, tr. C. Vollert, Mil-
waukee: Marquette University Press, 2007.
Suarez, F., On Beings of Reason: Metaphysical Disputation 54, tr. J. P. Doyle, Milwaukee: Mar-
quette University Press, 2010.
Suarez, F., Metaphysical Disputation 23, tr. S. Penner. Available at sydneypenner.ca/dm23.
shtml, 2015.
8 Hume, teleology and the
‘science of man’
Lorenzo Greco and Dan O’Brien
There are various forms of teleological thinking central to debates in the early
modern and modern periods, debates in which David Hume (1711–1776)
is a key figure. In the first section, we shall introduce three levels at which
teleological considerations have been incorporated into philosophical accounts
of man and nature, and sketch Hume’s criticisms of these approaches. In the
second section, we turn to Hume’s non-teleological ‘science of man’. In the
third section, we show how Hume has an account of human flourishing that is
not dependent on teleology. In the fourth section, we shall speculate as to the
relation between Hume’s account of human nature and contemporary evolu-
tionary accounts of morality and reasoning.
Teleology: metaphysical, Christian, political

There are distinct domains or ways of thinking of reality within which tele-
ology can be seen as relevant, that is, with respect to the causal interaction
between ordinary objects in the world, with respect to individuals and with
respect to society and political progress. In this section, we shall sketch teleo-
logical accounts of these kinds in order to clarify what is meant by teleology
and the kinds of ways it has been seen as playing a role in nature. We shall also
note Hume’s rejection of all such accounts.
First, there is the Aristotelian notion of final causes. A final cause is the
end-point towards which things are directed. These are mind-independent fea-
tures of the natural order. The final cause is the ‘cause of causes’. As Boulter
describes it, a final cause is ‘that which causes the efficient cause of X to bring
about this arrangement in the stuff of X rather than some other arrangement’.1
Hume rejects this Aristotelian framework: ‘[A]ll causes are of the same kind,
and . . . there is no foundation for that distinction, which we sometimes make
betwixt efficient causes, and formal, and material . . . and final causes.’2 Further,
the one kind of cause that remains is not easily identifiable with any of those
posited by Aristotle. Both our everyday beliefs about the causal structure of the
world and our causal science are derived from the way we project experienced
regularities onto the world and not from knowledge of mind-independent
features of the natural order.
148 Lorenzo Greco and Dan O’Brien
Second, there is the notion of the teleology of individuals and, for Christians,
the teleology of a person – the end-point at which they are directed – is, all being
well, eternal life and salvation. Hume has no truck with such thinking, and this
is agreed upon even by those who do not interpret Hume as a hard-line atheist.
Harris, in his recent intellectual biography, takes Hume as having ‘a maximally
detached and disengaged point of view’ with respect to religion, considering it
with ‘ruthless impartiality, as if describing nothing more emotionally engaging
than some bizarre belief systems so long extinct as to be bound to be all but
unintelligible to the reader’.3 A persuasive case is made that there was ‘little
genuine intellectual affinity between Hume and the philosophes’,4 bristly athe-
ists such as Diderot and d’Alembert whom Hume met in Paris. Hume was
sceptical that writers could change and improve the world, history giving us
‘no reason to believe that philosophy might be able to do anything at all to
weaken the hold of religion on the vast majority of people’.5 He preferred the
company of moderate Scottish Presbyterians such as Robert Wallace, Thomas
Reid and George Campbell. Harris sees his interpretation as a corrective to
the irreligious picture of Hume in which he is portrayed as The Great Infidel
(the title of Graham’s 2006 biography).6 The latter is the standard line and it
has been developed by, amongst others, Herdt, Bailey and O’Brien, and Rus-
sell.7 However, whichever interpretation one favours, all agree that Hume had
no personal faith; he saw no positive connection between religious belief and
morality, and, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,8 the case for theism
‘crumbles almost into nothing under rational examination’.9
Hume does, though, make the surprising claim in his essay, ‘Idea of a Perfect
Commonwealth’, that ‘it is vain to think that any free government will ever
have security or stability’ without an established Church and clergy.10 How-
ever, even if this is a sincere claim, it is not one derived from ideological com-
mitment or teleological claims concerning an inevitable future political state.
That religion may have played a role in stabilising society at points in history
is a highly contingent historical claim and does not in any way legitimise the
tenets of particular historically-situated religions. This is confirmed by Hume’s
tongue-in-cheek suggestion that clerics should be paid by the state – not to
cement their legitimacy – but in order to ‘bribe them to indolence’.11 Given
that religion exists, it would be dangerous to suppress it. We should instead
buffer religious fanaticism with state-funded moderates. As Baier says, ‘A less
religious justification for establishing religion could scarcely be imagined.’12
Harris is right that Hume often meets religion with humour rather than
anger or frustration, but the humour is often cutting, mocking and acerbic,
particularly so in the History of England. Harris even agrees with Carlyle, a
friend of Hume’s, that Hume is ‘by no means an atheist’.13 It is not completely
clear, though, why this is denied. Part of the reason is that Hume should not
be seen as an atheist in the eighteenth-century context given that this would
suggest a dogmatic commitment to some kind of naturalistic metaphysical view
of reality, which, arguably, is inconsistent with Hume’s scepticism. Harris seems
to suggest, though, that Hume is also not an atheist in today’s sense. If so, then
Hume, teleology and the ‘science of man’ 149
his characterisation of contemporary atheism is unduly narrow. It may be true
that the revolutionary zeal and dogmatism of the philosophes was not to Hume’s
taste, nor would be the temperamentally-akin New Atheism of today. It may
also be true that he preferred to talk about politics and economics rather than
religion, but none of this undermines his credentials as a certain kind of atheist:
one who is non-dogmatic, tactful with friends whose deeply held commitments
are different to his own, perhaps at times weary of the fight and sceptical of
any lasting disintegration of religion, but one who, nevertheless, wielded an
armoury of argument and biting humour against organised religion in all its
forms and thus against teleology in Christian form.
Third, teleology can be applied at the level of the nation. Contemporaries
of Hume typically answered questions concerning the relationship between
liberty and authority by appealing to inalienable rights – Tories favouring those
of the monarch, while Whigs sought a return to ancient freedoms possessed
before the Norman conquest. Hume thought such a ‘prelapsarian’ state mythi-
cal: ‘There had been no freedom worth the name in the Saxon period’ and the
‘Magna Carta was by no means a codification of ancient English liberties’.14
The latter had merely codified a deal between the barons and the king, and, as
a side-effect, the populace had benefitted. ‘English history was a story of con-
tinual change, not of a return to first principles’15: a result of complex vying
for power between the monarchy, nobility and people. Further, any attempt to
radically change the political order is more than likely to fail and cause harm.
Cromwell’s republic was ‘a wild aberration fuelled largely by religious fanati-
cism’,16 and it ended up achieving nothing. Hume took the side of the King
in the civil war, but this was only on pragmatic grounds; it did not reflect his
commitment to Tory ideology. ‘What mattered in government was stability,
order, and the protection of rights of property’ and the status quo generally
maintains these better than violent upheaval.17 Hume, Harris argues, ‘broke
altogether with the tradition of English historiography. He was asserting, in
effect, that the past had no political significance. . . . Politically speaking, it was
the present, and the future, that mattered’18 – a future, though, that was open;
one that was not always in the process of being borne back into a past of ‘first
principles’, be they Tory or Whig.
In this chapter, though, we shall not focus on these particular metaphysical,
theological and political issues, but rather on human nature and morality, realms
that resisted the early modern move away from teleology towards naturalistic
explanation. Locke and Hutcheson, for example, both take important steps
towards a fully naturalistic account of human nature and morality, but they do
not jettison all teleological elements. For Hutcheson, the moral distinctions
we draw are based on feelings or ‘natural affections’ of approval and disap-
proval, and not on eternal moral truths that can be discerned by reason alone.19
Hutcheson thus grounds morality in human nature, a nature that should be
investigated empirically. Such investigation, though, reveals the divine origin
of our natural sentiments and thus its teleological dimension. We agree with
each other on what is virtuous, and these hard-wired affective responses lead to
us acting in ways that are beneficial to ourselves and to others. Such harmony
cannot be down to chance, but rather to the design of a benevolent creator:
‘This account of Affections will . . . prepare the way for discerning considerable
Evidences for the Goodness of the Deity, from the Constitution of our Nature.’20
Hume concurs with the empirical approach that Hutcheson takes to morality
and with his emphasis on the importance of the natural affections or ‘moral
sentiments’, but he takes the extra step and, as noted by Taylor, he ‘effectively
displaces the teleological explanations so prevalent even in the works of those
he lauded, such as Locke, Butler, and Hutcheson’.21 Hume’s firm rejection of
teleology is confirmed in a 1739 letter to Hutcheson, in which, it is thought,
Hume is responding to Hutcheson’s criticisms of the account of morality pre-
sented in a draft manuscript of the Treatise.22 In this letter Hume says
I cannot agree to your Sense of Natural. ’Tis founded on final Causes;

which is a Consideration, that appears to me pretty uncertain & unphi-
losophical. For pray, what is the End of Man? Is he created for Happiness
or for Virtue? For this Life or for the next? For himself or for his Maker?
Your Definition of Natural depends upon solving these Questions, which
are endless, & quite wide of my Purpose.23
It is upon Hume’s non-teleological account of human nature that the next sec-
tion begins to focus.
The science of man

In the Introduction to the Treatise, Hume tells us that he wants to develop a
‘science of man’.24 Such a science is also presented in the Abstract of the Treatise
and in Section 1 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.25 We shall
spell out its methodological aspects, and then the conception of human nature
to which it leads.
Hume argues that the science of man encompasses all the other sciences. It
is foundational in character: ‘’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation,
greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem
to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another.’26 When he says
‘all the sciences’, he means all of them, not just those enterprises that might
appear to be closer to the operations of human nature, such as morality, literary
and artistic criticism and politics. Thus:
Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some mea-
sure dependent on the science of Man; since they lie under cognizance of
men, and are judged of by their power and faculties.27
The method used by Hume to develop his science of man is strictly empirical,
the subtitle of the Treatise being ‘An Attempt to introduce the experimental
Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects’. At the core of this method there is
‘experience and observation’,28 and by relying on these, Hume follows in the
footsteps of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville,
Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler and Isaac Newton. He talks with ‘contempt
of hypotheses’, that is, of any explanation that is advanced before and indepen-
dently of experiential confirmation.29
By following this method, it becomes possible to reduce the science of man
to a small number of principles, in the same way as the Newtonian method
arrives at a set of principles in natural philosophy:
But ’tis at least worth while to try if the science of man will not admit of
the same accuracy which several parts of natural philosophy are found sus-
ceptible of. There seems to be all the reason in the world to imagine that
it may be carried to the greatest degree of exactness. If, in examining sev-
eral phaenomena, we find that they resolve themselves into one common
principle, and can trace this principle into another, we shall at last arrive at
those few simple principles, on which all the rest depend.30
Hume ‘proposes to anatomize human nature in a regular manner, and promises

to draw no conclusions but where he is authorized by experience’.31 The result
is an ‘anatomy’ of human nature that results in a kind of ‘mental geography’.32
Such a study is not an easy task. This is because, to begin with, ‘we ourselves
are not only the beings, that reason, but also one of the objects, concerning
which we reason’.33 Thus, performing experiments in this case is very different
from the way we do this with all the other sciences, where ‘[w]hen I am at a
loss to know the effects of one body upon another in any situation, I need only
put them in that situation, and observe the results from it’. We cannot read-
ily do this with ‘moral subjects’. The experiments that the scientist of human
nature can hope to examine are of a very different sort:
We must . . . glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious

observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common
course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their
pleasures.34
What results from this is a notion of human nature that incorporates our social
relations with each other. If one looks to the Treatise, only Book 1, ‘Of the
Understanding’, is devoted to the operations of the individual mind, and this
only in part. Book 2 is on the passions, while Book 3 focuses on ethical mat-
ters. Human beings are not isolated minds, that can be seen as independent
from the actions that these embodied minds perform and the social relations in
which they take part. The science of man thus goes beyond the mere analysis
of mind.
This becomes even clearer in Section 1 of the first Enquiry. There, Hume
observes that philosophers can be anatomists or painters. While the painter
‘employs all the richest colours of his art, and gives his figures the most graceful
and engaging airs’, hence promoting virtue and discouraging vice, the anato-
mist provides the painter with a detailed examination of
the inward structure of the human body, the position of the muscles, the
fabric of the bones, and the use and figure of every part and organ. Accu-
racy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate
sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.35
The job of the anatomist is to inquire into ‘the abstruse philosophy’,36 so as to

find the first principles of human nature, and thus come
to know the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each
other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seem-
ing disorder, in which they lie involved, when made the object of reflexion
and enquiry.37
But again, as was the case in the Treatise, in the first Enquiry the objects of this
examination are presented as always dependent on the reality in which they act
and live: ‘Man is a sociable, no less than a reasonable being. . . . Man is also an
active being.’38 The ‘spirit of accuracy’ that distinguishes the anatomist’s con-
duct is always ‘subservient to the interests of society’,39 and the science of man
would be hamstrung without the perspectives of both the anatomist and the
painter. Therefore, the scientist of human nature, to properly realise her goal –
that is, to offer a complete description of human nature – should listen to both
the anatomist and the painter, and see the object of her study as a creature that
thinks but also feels and acts together with other people:
Indulge your passion for science, says she [nature], but let your science be
human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. . . .
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.40
Let us now, as it were, put some flesh on Hume’s account of human nature: let
us consider the content that emerges from the survey of human beings seen ‘in
company, in affairs, and in their pleasures’. This consists of certain consistent
features of human behaviour, those directly observable, and those that have revealed
themselves in the course of human affairs as they unfold throughout history. Direct
observation and the study of history disclose a basic uniformity in human motives,
which allows us to predict human conduct to a high degree of accuracy:
Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit; these

passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have
been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the
actions and the enterprizes, which have ever been observed among mankind.
Moreover, observation and history permit us to compare different social situa-

tions distant in space and time, and note similarities between them:
Would you know the sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the
greeks and romans? Study well the temper and actions of the french
and english: You cannot be much mistaken in transferring to the former
most of the observations, which you have made with regard to the latter.
Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs
us of nothing new or strange in this particular.41
Hume resumes this comparison between Roman and Greek societies, on the
one hand, and French and English ones, on the other, in A Dialogue, and this
seems to illustrate the constancy of human nature notwithstanding the multi-
plicity of its manifestations:
The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south; yet both spring from the same
mountain, and are also actuated, in their opposite directions, by the same
principle of gravity. The different inclinations of the ground, on which
they run, cause all the difference of their courses.42
There are, though, variations that can be observed in the behaviour of indi-
viduals from one society to another, and there is some debate as to whether
Hume offers an account of human nature that is independent of the context
in which it plays out. Different weight has been attributed by Hume scholars
to social context in determining the regularities in human nature. Cohen,
Walsh and Berry, for example, favour an account in which Hume elaborates
a theory of human nature that, despite being given in history and in specific
contexts, is, nonetheless, not reducible to these.43 Walsh, for example, remarks
that ‘Hume proposes to treat these differences as supervenient upon, or per-
haps as specifications of, a common human nature which we all share’.44 In
contrast, according to Forbes, Hume upholds a form of ‘sociological relativ-
ism’ whereby
[t]he universal principles are to be regarded as abstractions from the con-

crete variety of human (= social) experience; Hume’s ‘general psychology’
is concerned with the function and mechanism, not the content of the
mind, which is various and supplied by social and historical circumstances.45
However, for our purposes, we need not make a stand on this issue. The key
claim is that human nature – be it context-dependent or context-independent –
is a contingent fact about human beings that is revealed through history and
through observation of our social relations with others. It is not, as it was for
other naturalistically minded thinkers of the early modern period, the product
of a divine creator and his purposes, whatever they may be.
Human flourishing, teleology and Humean ends

We have seen how Hume arrives at his account of human nature by empirical
and historical means. In this section, we shall distinguish his approach from a
priori conceptions of human nature, those grounded in teleologically-based
accounts of what it is for individuals and for societies to flourish.
For Hume, we must remain satisfied with what experience teaches us, with-
out concerning ourselves with what is beyond the limits of experience – that
is, we must accept the ‘impossibility of explaining ultimate principles’.46 It is,
though, ‘a satisfaction to go as far as our faculties will allow us’.47 As he claims
in the Introduction to the Treatise:
[I]t [is] . . . impossible to form any notion of its [the mind’s] powers and
qualities otherwise than from careful and exact experiments, and the
observation of those particular effects, which result from its different cir-
cumstances and situations. And tho’ we must endeavour to render all our
principles as universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the
utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes, ’tis
still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis, that
pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought
at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.48
Not only the science of man, but all the other sciences, and all the arts, cannot
‘go beyond experience, or establish any principles which are not founded on
that authority’.49 Experience is the starting point for our inquiries into human
nature. At the same time, experience appears to be the extreme limit within
which the notion of human nature can have meaning:
When we see, that we have arrived at the utmost extent of human reason,
we sit down contented; tho’ we be perfectly satisfied in the main of our
ignorance, and perceive that we can give no reason for our most general
and most refined principles, beside our experience of their reality.50
Therefore, the principles of the science of human nature are established on the
basis of an examination of human affairs, and these same principles are then applied
to understand the concrete phenomena of human life, in which they are adapted
to the variety of circumstances in which human life expresses itself. Within this
picture, Hume’s conception of human nature is strictly devoid of any teleology:
all our conclusions regarding human nature are derived from observation, and do
not depend on ideas about how human nature should be framed. Considerations
derived from experience do not allow us to take for granted any final end, nor
do they say anything of any alleged essence of human nature.
Hume’s approach can thus be contrasted with a neo-Aristotelian strategy,
such as that of Philippa Foot, one in which it is possible to isolate ‘Aristotelian
categoricals’, that is, teleological judgments that identify what is naturally good
or bad for a certain species. Aristotelian categoricals reveal themselves in expe-
rience; even so, they represent the a priori conditions that make species flour-
ish: ‘Part of what distinguishes an Aristotelian categorical from a mere statistical
proposition about some or most or all the members of a kind of living thing is
the fact that it relates to the teleology of the species.’51
Conversely, for Hume, any such views concerning human flourishing are
generalisations only, drawn from observation of constancy in people’s con-
duct as they behave in different situations, in different contexts and at different
times. When it comes to determine Aristotelian categoricals for humans, Foot
lists the virtues as an integral part of the definition of human nature and of
what makes it thrive; a good human being is someone who acts according to
the virtues, since it is these that specify the telos of human beings. On the con-
trary, for Hume, what we observe regarding human conduct does not tell us
anything regarding the telos of human nature; we cannot say what our virtuous
actions are for, or what our lives as a whole are for, either in terms of the design
plan of a benevolent creator or in terms of Aristotelian categoricals.
That is not to say, though, that Hume does not provide an account of what
it is for humans to flourish, for them to be, in a non-teleological sense, doing
well. Empirically speaking, it is possible to register what is pleasant and what is
painful to humans, and thus to derive principles to determine what is good or
bad for them – such principles being ‘inseparable from our make and constitu-
tion’.52 Specifically, Hume argues that human beings appreciate, and hence find
virtuous, what is immediately agreeable or what is useful to themselves or to
others. Conversely, they are averse to, and hence find vicious, what is immedi-
ately disagreeable or disadvantageous to themselves or to others.53 These crite-
ria are derived from experience and, in turn, when applied to human conduct,
universally determine what is virtuous or vicious to human beings. Hume can
thus criticise certain ways of living that have characterised particular periods in
history. This is what he says, for example, regarding the Christian or ‘monk-
ish virtues’ of ‘[c]elibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility,
silence, [and] solitude’:
[f]or what reason are they every where rejected by men of sense, but
because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s for-
tune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; nei-
ther qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor encrease his power
of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these
desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the
fancy and sour the temper.
As such forms of behaviour are not conducive to human flourishing, we

‘justly . . . transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the cata-
logue of vices’. Hume ends this polemic with a cutting attack on sainthood:
A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the
calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and
society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself.54
Hume, therefore, offers an account of what is natural for human beings that
bears both a descriptive and a prescriptive valence. By looking at how human
beings have behaved in the course of their history, they can be described as
approving of what is agreeable or useful to themselves or to other people. This
also represents a normative measure to judge what is good or bad for them,55
allowing Hume to conceive a ‘dynamic or progressive’ engine operating within
human relations, thus admitting the possibility of the correction of human
behaviour due to experience and reasoning.56 This is in contrast to ‘artificial
systems’ such as those which incorporate the monkish virtues, in that these are
characterised by a static and definitive conception of human life that rejects at
the outset any possibility of correction via experience and reasoning.57
What is crucial, however, is that this normative measure does not reflect
any final end for human beings that can be stated prior to experience and that
unfurls, pre-ordained, through history. If human beings can be described as
appreciating what is agreeable or useful – and such appreciation of virtue can
be seen to progress and develop – this is the result of empirical observation that
does not presuppose any teleology in Hume’s approach.
A final speculation: Hume and Darwinian teleology

Hume thus rejects Aristotelian, scholastic and Christian notions of teleology,
in favour of the science of man or what is today called naturalism. Such an
approach is now mainstream, although, as we have seen, there are exceptions
such as Foot.58 There remains, though, a respectable form of teleology in con-
temporary philosophy, one most prominent in teleological accounts of cogni-
tion and morality. This is where teleology is cashed out in evolutionary terms.
In this final section we shall, anachronistically of course, speculate concerning
what Hume’s attitude to such teleology would be. Such speculation will clarify
both what is distinctive about Hume’s account of human nature, and also cer-
tain claims concerning the historical importance and relevance of Hume to
contemporary naturalism. This, for example, is what I said in the Reader’s Guide
to Hume’s Enquiry:
Cognitive science is now an interdisciplinary research programme that

brings together workers in psychology, computer science, neurophysiol-
ogy, linguistics, evolutionary biology and philosophy. . . . [Hume] is an
important precursor to this whole movement. It is not too fanciful to claim
that Hume would have looked very favourably on this modern approach to
the mind, and, if he were around today, one can easily see him as a director
of a cognitive science programme rather than as a professor of metaphysics
or traditional epistemology. . . . [i]t is not hard to imagine Hume embrac-
ing a Darwinian evolutionary account of life and of the mind.59
In one sense, this is uncontroversial. Given his account of animal cognition,

Hume would surely have accepted an evolutionary account of the origin of
man. Traditionally, humans were seen to hold a special place in the natural
order of things, a place higher than that of animals. Some philosophers have
claimed that this is because we have a kind of insight into the nature of the
world that animals lack. Through a priori reasoning alone we can come to
know truths about the nature of the world: we can know, for example, that
every event has a cause, and that God exists. Such insight is a product of our
‘Understanding’ or ‘Reason’, and, as Locke puts it, ‘it is the Understanding that
sets Man above the rest of sensible Beings, and gives him all the Advantage and
Dominion which he has over them.’60 Such powers of reasoning place us above
animals and nearer to God in the natural order.61
Such an elevated conception of human nature is the target of Hume’s science
of man. We do not have rational insight into the essential nature of the world.
Such God-like insight is replaced by the kind of processes that also govern ani-
mal thinking. Hume argues by analogy. Animal behaviour is similar to our own
in various ways, and such similarities suggest that animals have certain experi-
ences and ways of thinking in common with man.
No truth appears to me more evident, than that the beasts are endowed
with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so
obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.62
Hume does, however, acknowledge that there are certain differences between
human and animal thought. Human thought is unique in that it turns to ques-
tions of morality, law and religion. Later philosophers have come to focus on
man’s linguistic abilities, and it is these that enable our thought to be more
sophisticated. Hume does not consider this route, although he does note
that testimony from books and conversation enlarges our experience and thus
enables us to have thoughts that would be beyond an isolated individual (or
a non-linguistic animal). He also suggests other naturalistic explanations for
differences between animal and human thinking. First, cognitive abilities vary
between people – and between people and animals – because there are dif-
ferences in powers of attention and memory, and these differences, in turn,
lead to differences in reasoning capacity. Second, ‘larger’ minds can more easily
think about complex systems of objects and pursue longer chains of causal rea-
soning. For Hume, similar quantitative differences between the cognitive pow-
ers of men and animals explain why our thinking is capable of more complex
operations.63 Nevertheless, the suggestion here is that Hume would likely be
conducive to Darwinian developments – a century later – given his views on
the continuity between animal and human thought.64
However, contemporary teleological theories of mental content do not simply
claim that human cognitive processes are the product of natural selection. They
go further, with the nature of mental content and its normative dimension
defined in evolutionary terms: (very roughly) my belief has the content that
the sky is blue because believing the sky is blue when the sky is indeed blue has
given our ancestors a survival advantage and thus the cognitive structures that
enable us to have such thoughts have been selected for.65 Here, though, specu-
lations concerning whether Hume would accept such an account are stretched
to the limit, given his fundamentally distinct account of mental content and
his allegiance to the idea theory. It may, though, be instructive to consider
teleological accounts of reasoning rather than of propositional content. Certain
forms of reasoning are seen as good and others as bad and this distinction can
be grounded in evolutionary terms. Good reasoning is that which has contrib-
uted to our biological fitness, the mechanisms for which thus selected for and
inherited. Normativity, as it were, comes for free with a naturalistic, evolution-
ary account of the function of mental states.66
Speculation concerning whether Hume would embrace such an account of
how good reasoning (such as inductive inference) can be distinguished from bad
(such as indoctrination) is not so stretched given such a distinction is right at the
heart of the tension between Hume’s scepticism and naturalism. His sceptical
arguments appear to undermine all forms of reasoning, yet, in the context of
the discussion of miracles and elsewhere, inductive reasoning is recommended
and taken to be ‘wise’.67 The coherence of his position is not obvious since his
scepticism would appear to undermine the distinction between good and bad
forms of reasoning (to which he does seem to be committed). However, here
is one way to navigate this most central and contentious issue of Hume inter-
pretation. Scepticism, for Hume, has an epistemic role. As Falkenstein puts it:
‘For Hume, an encounter with skeptical arguments diminishes the vivacity of all
of our ideas, but certain beliefs (those originating from causes that we consider
to be legitimate) are better able to recover from the blow.’68 As scepticism dims
or extinguishes the products of the various mechanisms of belief acquisition –
those involving, for example, indoctrination and faith – the force or vivacity
derived from causal reasoning can shine through. Such reasoning applied to the
beaks of finches, the fossil record and the genomes of populations of fruit flies
inexorably leads to the belief in evolution by natural selection. Such belief can
then be applied to what is today called the problem of normativity, and induc-
tive reasoning can then be seen as justified since it is the product of natural selec-
tion. (Our fictional Hume, as head of his cognitive science programme, relieved
that his youthful philosophical doubts are unfounded.)
However, something here doesn’t sit well. First, we should remember the
depth of Hume’s scepticism: it concerns the justifiedness of belief in the exter-
nal world, one’s enduring personhood and the soundness of both inductive and
deductive reasoning.69 Hume’s solution to scepticism, whatever that may be,
must come before – must justify – belief in evolution, rather than the belief
in evolution grounding his solution to scepticism. His account of normativity
has to justify beliefs in the external world and inductive reasoning, whereas the
justification of such beliefs and forms of reasoning is presupposed by science.
Recall the earlier metaphor: scepticism dims the lights on poor forms of reason-
ing. Imagine them going down . . . not smoothly, as one might turn a dimmer
switch, but patchily, as lights might go out in a theatre after a show, first the stalls,
then the orchestra pit, then the gods. These areas of the theatre correspond to
different forms of reasoning, with the individual seats in these areas correspond-
ing to specific beliefs arrived at via these forms of reasoning: the stalls perhaps
comprising beliefs that are the result of indoctrination, the gods, those arrived
at by faith alone. When all the lights go out, though, it’s not completely dark . . .
the red exit lights remain: causal reasoning the exit from scepticism. It is from
this red light that good scientific reasoning develops, but the first flicker must
itself be justified by something more fundamental, and not the blaze of scien-
tific reasoning that will ultimately result.
Evolutionary considerations have also been brought to bear on morality and
moral theory. Joyce and Greene, for example, argue that moral thinking aids
cooperation and therefore survival.70 This is, therefore, the function of morality –
this is what it is for. Again, in one sense it’s plausible that our fictional Hume
would agree that the psychological mechanisms involved in moral thinking
are the product of natural selection.71 However, for Hume, the normativity
constitutive of morality is grounded in feelings of approval felt from the com-
mon point of view, those we appreciate via sympathy.72 That we have such
sympathetic mechanisms is the key thing, whether or not such mechanisms are
the result of evolution. The normative element is supplied by the point of view
afforded by the mechanism of sympathy, not by the origin of this mechanism.
The practice of morality may help explain our survival, but we suspect that
Hume would baulk at the suggestion that this is what morality is for. Such
a way of putting it smacks too much of the kinds of teleological thinking at
which his science of man is aimed.
In this chapter, we have examined the notion of teleology in relation to Hume.
After distinguishing certain metaphysical, Christian and political senses of tele-
ology, we turned to Hume’s empirical science of man and clarified how it is
opposed to teleological explanations of the workings of human nature. Not-
withstanding Hume’s rejection of teleology, we have argued that he upholds
a form of human flourishing which is in line with his empirical approach.
We concluded by considering whether Hume would embrace contemporary
teleological accounts of cognition and morality. We expect Hume would have
probably been sympathetic towards Darwinism, but that he would have rejected
the kind of normativity and teleological claims that some derive from it.
Notes
1 Boulter, ‘Can the Sciences Do Without Final Causes?’ (Chapter 7 in this volume), p. 135.
2 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007 [first published 1739–1740], 1.3.14.32.
3 J. Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2015, pp. 22 and 343. The discussion in this section is a development of thoughts first
presented in D. O’Brien, ‘Review of J. Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography,’ History of
Political Thought, 38(2), 2017, pp. 371–81.
4 Harris, Hume, p. 414.
6 R. Graham, The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume, East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2004.
7 J. Herdt, Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997; A. Bailey and D. O’Brien, Hume’s Critique of Religion: Sick Men’s
Dreams, Dordrecht: Springer, 2013; P. Russell, The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism,
Naturalism, and Irreligion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
8 D. Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. N. Kemp Smith, Edinburgh:
Thomas Nelson, 1947 [first published 1779].
10 D. Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund
Press, 1987 [first published 1741].
11 D. Hume, History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688,
6 vols, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1983 [first published 1778], vol. 3, p. 136.
12 A. Baier, Death and Character: Further Reflections on Hume, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2008, p. 92.
13 Harris, Hume, p. 569, n. 193.
14 Harris, Hume, pp. 388 and 397.
19 For the move from moral rationalism to moral sentimentalism, pursued in their different
ways by Hutcheson and Hume, see M. B. Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and
the Birth of Secular Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
20 F. Hutcheson, An Essay on the Conduct of the Passions and Affections with Illustrations on the
Moral Sense, London: J. Darby, 1728, p. 86. God plays an analogous role in the moral
theories of Adam Smith and Shaftesbury. See A. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed.
D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976 [first published
1759]; A.A.C. Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit, ed. D. Walford, Man-
chester: Manchester University Press, 1977 [first published 1699].
21 J. Taylor, Reflecting Subjects: Passions, Sympathy, and Society in Hume’s Philosophy, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 2.
22 ‘Natural’, for Hutcheson, means created by God – virtue thus God-given and natu-
ral. Hume questions this, claiming ‘’Tis impossible . . . that the character of natural
and unnatural can ever, in any sense, mark the boundaries of vice and virtue’ (Treatise,
3.1.2.10). Hume observes that both virtue and vice are natural, as opposed to supernatu-
ral or miraculous, and that perhaps vice has more claim to be called natural in the sense
of usual or common.
23 D. Hume, Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1932, vol. 1, p. 33.
24 Hume, Treatise, Intro., p. 4.
25 D. Hume, An Abstract of a Book Lately Published; Entitled, a Treatise of Human Nature,
reprinted in A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007 [1739–1740]; D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [first pub-
lished 1772].
29 Hume, Abstract, p. 2.
32 Hume, Human Understanding, 1.13.
41 Hume, Human Understanding, 8.7. See also Hume, Treatise, 2.1.11.5.
42 D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998 [first established 1751], A Dialogue, 2.5.
43 A. Cohen, ‘In Defence of Hume’s Historical Method’, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy, 13, 2005, pp. 489–502; W. H. Walsh, ‘The Constancy of Human Nature’,
in H. D. Lewis (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements: Fourth Series,
London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1976, pp. 274–91; C. J. Berry, Hume, Hegel, and
Human Nature, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982. See also D. W. Livings-
ton, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984,
Chapter 8.
44 Walsh, ‘Constancy’, p. 276.
45 D. Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975,
p. 119. See also R. Dees, ‘Hume and the Contexts of Politics’, Journal of the History of
Philosophy, 30, 1992, pp. 219–42.
51 P. Foot, Natural Goodness, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, p. 33.
52 Hume, Principles of Morals, 6.3n26.
53 For further discussion of Hume’s account of the virtues, see D. O’Brien, ‘Hume and
the Virtues,’ in A. Bailey and D. O’Brien (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Hume,
London: Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 288–302.
54 Hume, Principles of Morals, 9.3.
55 See M. Lind, ‘Hume and Moral Emotions,’ in O. Flanagan and A. Oksenberg Rorty
(eds.), Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1990, pp. 133–47; J. Spector, ‘Value in Fact: Naturalism and Normativity in
Hume’s Moral Psychology,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 41, 2003, pp. 145–63.
56 See M. B. Gill, ‘Hume’s Progressive View of Human Nature,’ Hume Studies, 26, 2000,
pp. 87–108; Gill, The British Moralists, pp. 227 and 238.
57 See J. T. King, ‘Hume on Artificial Lives with a Rejoinder to A. C. MacIntyre,’ Hume
Studies, 14, 1988, pp. 53–92. Like King, Baier argues for such Humean progressiveness
in juxtaposition to the monastic life, as does Taylor, who speaks of ‘a dynamic process
of social negotiation, in which we employ the idiom of moral sentiment to construct,
confirm, contest, and so on, our notions of ideal, decent and immoral characters.’ See
J. Taylor, ‘Hume on the Standard of Virtue,’ The Journal of Ethics, 6, 2002, pp. 43–62.
See also A. Baier, ‘Civilizing Practices,’ in A. Baier, Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind
and Morals, London: Methuen, 1985, pp. 246–62; J. Taylor, ‘Humean Humanity versus
Hate,’ in J. Welchman (ed.), The Practice of Virtue: Classic and Contemporary Readings in
Virtue Ethics, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006, pp. 182–203.
58 See also Boulter, ‘Can the Sciences Do Without Final Causes?’ (Chapter 7, this volume).
59 A. Bailey and D. O’Brien, Reader’s Guide to Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Under-
standing, London: Continuum, 2007, p. 146.
60 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1975 [1689], I.i.1.
61 For such a conception of our place in nature, and the image of God hypothesis, see E. Craig,
The Mind of God and the Works of Man, Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
62 Hume, Treatise, 1.3.16.1.
63 These thoughts on animal cognition are taken from Hume, Human Understanding, p. 9:
and A. Bailey and D. O’Brien’s commentary on this section of the Enquiry. See Reader’s
Guide, pp. 96–101.
64 For speculation concerning Hume’s influence on Darwin, see W. B. Huntley, ‘David
Hume and Charles Darwin’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(3), 1972, pp. 457–70.
65 See, for example, R. Millikan, Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories, Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.
66 Wolterstorff takes Hume to be a ‘precursor’ to such ‘proper functionalist’ accounts of
good reasoning. See N. Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief, New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996, p. 166n6.
67 Hume, Human Understanding, p. 10.
68 L. Falkenstein, ‘Naturalism, Normativity, and Scepticism in Hume’s Account of Belief,’
Hume Studies, 23(1), 1997, p. 31.
69 See Hume, Treatise, 1.4.2 (for scepticism with respect to the external world), 1.4.6 (per-
sonal identity), 1.3.6 (inductive reasoning) and 1.4.1 (deductive reasoning).
70 See R. Joyce, The Evolution of Morality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006; J. Greene,
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap between Us and Them, London: Atlantic, 2013;
Cain, ‘What Is the Function of Morality?’ (in this volume) discusses this approach in depth.
71 Morality, for Hume, involves sympathetic mechanisms and these are to some extent
present in animals: ‘It is evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes
place among animals, no less than among men.’ (Treatise, 2.12.2.6).
72 See O’Brien, ‘Virtues’.
Bibliography
Baier, A., ‘Civilizing Practices,’ in A. Baier, Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals,
London: Methuen, 1985, pp. 246–62.
Baier, A., Death and Character: Further Reflections on Hume, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
Bailey, A. and O’Brien, D., Reader’s Guide to Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understand-
ing, London: Continuum, 2007.
Bailey, A. and O’Brien, D., Sick Men’s Dreams: Hume’s Critique of Religion, Dordrecht: Springer,
2013.
Berry, C. J., Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982.
Cohen, A., ‘In Defence of Hume’s Historical Method,’ British Journal for the History of Phi-
losophy, 13, 2005, pp. 489–502.
Craig, E., The Mind of God and the Works of Man, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Dees, R., ‘Hume and the Contexts of Politics,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 30, 1992,
pp. 219–42.
Falkenstein, L., ‘Naturalism, Normativity, and Scepticism in Hume’s Account of Belief,’
Hume Studies, 23 (1), 1997, pp. 29–72.
Foot, P., Natural Goodness, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
Forbes, D., Hume’s Philosophical Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Gill, M. B., ‘Hume’s Progressive View of Human Nature,’ Hume Studies, 26, 2000, pp. 87–108.
Gill, M. B., The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Graham, R., The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume, East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2004.
Greene, J., Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap between Us and Them, London: Atlantic,
2013.
Harris, J., Hume: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Herdt, J. A., Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
Hume, D., Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932.
Hume, D., Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. N. Kemp Smith, Edinburgh: Thomas
Nelson, 1947 [first published 1779].
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volumes, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1983 [first published 1778].
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14, 1988, pp. 53–92.
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Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990, pp. 133–47.
Livingston, D. W., Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
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1996.
9 What is the function
of morality?
Mark Cain
Does morality have a function in the teleological sense of that term and, if so,
what is that function? When I ask the question ‘what is the function of moral-
ity?’ I mean the term ‘function’ to be understood in teleological terms. Thus,
the function of morality is a matter of what morality is ‘for’, what its purpose
is or what goal it is designed to achieve. According to the dominant answer
to that question within both philosophy and cognitive science, morality does
indeed have a function and that function is to facilitate cooperation. My goal
in this chapter is to raise some sceptical doubts about this answer through the
examination of an important version of it that has recently been developed
by Michael Tomasello in his book A Natural History of Human Morality. But
before launching directly into Tomasello’s work, it is important to have a solid
understanding of the nature of morality, on the one hand, and of function, on
the other.
Morality and moral judgment

Moral evaluation is a prominent feature of human life; we frequently morally
evaluate our own actual and potential behaviour and that of our fellows. When
we do this we make a moral judgment. Such judgments are often given a lin-
guistic expression that utilises such normative terms as ‘ought’, ‘should’, ‘right’,
‘wrong’, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘fair’, ‘unfair’, and so on. For example, one might say
‘you shouldn’t have stolen that book from the library’ or ‘it is a good thing to
donate to charity’. Moral judgment is a human universal; it takes place in all
cultures and is done by all normal people,1 and we begin doing it very early
in our lives.2 It is also probably unique to humans as not even higher primates
such as chimps make moral judgments.3 When I talk about ‘morality’ in this
chapter, I am referring to the human capacity to make moral judgments and
the mental machinery that directly supports that capacity.
As the capacity to make moral judgments is central to morality, then the
question is raised as to the nature of moral judgment. In the case of some
types of mental states, there is a distinction between occurrent and standing
states. For example, I believe that Henry James wrote The Portrait of a Lady, a
belief that I have held for some time and continue to hold even when I am not
166 Mark Cain
actively considering the proposition that Henry James wrote The Portrait of a
Lady. As Prinz would put it,4 this belief is stored in my long-term memory and
is a dispositional or standing belief. In the situation where I actively consider
the proposition that Henry James wrote The Portrait of a Lady and commit
myself to its truth (e.g., in response to someone asking me who wrote The Por-
trait of a Lady), then my belief is an occurrent belief and this state involves the
activation of the corresponding standing belief stored in long-term memory.
It is plausible to say that the occurrent/standing distinction applies to moral
judgment in that the active moral judgments that we make when confronted
by certain behaviour or when planning our actions often reflect deeper-seated
commitments that persist over a period of time whilst we are not actively mak-
ing such judgments. Thus, for example, the vegetarian who actively judges that
it would be wrong to eat the ham sandwich just offered to them is drawing
upon a long-term conviction that it is wrong to eat meat.
The most important feature of moral judgments relates to their normative
character. Suppose that someone makes the moral judgment that eating meat is
wrong. In doing this, they are not making a straightforward factual claim as to
how people generally behave. Few people who judge that eating meat is wrong
are under the impression that people do not generally eat meat. Indeed, many
of our moral judgments are negative: they involve evaluating someone for not
behaving in a particular way. Thus, moral judgments are inherently normative:
one is not judging how things are but how things ought to be or how people
ought to behave.
But what is involved in judging that one ought to behave in a particular way
even if people do not generally behave in that way? The immediate difficulty
in answering this question is that not all apparently normative judgments are
on the same footing. Sometimes judgments that we express using words such as
‘should’ and ‘ought’ are prudential, as when I tell a student who has asked me
how to get an A grade in their next essay that they ought to read more widely
and engage in deeper analysis of the texts they discuss. When I do this, I am
saying that in order to achieve their goal, it is necessary to do what I advise,
that it would be prudent to do what I advise if they have the goal in question.
The key point is that I’m not implying that they are under any obligation to
do what I advise independently of their goal to get an A; if they drop that goal,
then my advice is no longer relevant to them. But, as Kant emphasised,5 moral
judgments are not conditional in that way; when we make a moral judgment,
we are judging how people ought to behave whatever their goals.
This might appear to imply that moral judgments are connected to legal
laws or social conventions so that making a moral judgment is akin to making a
judgment about what the law or social convention requires. People sometimes
violate the demands of the law or social convention, but if a person doesn’t
care about the law or social convention then that does not imply that they do
not apply to them.6 Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to equate moral judg-
ments with judgments about the law or judgments about the operative social
conventions. We do typically demand of the law that it engages with morality;
What is the function of morality? 167
for example, the moral wrongness of rape is a very good reason for making
rape a crime. However, morality is independent of the law in the respect that
much of the law does not relate to moral matters. Moreover, it is commonplace
and perfectly coherent to judge that a particular type of behaviour has a par-
ticular moral status (negative or positive) while the law does not engage with
it (e.g., having an affair when one is in a long-term relationship). Similarly, it
is commonplace and perfectly coherent to judge as morally legitimate a type
of behaviour that you know to be illegal (as, for example, many liberal people
did in the United Kingdom prior to the decriminalisation of homosexual acts
between men in 1967).
With respect to social conventions, similar points can be made. Although one
might judge that we have a moral duty to follow social conventions (perhaps,
because to fail to do so would upset our fellows or undermine social cohesion),
it is commonplace and perfectly coherent to judge a type of behaviour as mor-
ally legitimate even though it violates social convention (e.g., having children
out of wedlock, or men wearing dresses) or regard it as morally problematic
even though it is demanded by social convention (e.g., addressing a woman by
means of a title that reflects her marital status). Indeed, classic research in devel-
opmental psychology has established that early in their development, children
draw a distinction between the moral and the conventional domains.7 In short,
then, moral judgments are inherently normative but the normativity involved
is distinct from that connected with prudence, social convention and legality.
A third feature of moral judgments relates to their impartial character; when
we make a moral judgment, we commit to holding everyone in the relevant
group, including ourselves, to the same standards. Thus, one cannot coherently
judge that everyone apart from oneself ought to pay tax or that it is wrong for
anyone apart from oneself to eat meat. That is not to say that one cannot mor-
ally excuse an individual on a particular occasion, but any such exceptions need
to be principled as when one excuses someone who steals when they had no
alternative way of providing for their hungry children.
A fourth feature of moral judgments is that they generally have a strong
motivational force; as Richard Joyce puts it,8 they have ‘practical clout’. Thus,
for example, if someone judges that eating meat is wrong, then they are gener-
ally motivated to avoid eating meat and to respond to others who eat meat by
criticising, shunning or punishing them. For those committed to moral judg-
ment internalism (such as Michael Smith),9 this relationship between moral
judgment and motivation is necessary, whereas for moral judgment externalists
such as Shafer-Landau,10 the link is contingent. I will not take a stand on this
issue here.
A fifth feature of moral judgments is that they are strongly connected to our
emotions. Put bluntly, we generally care about moral matters so that we often
feel guilt or shame when we judge we have done something wrong and feel
angry or indignant towards those we judge to have done wrong. Once again,
there is a debate as to whether or not this link is necessary or contingent, with
philosophers influenced by Hume on the one side,11 regarding it as necessary,
168 Mark Cain
and their opponents regarding it as contingent.12 Again, I will not take a stand
on this issue here.
A sixth feature of moral judgments relates to their interpersonal nature. We
do sometimes make moral judgments that relate to the conduct of the indi-
vidual in isolation from other people, as when someone judges that a person
has a moral obligation not to waste their talents. However, moral judgment
generally relates to how individuals ought to engage with their fellows. Indeed,
Joyce goes so far as to say that a Robinson Crusoe would have no need for
morality.13,14
I do not pretend to have given an exhaustive account of the nature of moral
judgment in this section, but I take myself to have made a number of points
that are relatively uncontroversial and which collectively provide sufficient
understanding of what I mean by ‘morality’ when I raise the question as to the
function of morality. It is now time to turn to the question of how we are to
understand the term ‘function’.
Functions
The function of morality is a matter of what morality is ‘for’, what its purpose
is or what goal it is designed to achieve. This notion of function could do with
some clarification. In recent philosophy, especially in the philosophy of mind
and in discussions of the explanation of complex capacities, the term ‘function’
is often not understood in a teleological manner. For example, when philoso-
phers of mind attempt to characterise types of mental state in functional terms,
what they mean by ‘functional’ has to do with causation.15 Thus, a functional-
ist about pain is claiming that what makes a mental state pain has to do with
its causes and effects rather than what it is for in any teleological sense. And
when Fodor, Dennett and Cummins champion a form of explanation of the
complex capacities of a system that involves decomposing the system into com-
ponents that perform less complex functions than the system to which they
belong, they understand the function of a component in terms of that aspect of
what it does that contributes to the performance of the target capacity rather
than what it is for.16,17,18 For example, explaining how an internal combustion
engine works would involve identifying such parts as the cylinder, crankshaft,
carburettor and so on, and identifying what each of these parts does and how
they interact so as to engender the overall behaviour of the engine.
An obvious example of a function in an alternative teleological sense comes
from the domain of artefacts. For example, the function of a kitchen knife
is to cut food. The function of artefacts relates to what they are designed
to do, made to do or, perhaps, used to do. This design, manufacture or use
depends upon the mental states of some intelligent designer, manufacturer or
subsequent user. For example, a kitchen knife has the function of cutting food
rather than some other function or no function at all because it was designed,
manufactured or used with the intention of cutting food by some intelligent
agent.
However, it is possible to have a function in the teleological sense without
being the product of intelligent design, manufacture or use. Ever since Darwin,
evolutionary biologists have attributed functions to the traits of organisms. For
example, the function of the heart is to pump blood around the body and the
function of the zebra’s stripes is to camouflage it from potential predators.19 At
first blush, such talk of function might seem odd given that one of Darwin’s
central aims was to explain the complexity of organisms and why they are often
so well-suited to the environmental niche that they inhabit without appeal to
an intelligent designer.20 What solves the puzzle here is the so-called etiologi-
cal account of function championed by Wright.21 The basic idea is that the
function of a trait is a matter of the effects in virtue of which it was selected
and continues to exist within the population. Consider an example. Suppose
that as a result of genetic mutation an organism had a trait not possessed by its
parents or most of the other members of its population. For example, suppose
the organism was an insect that had a distinctive dark colouration.22 As a result
of this colouration, the insect was much harder to detect by predators and so
lived for a longer period and had more offspring than it otherwise would have
done. Moreover, it had a longer life and produced more offspring than its fel-
lows with the alternative traditional light coloration. The offspring of the insect
inherited the genetic basis of the dark colouration and so had the same coloura-
tion as their parent. This bestowed upon them a similar reproductive advantage
so that the new dark colouration gradually became commonplace within the
population. Thus, what explains why the dark colouration became widespread
in the population and why it continues to persist many generations down the
line has to do with its effects with respect to hiding the insect from predators.
Thus, the function of this specific colouration is that of camouflaging the insect
from predators and the trait has this function without the involvement of any
intelligent designer. Of course, evolution by natural selection is typically an
incremental process with new mutations modifying traits that are based upon
earlier mutations. This is somewhat obscured in the example of the insect as
described thus far. But the darkening process could occur gradually as a first
mutation led to an insect being slightly darker than its fellows, a subsequent
mutation in a later generation causing a slightly darker colouration, and so on,
with each step providing a defence against predation. In such a case, the colou-
ration at each stage in the incremental process has the function of camouflaging
the insect from predators.
In the context of this chapter, I’m going to accept the etiological account
as a viable account of how traits get their function in the teleological sense of
that term. My justification for this is that such an account is tacitly endorsed by
many of those prominent figures who discuss the function of morality. More-
over, the prominent objections expressed in the philosophical literature are
not particularly germane. One such objection is that the teleological notion of
function is explanatorily inert.23 For example, if we want to explain how the
insect in the previous example avoids being eaten by predators or how the heart
pumps blood around the body, appealing to the selectional history of the insect
170 Mark Cain
or the heart is going to get us nowhere. Rather, what we need to appeal to are
the intrinsic properties that ground the relevant causal powers. For example,
suppose that an insect that is a molecule-for-molecule duplicate of the evolved
dark insect spontaneously comes into existence in the manner of Davidson’s
swampman.24 The two insects will be just as effective at avoiding being eaten by
predators and what explains this are factors such as their colouration, that of the
surfaces on which they alight, the visual capacities of potential predators and so
on. In the case of each insect, the explanation of their predation-avoiding pow-
ers will be just the same, regardless of their having quite different selectional
histories. Therefore, selectional history and the functions that it grounds are
not doing any explanatory work.
The standard response to this objection is to follow Mayr in distinguishing
between how-questions and why-questions in biology.25 How-questions ask
how a biological system or structure does what it does (e.g., how does the
insect avoid being eaten?) and why-questions ask why the system or structure
is the way that it is or why it continues to exist in a particular form (e.g., why
does the insect have a dark colouration?). Now, the response continues, appeals
to selectional history and teleological function are not capable of answering
how-questions, but they do answer why-questions, hence they are of explana-
tory value. In short, the objection misses an important distinction and con-
demns appeals to teleological function for failing to do something that they
need not do.26 My goal in this chapter is to discuss a particular account of the
function of morality. The advocates of that account are clearly concerned with
why-questions: why is it that we humans, in contrast to all other extant species,
engage in moral evaluation; what aspects of our history led to the emergence of
our capacity for moral judgment? Hence, I will assume that the appeal to the
distinction between why-questions and how-questions defeats any challenge to
the point and legitimacy of asking the question as to the function of morality.
I should also point out that to regard organisms as having traits that have
functions in the teleological sense is not thereby to endorse the adaptationist
view that most of an organism’s traits are adaptations or products of evolution
by natural selection or to deny that some traits are spandrels or that such fac-
tors as genetic drift and constraints play an important role in evolution.27,28,29,30
Thus, different traits can have different origins, and it is an open question as
to whether any given trait, including the human capacity to make moral judg-
ments, has an origin such that it has a particular function.
The etiological account of function doesn’t just apply to traits that emerge
through a process of biological evolution, for it also applies in the case of
cultural evolution. Cultural evolution involves the development of a cultural
product such as a type of behaviour or an idea over time. As in the case of
biological evolution, something must be transmitted from one generation to
the next. However, the manner of transmission will not be genetic, but rather
will involve social learning where one individual picks up the behaviour or
idea in question from another individual by copying.31 Such learning is to be
contrasted with individual learning where an individual learns something on
their own by means of, for example, a process of trial and error. Social learning
often involves teaching where, for example, a parent actively attempts to help
their offspring to acquire a particular behaviour or idea, but it need not involve
such teaching.32
As with biological evolution, cultural evolution relies upon a copying pro-
cess that is largely reliable but sometimes gives rise to ‘error’ where the product
of copying is different from the source that is copied. Thus, variants are intro-
duced into the world. Sometimes these variant behaviours or ideas will be less
effective than their forebears and will be abandoned or not copied by the next
generation. But sometimes they will be more effective than their competitors
and so will come to dominate the population as a result of being widely copied.
Suppose that an individual hunter–gatherer has mastery of a widely used
technique for skinning small game. Another member of the group watches
them apply this technique and attempts to copy it. However, the copying pro-
cess isn’t perfect as the individual learns a technique that is slightly different
from that which they attempt to copy. In particular, it is quicker to perform,
demands less energy, wastes less meat and damages the animal skin less than the
original copied technique. This benefits the individual: they and their family
get to eat more, have better quality animal skin for making clothes and have
more time and energy for other pursuits. The advantages of this new technique
are not lost on the other members of the group who themselves begin to copy
it (often accurately) so that it comes to be the dominant technique for skin-
ning small game in the group, usurping the old technique. Several generations
down the line there is another inaccuracy in copying the technique during the
learning process which, once again, has benefits so that a new modified version
of the technique becomes the most popular within the group. This process
of copying with the occasional beneficial modification continues over many
generations. Thus, we have a case of the cultural evolution of a technique for
skinning small game, a phenomenon that bears sufficient similarities to biologi-
cal evolution to count as a case of evolution in a non-metaphorical respect. It is
possible that processes of thinking and reflection were involved in the evolution
of the skinning technique. For example, the modifications might not always
have come about through unintentional mistakes; rather, they could sometimes
be the products of thoughtful attempts to improve the old technique. Hence,
cultural evolution need not be as blind, and dependent upon fortuitous acci-
dents, as its biological relative and this explains why it proceeds at a consider-
ably faster pace.
The existence of cultural evolution means that the etiological account of
function can be applied to cultural products as well as to biological traits.
Hence, to claim that morality has a specific function is not thereby to commit
oneself to the view that morality is an evolved biological trait. Accordingly,
amongst philosophers and cognitive scientists who argue that morality has a
cooperative function, one can distinguish between those who think of moral-
ity as a biological adaptation and those who think of morality more in cultural
terms.33,34
172 Mark Cain
Cooperation
Now that I have explained what I mean by the terms ‘morality’ and ‘function’, I
can turn to address the question as to the function of morality head-on. Humans
are social beings who generally live together in groups. But we are not merely
social beings; in addition, we are cooperators. Many of our endeavours involve
working together with our fellows to achieve a common goal that we would
not be able to achieve on our own. Of course, we are not the only animals that
cooperate, but the range and flexibility of our cooperative behaviour is unparal-
leled. Cooperation has enabled us to spread across the globe and build societies
based upon rich cultures and sophisticated technologies that rarely stand still.
One view which dominates the literature is that the function of morality is
to facilitate and support cooperation. Here is a clear expression of that view
from Jonathan Haidt:35
Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices,

identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mecha-
nisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make
cooperative societies possible.
In a similar vein, Joshua Greene writes ‘morality is a set of psychological adapta-

tions that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation’.36
One of the most interesting, well-developed and important versions of the
view that morality has a cooperative function has been developed by Michael
Tomasello as part of a broader project concerned with the origins of human
cognition.37 It will be instructive to consider Tomasello’s perspective on moral-
ity in some detail.
Tomasello’s goal is to provide what he calls a ‘natural history of morality’, an
account of how morality developed in the human species. Morality is some-
thing that emerged in the species – and also emerges in the development of
the individual – as a result of a process of intellectual reflection and subsequent
insight into our situation when we attempt to cooperate. Once it has devel-
oped, morality serves to further support such cooperative endeavours, making
them more likely to succeed. The underlying cooperative behaviour and the
processes of reflecting upon it themselves depend upon evolved psychologi-
cal mechanisms without which there would be no human morality. However,
these mechanisms did not specifically evolve for morality.
For Tomasello, morality has two components, the morality of sympathy and
the morality of fairness. The morality of sympathy is at work when we help
one of our fellows out of a concern for their well-being. The morality of fair-
ness is at work when we make judgments concerning what is fair or just or
what a person deserves based upon a sense of obligation that we ought to treat
our fellows fairly. The morality of sympathy has a precursor in our great ape
relatives who display sympathy towards their kin and friends. However, the
morality of fairness is unique to humans.
According to Tomasello, human morality emerged in two stages, both of
which involved attempts to find new ways of cooperating in response to ecologi-
cal changes. The first stage occurred in the region of 400,000–500,000 years ago,
before the arrival of modern humans (Homo sapiens) some 150,000 years
ago. Due to deforestation, humans came under competition for food from
ground-dwelling apes and to survive needed to work together as pairs in
hunter–gatherer ventures. Such cooperation was necessary for survival, and
in this context, cooperators had a stake in one another as the welfare of each
depended on the welfare of the other. Accordingly, any motivation for cheating
was undercut, and in helping another, one did not run a major risk that one’s
generosity would not be reciprocated. Thus, Tomasello’s portrayal of the plight
of early human cooperators is at odds with the putatively more gloomy per-
spective of those who emphasise the problematic nature of reciprocation and
the strength and rationality of the motivation to cheat.38 One way of putting
this is to say that the plight of our ancestors is better represented by the Stag
Hunt – where two individuals have to choose between hunting for small game
on their own or working together to capture larger prey – than the Prisoner’s
Dilemma, where two prisoners have to decide whether to confess to a crime
and/or identify their partner in crime to the authorities.39 In the Prisoner’s
Dilemma, the rational thing for the individual to do is to identify their partner
as having committed the crime but deny their own involvement. In contrast,
in the Stag Hunt the rational thing to do is to cooperate.
Within the context of pairwise cooperation, humans evolved psychological
mechanisms that supported such cooperation and facilitated an appreciation
of their plight such as to give rise to what Tomasello calls ‘second-personal
morality’. Such a morality holds only between pairs of cooperators whilst they
are engaged in cooperative activities. Second-personal morality has two com-
ponents, one relating to sympathy, as one extends one’s concern for the well-
being of one’s kin and friends to one’s cooperative partner – and the other
relating to fairness – as one feels an obligation to treat one’s partner fairly and
as they deserve to be treated.
The central mechanisms that underpin this second-person morality are three-
fold: first, joint intentionality; second, second-personal agency; and third, joint
commitment. Joint intentionality is exercised when two individuals both share
certain mental states and are mutually aware of that commonality.40 In the con-
text of hunter–gatherer cooperation, this involved mutual knowledge of a shared
goal, mutual knowledge of the role of each partner in achieving the goal and
mutual knowledge of the ideal way to perform each of these roles. Such mutual
knowledge is stored in what Tomasello calls ‘personal common ground’. Reflect-
ing upon their situation, both cooperative partners come to appreciate that each
constitutes an ‘I’ interacting with another – a ‘you’ – to form a joint agent, a ‘we’.
Further, they appreciate that their individual roles in the ‘we’ are interchangeable
so that there is a relationship of equivalence between the partners.
The second mechanism underpinning second-personal morality, second-
personal agency, involves treating partners and potential partners with mutual
174 Mark Cain
respect and a sense of desert, evaluating and choosing partners on the basis of
their collaborative potential, and being aware that others evaluate oneself in
the same way. What is crucial in the exercise of second-personal agency for
the emergence of morality is the individual’s recognition that in virtue of their
equivalence with their cooperative partner, both deserve respect from the other
should they perform their role in line with the mutually known role ideals.
The third mechanism involved in second-personal morality, joint commit-
ment, is exercised when an individual identifies with a larger body – that is,
the ‘we’ formed with their cooperative partner – and explicitly grants authority
to that larger body so as to accept being judged by its standards as shared in
common ground and to take responsibility for judging themselves and others
by those standards. Thus, as a result of making joint commitments, individuals
judge both themselves and their fellows impartially rather than in a self-serving
manner, something that is crucial if their behaviour is to be based on a sense of
how they ought to behave rather than being merely strategic.
Second-personal morality constitutes a very local form of morality that holds
between collaborative partners only whilst they cooperate. However, with fur-
ther social changes, ‘a full-blown, group minded, cultural morality of “objec-
tive” right and wrong applying to everyone in all situations’ began to emerge
some 150,000 years ago.41 The crucial social changes involved the formation
of cultural groups that brought together small groups of foragers in order to
protect them from competitor groups. Within such cultural groups, each indi-
vidual entered into a relationship of interdependence with many other people,
most of whom they would not know directly and could recognise as a fellow
group member only on the basis of their behaving in a manner characteristic
of group members. With the formation of cultural groups, the morality of
sympathy was scaled up as individuals came to feel sympathy towards all other
members of their cultural group.
To operate in a cultural context, the mechanisms of joint intentionality,
second-personal agency and joint commitment that underpin second-personal
morality needed to be scaled up to those of collective intentionality, cultural
agency and moral self-governance, and it is through the exercise of these mech-
anisms that a fully fledged public morality of justice and fairness emerged.
Collective intentionality involves members of a cultural group having mutual
knowledge of the conventional practices of that culture and of the ideal way to
perform the various roles people perform within the group. Such knowledge
constitutes cultural common ground and enables individuals to interact effec-
tively with those who they do not know intimately. For example, they will
know how they are generally expected to behave in any given cultural context
and how the other participants in that context can be relied upon to behave, be
it – to use contemporary examples – a supermarket, an academic conference, a
rock concert, a job interview or a blind date.42
Cultural agency, the second component underpinning group-minded cul-
tural morality, is a mechanism for controlling potentially uncooperative mem-
bers of the group and rests upon social norms that specify how we must behave
in various situations to be cooperative. Some of these norms are merely con-
ventional, but some have a moral character that ‘comes from the underly-
ing second-person morality of sympathy and harm, fairness and unfairness, in
which the norm is grounded’.43 A norm against stealing would be an example
of a norm that has a moral character in virtue of its relationship to second-
personal morality in contrast to norms of etiquette. An important element of
cultural agency is an evolved tendency to enforce social norms on others even
when we are an unaffected bystander.
Moral self-governance, the third component underpinning group-minded
cultural morality, is a mechanism for self-regulation in a social context that
relies upon what Tomasello (following Korsgaard) calls ‘reflective endorsement’
along with guilt.44 Reflective endorsement occurs when an individual, in the
course of action planning, reflects on whether a particular goal or value is a
good one to pursue. Guilt arises when an individual reflects retrospectively
on her actions and judges that she has done something wrong and so deserves
punishment. Such moral self-governance is underpinned by an identification
with the creators of the social norms in terms of which the individual judges
her actual and potential behaviour so that those norms are seen as something
that ‘we’ created for our own benefit.
With respect to the development of morality in the individual, Tomasello
sketches a process that resembles that of the emergence of morality in the spe-
cies. Thus, a child first develops a second-personal morality between the ages
of 1 and 3 where they help spontaneously, share equally with others and hon-
our and expect their fellows to honour joint commitments. It is only from the
age of 3 that children develop a group-minded cultural morality that reflects
the norms of their cultural group. But once such a morality has developed, the
second-personal morality is not abandoned; rather, the group-minded cultural
morality rests on top of a simpler second-personal morality and their demands
can sometimes pull in opposite directions, giving rise to internal moral conflict.
Several points are worth noting about Tomasello’s natural history of morality.
First, Tomasello does think that biological evolution is at work; the three mech-
anisms involved in second-personal morality and their scaled-up analogues that
operate in group-minded cultural morality are either biological adaptations or
are underpinned by biological adaptations. However, they are not adaptations
specifically for morality, but for cooperation more generally. In this respect,
his view of morality echoes his view of language developed in Constructing a
Language according to which the creation and learning of language depends
upon the more general mechanisms of mind-reading and pattern recognition.
Second, Tomasello portrays the emergence of morality as a heavy-duty intel-
lectual process where individuals reflect upon their situation as they attempt to
cooperate and so come to view that situation in moral terms, for example, as
one where their fellows merit being treated in certain ways, or as one where
we are all obliged to behave in certain specific ways.
Third, for Tomasello, the specific content of an individual’s moral outlook
will reflect their experiences. This is particularly true of group-minded cultural
176 Mark Cain
morality as it requires the individual to come to know the cultural conventions
of her community, something that, in turn, depends upon cultural transmis-
sion and learning. Accordingly, members of different cultures can have dif-
ferent moral outlooks notwithstanding the fact that their respective outlooks
will always relate to sympathy and fairness. For example, as the experiments
involved in playing the Ultimatum Game indicate,45 members of different cul-
tures hold different views as to what is fair and what is not.46 For example,
some think that fairness requires an equal distribution of resources, whereas
others think that it is fair to distribute resources on the basis of merit.
Fourth, Tomasello thinks that group selection is at work in the moral domain.
That is, the moral outlook of one cultural group might outperform that of another
in virtue of facilitating more effective cooperation between its members, with
the upshot that the less cooperative group might die out or be assimilated into
the more cooperative one. Tomasello shares the widespread scepticism as to the
significance of group selection as a biological force. However, he follows Rich-
erson and Boyd in postulating a process of cultural group selection.47 The
implications of this are that the specifics of an individual’s moral outlook will
typically reflect the identity of her cultural group and its historical interactions
with other cultures rather than their biological nature.
Morality and cooperation

Should we be convinced by Tomasello’s perspective on the function of moral-
ity? I am sceptical for several reasons. A first objection relates to the power of
moral judgment to make a relevant impact on our behaviour. In the discussion
of the aforementioned nature of functions, I argued that for a trait to have a
particular function, it must have produced relevant effects in its history, effects
that benefitted organisms that had the trait. Applied to the present case, this
implies that for morality to have a cooperative function, past individuals who
engaged in moral judgment must have been more effective cooperators than
their fellows who did not morally judge or, alternatively, more effective coop-
erators than they otherwise would have been had they not morally judged. Put
bluntly, moral judgment must have made a difference to how our ancestors
behaved and that difference must have had a positive impact on their coopera-
tive endeavours. But how plausible is it that moral judgment had such a positive
impact?
I share with Tomasello an assumption that humans are generally rational and
capable of working out how best to behave in order to satisfy their interests,
goals and desires. In other words, we are generally effective at strategic reason-
ing, and this has a positive impact on how we behave. Very often, morality and
self-interest point in the same direction; that is to say, that what an individual
would do if they were acting rationally out of self-interest would be just the
same as what they would do if they were acting on the basis of moral consid-
erations. For example, morality demands that I prepare thoroughly for all the
classes that I teach and am generally helpful towards my students. But so does
self-interest, as a poorly prepared and unhelpful teacher will receive negative
evaluations from their students which will in turn lead to disapprobation from
their managers and colleagues that can harm their long-term job prospects.
We saw that in order to undercut the idea that humans are prone to cheating
and defection, Tomasello emphasises the fact that cooperators have a stake in
one another. Indeed, he sometimes characterises his position as the stakeholder
model of morality. Thus, for example, it is in the interests of a hunter–gatherer
to give food to their foraging partner as they have a stake in that partner’s well-
being. This is important for Tomasello for it explains how the mechanisms
underpinning morality can evolve, be it by biological or cultural means. But if
we have a stake in one another’s well-being, then the demands of self-interest
and those of morality will typically agree, just as I have claimed. For example,
suppose a hunter–gatherer retrieves a rabbit from a trap they have set with a
foraging partner. What the morality of fairness and justice demands is that
they share the prey with their partner. It would be unfair to fail to inform the
partner and consume the rabbit alone. But it would also be ill-advised from a
strategic perspective. For, if one’s partner goes hungry they may be too weak
to be of much use on the next foraging trip. Or if the act of unfairness is dis-
covered the partner might break off the partnership, undermining the selfish
individual’s future food gathering prospects.
My point here is not that there is no difference between acting out of self-
interest and acting on the basis of moral considerations. For, as Tomasello
argues, motives matter when it comes to morality. For example, to be a moral
agent, one must act out of a sense of obligation and not for purely strategic rea-
sons. It is for this reason that he denies that chimps are moral agents; even when
chimps seemingly behave in line with the demands of morality (e.g., when they
putatively treat a fellow chimp justly) they do so for strategic reasons.
The upshot of all this is that the capacity to make moral judgments and act
on them could not have made any difference to the behaviour of our ances-
tors who were already engaged in strategic reasoning. Developing a capacity
to make moral judgments and act on them would have been akin to putting
on braces when your trousers were firmly secured by a belt. But, given the
nature of functions, for morality to have a cooperative function, the capacity
to make and act on moral judgments must have made a relevant difference to
the behaviour of our ancestors; it must have made them behave in ways that
enhanced their cooperative endeavours, behaviour that they otherwise would
not have engaged in (or behaviour that their strategic but non-moral fellows
did not engage in). Consequently, on the stakeholder model, morality could
not have secured a cooperative function.
A potential response to this objection has been developed by Joyce in the
context of defending his view that morality is a biological adaptation.48 What
Joyce claims is that we are subject to weakness of will; we often fail to do things
that we want to do and know are in our best interests, and we have a particu-
lar problem delaying gratification. For example, I might have an extra glass of
wine when I know I will regret it the following day or give that 5-mile run a
178 Mark Cain
miss on a cold and rainy day despite supposedly being on a fitness drive. Thus,
in cooperative situations, we run the risk of failing to do what we know is in
our best interests so that our cooperative endeavours break down. The advan-
tage of morality, according to Joyce, is that moral judgments have a ‘practical
clout’ that regular intentions or desires do not have; in other words, it is much
harder to do something that one judges to be wrong or fail to do something
that one judges to be right than it is in the cases where one’s motivations to
act are provided by mental states that do not have a moral character. This raises
the question of how moral judgments have such motivational force; why is it
harder to ignore a moral judgment than a regular non-moral strategic judg-
ment? Joyce provides the familiar answer that moral judgments have an emo-
tional component (without being purely emotional states) and it is this that
provides them with their motivational force.
This raises the question of whether moral judgments are sufficiently power-
ful with respect to action; do they systematically outperform self-interested
reasoning in terms of causing us to act? If not, then Joyce’s argument collapses
and we are left with the conclusion that morality doesn’t have a cooperative
function.
I am sceptical of the power of moral judgment to drive behaviour for the
following reasons. First, it is almost a truism that humans often behave in ways
that conflict with their moral judgments and convictions, and this is reflected in
the fact that so many of our moral judgments are negative in tone and involve
judging that someone did something that they shouldn’t have done and knew
full well that they shouldn’t have done. Second, some cognitive scientists ques-
tion whether reasoning plays a substantial role in arriving at moral judgments.49
Whether they are right, people often seem to engage in reasoning to get them-
selves out of acting on the basis of a rather inconvenient moral judgment or
injunction. For example, I have heard people who are morally in favour of
giving to charity justifying their not giving to charity on the grounds that
the charity in question can’t be relied upon to spend donations wisely. And
I’ve heard people who condemn major corporations for exploiting loopholes
in the tax system justify their own minor tax indiscretions on the grounds that
the sums involved are trifling. In short, we are rather effective at employing
reasoning to escape the behavioural demands of moral judgment when acting
on the basis of that judgment clashes with self-interest.
Third, in case the foregoing sounds a little too anecdotal, there are impor-
tant experimental data that suggest that in those cases where morality and self-
interest point in the same direction, it is self-interest that is driving behaviour,
and when they point in different directions, self-interest often wins out. Bateson
et al. conducted an experiment in a university common room which operated
an honesty box system for paying for tea and coffee.50 A clearly visible notice
was displayed at head height near to the tea and coffee-making equipment
and supplies. As well as indicating the prices, the notice had an image printed
upon it which alternated from week to week between flowers and a pair of
eyes. What Bateson et al. discovered were that contributions to the honesty
box were considerably higher when the displayed image was of a pair of eyes
than when it was of a flower. They interpreted this as indicating that the image
of the eyes reminded individuals that they were potentially being watched and
that their reputation would be damaged by a failure to contribute to the hon-
esty box. Thus, a self-interested desire to protect one’s reputation rather than a
genuine concern for the public good was the key behavioural driver.
A second objection to Tomasello’s perspective on the function of morality
involves questioning the need for morality to drive our cooperative behaviour.
In the previous objection, I warned against the danger of overestimating the
impact of moral judgment on our behaviour. What I am warning against now
is the danger of underestimating the power of non-moral factors to influence
our behaviour. Humans are cultural beings, and an important aspect of any cul-
ture is a rich network of conventions and non-moral norms that govern behav-
iour. As Tomasello is keen to point out, human individuals are very effective
at learning such conventions and norms (which are stored in what he calls cul-
tural common ground), and once learned, such conventions and norms have
a powerful hold on our behaviour. For example, I have internalised the Brit-
ish norms surrounding queuing and slavishly follow them without reflection
whenever I encounter situations where they apply. Sometimes I holiday abroad
in places where I know full well that the British queuing conventions do not
apply. Nevertheless, I cannot help but queue like a Brit and invariably end up
waiting a long time to be served. Similarly, I have internalised the convention
of standing on the right of escalators when travelling on the London Under-
ground, thereby leaving a clear passageway on the left for travellers in a hurry.
I know full well that this convention doesn’t apply everywhere. Nevertheless,
when I find myself on an escalator in another context I cannot help but stand
on the right and find it almost emotionally painful to stand on the left. What
these examples show is the power of conventions to direct our behaviour.
If we are so prone to pick up conventions and they have such a hold on us
then why would we need morality to support our cooperative endeavours?
Surely, a body of conventions would be far more effective. For example, to
get people to help their less fortunate fellows all you need is a convention
of helping the less fortunate rather than a capacity to judge that it is morally
good to help those less fortunate than oneself. It might be objected that if we
did have and learn such conventions and routinely acted on the basis of them,
then we would have learned a moral norm and be acting on the basis of moral
considerations. However, such an objection would miss the important point
that moral agency requires not merely acting in accord with moral norms but
doing what one does for moral reasons (e.g., out of a sense of obligation). Thus,
if the mechanisms that underpin ‘doing the right thing’ are the same as those
that underpin the following of a non-moral convention then one would not
have learned a moral norm or be acting on the basis of moral considerations.
In sum, there is reason to believe that we have a psychology that is such that
our cooperative endeavours would be better suited by learning and following
non-moral conventions than by exercising our capacity for moral judgment.
180 Mark Cain
Tomasello has developed a particularly detailed and sophisticated version
of the popular view that morality has a cooperative function that promises
to dominate the literature for years to come. Drawing upon an account of
the nature of moral judgment and of teleological function developed in the
first half of this chapter, I have raised a number of objections to Tomasello’s
account. In particular, I argued that moral judgment does not plausibly have
the required impact upon behaviour to accrue a cooperative function; typically,
the demands of morality agree with those of self-interest and where they clash
it is usually the demands of self-interest grounded in our strategic reasoning
capacities that win out. Moreover, given the human capacity to learn conven-
tions and the power that learned conventions have, there are far more effec-
tive means of ensuring that we behave in a way that supports our cooperative
endeavours.
By focusing on a particular version of the idea that morality has a coopera-
tive function, I have not settled the question as to what the function of morality
is or, indeed, whether it has any function at all. Thus, someone convinced by
my line of argument is faced with a series of options. The first option is that of
developing an alternative account of function that is not grounded in evolution
(be it biological or cultural) and arguing that that account applies to morality,
thereby grounding a particular function. The second option involves arguing
for an alternative non-cooperative function for morality that is grounded in
evolution. The third option is that of rejecting the idea that morality has a
function. I will leave the question of which of these options is the most fruitful
for another occasion.
Notes
1 R. Joyce, The Evolution of Morality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
2 P. Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, London: Bodley Head, 2013.
3 M. Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2016.
4 J. Prinz, Furnishing the Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
5 I. Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. A. Zweig, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1785/1998.
6 P. Foot, ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,’ Philosophical Review, 81(3),
1972, pp. 305–16.
7 E. Turiel, The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention, Cambridge: Cam-
8 Joyce, The Evolution of Morality, p. 57.
9 M. Smith, The Moral Problem, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994.
10 R. Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
11 For example, S. Nichols, Sentimental Rules: The Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; J. Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.
12 For example, J. Mikhail, Elements of Moral Cognition, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
13 Joyce, The Evolution of Morality.
14 See B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1985; T. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1998, for important expressions of the view that moral judgment inher-
ently concerns our interactions with our fellows.
15 N. Block, ‘Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy,
10, 1986, pp. 615–78.
16 J. Fodor, ‘The Appeal to Tacit Knowledge in Psychological Explanation,’ Journal of Phi-
losophy, 65, 1968, pp. 627–40.
17 D. Dennett, Brainstorms, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978.
18 R. Cummins, ‘Functional Analysis,’ Journal of Philosophy, 72, 1975, pp. 741–65.
19 Actually, there is some controversy as to the function of the zebra’s stripes and recent
research puts pressure on this familiar claim. For example, T. Caro, Zebra Stripes, Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2016, argues that the function of the zebra’s stripes is
to deter parasitic flies.
20 C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, London: John Murray, 1859; R. Dawkins, The Blind
Watchmaker, New York: Norton, 1986; D. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, London:
Penguin, 1995.
21 L. Wright, ‘Functions,’ Philosophical Review, 82, 1973, pp. 139–68. The etiological
account has subsequently been developed by P. Godfrey-Smith, ‘Functions: Consensus
without Unity,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 74, 1993, pp. 196–208; P. Godfrey-Smith,
‘A Modern History Theory of Functions,’ Nous, 28, 1994, pp. 344–62; K. Neander,
‘The Teleological Notion of “Function”,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 69, 1991,
pp. 454–68; R. Millikan, ‘In Defense of Proper Functions’, Philosophy of Science, 56,
1989, pp. 288–302. For a helpful overview, see P. Godfrey-Smith, Philosophy of Biology,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014; K. Neander, ‘Does Biology Need
Teleology,’ in R. Joyce (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, Abing-
don: Routledge, 2018, pp. 64–76.
22 This example is modelled on that of the famous peppered moth.
23 Cummins, ‘Functional Analysis’.
24 D. Davidson, ‘Knowing One’s Own Mind,’ Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philo-
sophical Association, 60, 1987, pp. 441–58.
25 Godfrey-Smith, ‘Functions: Consensus without Unity’; E. Mayr, ‘Cause and Effect in
Biology,’ Science, 134, 1961, pp. 1501–6.
26 Not all philosophers who defend the appeal to teleological function in biological expla-
nation accept that such functions are not relevant to answering how-questions. A recent
example is K. Neander, ‘Functional Analysis and Species Design,’ Synthese, 194, 2017,
pp. 1147–68.
27 G. Parker and J. Maynard Smith, ‘Optimality in Evolutionary Biology,’ Nature, 348,
1990, pp. 27–33.
28 A spandrel is a trait that is not an adaptation itself, but is a by-product of some other trait
that is an adaptation. See S. Gould and R. Lewontin, ‘The Spandrels of San Marco and
the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,’ Proceedings of the
Royal Society of London, Series B, 205, 1979, pp. 581–98.
29 Genetic drift is a change in the frequency of the variants of an existing gene in a popu-
lation due to random factors. See A. Ariew and R. Lewontin, ‘Confusions of Fitness,’
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55, 2004, pp. 347–63.
30 A constraint is a factor that restrains or limits evolutionary change within a population.
See S. Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2002.
31 K. Laland, Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.
32 K. Sterelny, The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2012.
33 For example, Joyce, The Evolution of Morality; J. Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and
the Gap between Us and Them, London: Atlantic, 2013.
34 For example, Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality; K. Sterelny, ‘Moral Nativ-
ism: A Skeptical Response,’ Mind and Language, 25, 2010, pp. 279–97.
182 Mark Cain
35 J. Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Lon-
don: Penguin, 2013, p. 314.
36 Greene, Moral Tribes, p. 23.
37 Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality. Seminal works in that project include
M. Tomasello, Constructing a Language, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002;
M. Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008; M.
Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Thinking, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2015.
38 Such gloominess is alluded to in the earlier quotations from Haidt and Greene which
refer to the challenge of selfishness and the need to suppress self-interest.
39 B. Skyrms, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004; W. Poundstone, Prisoners Dilemma, Game Theory and the Puzzle of
the Bomb, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
40 An appeal to joint intentionality is a recurring theme in Tomasello’s work. For example,
it is central to his anti-Chomskyan account of language acquisition in Constructing a
Language.
41 Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, p. 84.
42 In tying cultural conventions to mutual knowledge, Tomasello is allying himself to a
view of conventions following in the tradition most associated with D. Lewis, Conven-
tion: A Philosophical Study, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969 and in stark
opposition to R. Millikan, ‘Language Conventions Made Simple,’ Journal of Philosophy,
95, 1998, pp. 161–80.
43 Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, p. 100.
44 C. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1996.
45 In the Ultimatum Game, one player, the proposer, is given a sum of money. Their task is to
offer the other player, the responder, a portion of this money. If the offer is accepted then
the money is split accordingly. If the responder rejects the offer (e.g., on the grounds that
it is too small to count as a fair division of the money), then neither player gets to keep
any of the money.
46 J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, H. Gintis and R. McElreath,
‘In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies,’
American Economic Review, 91, 2001, pp. 73–8.
47 P. Richerson and R. Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution,
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005.
48 Joyce, The Evolution of Morality; R. Frank, Passions with Reasons: The Strategic Role of the
Emotions, New York: Norton, 1988, develops a similar line of argument.
49 For example, J. Haidt, ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist
Approach to Moral Judgment,’ Psychological Review, 108, 2001, pp. 814–34.
50 M. Bateson, D. Nettle and G. Roberts, ‘Cues of Being Watched Enhance Cooperation
in a Real-World Setting,’ Biology Letters, 2, 2006, pp. 412–14.
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10 Is intuitive teleological
reasoning promiscuous?
Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz
Humans have a tendency to reason teleologically. This tendency is more pro-

nounced under time pressure, in people with little formal schooling and in
patients with Alzheimer’s. This has led some cognitive scientists of religion,
notably Kelemen, to call intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous, by
which they mean teleology is applied to domains where it is unwarranted. We
examine these claims using Kant’s idea of the transcendental illusion in the first
Critique and his views on the regulative function of teleological reasoning in the
third Critique.1 We examine whether a Kantian framework can help resolve the
tension between the apparent promiscuity of intuitive teleology and its role in
human reasoning about biological organisms and natural kinds.
The cognitive science of religion (CSR) is the multidisciplinary study of the
cognitive basis of religious beliefs and practices. A basic assumption that unites
this methodologically and conceptually diverse field is that religion is a prod-
uct of everyday, mundane reasoning processes, and not some special domain
of human cognition that requires religion-specific explanations. One domain
CSR authors investigate is teleological thinking. People spontaneously adopt a
teleological stance in thinking about a wide range of events and objects in their
environment. For instance, they believe that features of the natural environ-
ment have a purpose (e.g., clouds are for raining), that the anatomical features
of animals and plants have a purpose (e.g., thorns are there to protect plants
from being eaten) and that significant life events happen for a reason (e.g., Jes-
sica thinks she failed her year because the universe was telling her she needed
to study something else).
Some CSR authors have argued that humans spontaneously exhibit pro-
miscuous teleological thinking, an over-attribution of teleology, beyond the
domain where such attribution would be appropriate.2 Humans make ques-
tionable inferences, such as that trees are for generating oxygen, or that the
purpose of lions is to be displayed in zoos. However, other authors have ques-
tioned this interpretation.3 In this chapter, we argue that Kant’s views on teleo-
logical thinking can help throw new light on this debate. In particular, as we
will show, Kant held that intuitive teleology helps us to make sense of the
world – and thus is regulative of our cognition – but that it also makes us
habitually overstep the boundaries of reasoning.
186 Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz
The first section provides an overview of Kant’s transcendental illusion and
its relevance for cognitive science today. The second section gives an overview
of the CSR literature on intuitive teleological thinking. The third section looks
into possible problems for the promiscuous teleology hypothesis and provides
alternative explanations: we propose that while teleological reasoning is salient
and tenacious across a wide variety of age groups and cultures, it can be flex-
ibly deployed depending on the availability of alternative explanations and the
extent to which someone deems teleology appropriate. The fourth section
looks in detail at Kant’s discussion of teleology in the third Critique, and his
evaluation of the design argument. The fifth section shows that Kant’s tran-
scendental illusion can help make sense of an intuitive teleology which on the
one hand helps regulate our cognition (a positive role), but at the same time
generates questionable inferences (a negative role).
Kant’s transcendental illusion and its relevance

for cognitive science
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant proposed a comprehensive metaphysics and
philosophy of mind that still has relevance for cognitive scientists today. His
distinctive contribution to the rationalism-empiricism debate was to argue that
the mind structures our experiences. While some of Kant’s proposals would be
considered strange by cognitive scientists (e.g., he believed space and time were
impositions of the mind, not inherent features of the world), his broad idea
that the mind structures experience is now accepted, which makes it hard to
appreciate how innovative it was in the eighteenth century. According to Kant,
the mind actively shapes and structures experience by several co-operating fac-
ulties of the mind, in particular, sensibility and understanding. Everything we
experience has a priori elements, that is, elements that our reason supplies,
prior to experience.
While this contribution to our current understanding of how the mind
works is well known among cognitive scientists, a second feature of his work
has received relatively little attention in the contemporary study of the human
mind. This concerns the limits of reasoning, of metaphysical reasoning in par-
ticular. Indeed, the Critique of Pure Reason is more a systematic probing of the
limits of the human mind than of its powers. Unlike rationalists, Kant did not
think that we could obtain any knowledge of the world merely through reason-
ing alone. Yet we do try to get knowledge of the world by reason alone when
we engage in metaphysical speculations, for instance, about the existence of
mathematical objects outside of space-time. This gives rise to a problem: our
metaphysical ruminations are fruitless.
In the A and B Prefaces of the first Critique, Kant considered the state of
metaphysics. Metaphysics, the philosophical inquiry about ultimate reality, was
supposed to be the queen of sciences, providing a comprehensive picture of
the world. Yet Kant clearly saw that while natural philosophers (who now
would be called scientists) were making progress, metaphysicians seemed to
Is teleological reasoning promiscuous? 187
be stuck in a rut. Rationalists such as Descartes thought it was possible to use
one’s reason and in this way to arrive at knowledge about God, the soul and
the universe, ideas that are outside of our experience. Kant disagreed: this is
an illicit use of reason as there are inherent limits to our knowledge (which he
detailed in the Analytic): we can learn about the world of our experience, and
about the categories, high-level templates that are a priori and that we need
to make sense of our experiences. But we tend to overstep these limitations,
when we use principles such as causation, which are outside our experience.
Kant bemoaned this tendency: ‘[Reason] begins from principles whose use
is unavoidable in the course of experience and at the same time sufficiently
warranted by it. With these principles it rises . . . ever higher, to more remote
conditions.’4 For example, the idea that everything has a cause for its existence
may accord with our everyday experience, but it is a mistake to apply this to
the universe as a whole, as cosmological arguments do.
We look for ultimate explanations which gives rise to a specific reasoning
error, the transcendental illusion. The transcendental illusion occurs when we
‘take a subjective necessity of a connection of our concepts . . . for an objective
necessity in the determination of things in themselves’.5 As Grier summarises,
this tendency of human reasoning, the transcendental illusion happens when
we ‘take subjective demands for unification of thought to be objective charac-
teristics of things’.6 For example, we tend to conceptualise events in terms of
cause and effect, but for Kant, it would be a mistake to infer from this cognitive
tendency that causation is an actual feature of the world.
The transcendental illusion is not an easily avoidable error. Simply think-
ing more deeply won’t solve it. Rather, the illusion is a result of the way our
reasoning is structured. Kant repeatedly drew an analogy between the transcen-
dental illusion and optical illusions; for example, the moon appears larger when
it is rising than when it is high up in the sky, even to an astronomer who is not
deceived by this optical illusion.7 In this, Kant prefigures some contemporary
work in cognitive science about cognitive biases that persist in spite of educa-
tion and reflection. For example, even highly educated people erroneously
maintain they are less biased than others.8 Part of Kant’s overall project is thus
to uncover the illusion in transcendental judgments while protecting us from
being deceived by it, but it can never bring it about that transcendental illusion
(like logical illusion) should ever disappear and cease to be an illusion. What we
have here is natural and unavoidable illusion.9
Kant’s position on the transcendental illusion is subtle, as he holds the follow-
ing claims, which are in tension, albeit not contradictory. First, the transcen-
dental illusion is the result of reasoning in an improper way. Our knowledge
has to be limited to experience, and cannot go beyond it. Second, the tran-
scendental illusion also plays a positive role. It helps us to regulate our cogni-
tion. As we will see further on, Kant’s Critique of Judgment provides an in-depth
exploration of teleological reasoning as a heuristic device. We conceptualise
biological organisms (animals and plants) as having natural purposes (Naturz-
weck). Although they are not products of design, they nevertheless have features
similar to artefacts, for example, they have parts that are in dependence rela-
tions, such as the leaves and trunk of a tree: ‘The leaves, too, though produced
by the tree, also sustain it in turn; for repeated defoliation would kill it, and its
growth depends on their effect on the trunk.’10 On the other hand, they are
unlike artefacts in that they produce offspring looking like themselves, ‘one
gear in the watch does not produce another; still less does one watch produce
other watches’.11 Kant found himself in the peculiar position of finding fault
with arguments such as the design argument and the cosmological argument,
and at the same time holding that the reasoning that underlies these arguments
is irresistible given the way our minds are structured.
Contemporary cognitive science has hardly paid attention to Kant’s second
bugbear, the limits of reason and how these lead us to making unwarranted
metaphysical claims. However, there is one notable exception, the cognitive
science of religion. CSR investigates the cognitive biases underlying religious
belief formation. CSR authors have argued that religious beliefs are under-
pinned by ordinary inference systems that we use in everyday forms of reason-
ing. For example, our belief in an immaterial soul may be the result of ordinary
reasoning processes that are involved when we think about other people and
their mental states. When one makes inferences about, say, what one’s grand-
father would want or do, his nearby physical presence is not required. After
grandfather’s death, our intuitive psychology continues to generate inferences
about what he would have wanted, which makes the idea of a continued exis-
tence of his mental states, separate from his body, plausible. This spontane-
ous thinking about dead people’s mental states does not yet amount to a fully
fledged set of afterlife beliefs, which tend to include reincarnation or reward/
punishment after death, but they make such beliefs plausible, and thus more
likely to be culturally transmitted.12
The same may be true of teleology. While intuitive teleological thinking
may have originated in reasoning about living things and artefacts, it may have
facilitated the generation and transmission of religious beliefs, including belief
in fate and in creationism. In the next section, we provide a brief overview of
the CSR literature on teleology.
Thinking teleologically
Young children and adults exhibit a tendency to think about objects and events
as for a purpose. Research on teleological thinking has focused on significant life
events and on features of the natural world. We here provide a review of this evi-
dence, focusing on people’s belief that things happen for a reason, and on their
belief that natural kinds are created for a purpose. Both of these tendencies are
often labelled ‘promiscuous teleology’, the tendency to over-attribute purpose.
We show that teleological thinking is tenacious, although it can be subdued by
education. The next section reviews some objections to promiscuous teleology.
People often attribute purpose to significant life events, both negative and
positive, as if things happen for a reason, for example, they might attribute
meeting their future partner by being seated next to them on a transatlantic
flight as happening for a reason – they were seated together so they would
meet and fall in love. Or, they might interpret a serious illness as a way to help
them realise what truly matters to them. Such teleological causes are often
attributed to supernatural agents or non-agential forces, such as karma or the
universe. People realise there are non-teleological natural causes involved as
well – the seating arrangement on the plane, or the genetic or environmental
causes of illness. Cross-culturally this joint appeal to non-teleological natural
and teleological supernatural causes happens frequently. South Africans explain
AIDS individuals in particular as a result of supernatural agency, such as a curse
by a witch, and naturalistic causes, in this case, infection with HIV.13 Likewise,
the Azande, an African small-scale society, know that termites are the natural
cause for why granaries collapse, but in order to explain why this granary and
not some other does so, and why it collapsed on that person, they appeal to
purposeful agency, in particular witchcraft:
The Zande knows that the supports were undermined by termites and that
people were sitting beneath the granary in order to escape the heat and
glare of the sun. But he knows besides why these two events occurred at
a precisely similar moment in time and space. It was due to the action of
witchcraft.14
Across cultures, people tend to regard supernatural explanations and mate-

rial explanations as complementary rather than competing. While explicitly
supernatural explanations emerge only in older children, probably as a result of
cultural socialisation, five-year-olds already teleologically explain significant life
events, for example, they happen so as ‘to teach a lesson’ or to ‘send a sign’.15
This indicates that teleological thinking about life events is an early-developed
tendency, later mediated by culturally transmitted belief systems, be they reli-
gious or non-religious.
Several studies have probed the relationship between religious beliefs and
teleological explanations for life events in adults. Committed theists offer more
teleological explanations for significant life events they encountered compared
to committed atheists.16 However, about a quarter of atheist participants do
appeal to fate or the universe to explain such events, for example, ‘I think this
occurred as a way for the universe to show me that no matter what I thought
my mission in life was, I was meant to be a person who lived my life for oth-
ers and strives to make everything around me a little better and more kind
and loving’.17 Likewise, people, regardless of religious belief, give teleological
explanations for life events, including half of the atheists, and three quarters of
the theist participants.18
Taken together, this research indicates an enduring tendency to think teleo-
logically about life events. It remains unclear, however, what cognitive capacities
might underlie this tendency. Heywood and Bering speculate that teleological
thinking is the application of ordinary social reasoning processes (where we
might think that people do things for a reason) to life events. In other words,
the way we think about people’s motivations is extended to non-agential enti-
ties such as the universe.19 However, findings about the relationship between
mentalising and teleological thinking have been mixed: people who are better
at social reasoning do not necessarily attribute more agency to fate or the uni-
verse, which one would expect if social reasoning lies at the basis of attributing
teleology to life events.20
Kelemen argues that children and adults spontaneously exhibit a tendency
to believe that objects, including natural objects such as clouds, trees or moun-
tains, serve a purpose.21 She terms this tendency ‘promiscuous teleology’, and
contrasts it with ‘selective teleology’. Selective teleology is the ability to use
teleological reasoning in domains where this is appropriate.22 These domains
include artefacts and anatomical adaptations. For example, chairs are for sitting
on and molars are for chewing with. Kelemen argues that people overextend
teleology beyond artefacts and anatomical adaptations, hence ‘promiscuous
teleology’.23
In an early experiment that probed participants’ teleological tendencies,
children were presented with a particular object, such as a tiger. They were
then offered two possible accounts for why the object is there. One was teleo-
logical: tigers are made for walking, for going in the zoo. The other was non-
teleological: tigers are not ‘for’ anything, they just are. Children had to indicate
which explanation they found more plausible. They tend to endorse teleologi-
cal explanations for whole biological entities (e.g., tigers) more than adults do,
whereas their endorsement for teleological explanations for artefacts are similar
to adults. The two kinds of accounts in this experiment are not equivalent:
one is an explanation, the other is not. Later studies have pitted teleological
against non-teleological explanations for why objects such as rocks and clouds
exist. Some teleological functional explanations were self-serving, for example,
‘the rocks were pointy so that animals wouldn’t sit on them and smash them’,
whereas others were other-serving, for example, ‘the rocks were pointy so that
animals could scratch on them when they got itchy’. Non-teleological expla-
nations appealed to causal processes, for example, ‘rocks were pointy because
bits of stuff piled up on top of one another for a long time’. Kelemen found
that while American adults endorsed teleological explanations selectively for
biological parts (e.g., the length of a giraffe’s neck), children of six and seven
years old applied it indiscriminately, using it also for non-biological natural
kinds, such as rocks, mountains and clouds. Moreover, British and Ameri-
can schoolchildren do not differ in their tendency to assign purpose to whole
objects and organisms.24 Because the teleological stance is not specific to arte-
facts, but applies to a variety of objects, including natural kinds and (parts of )
biological organisms, it is dubbed ‘promiscuous teleology’.
In order to establish that teleological thinking is a deep-seated human ten-
dency, one would have to show that it occurs cross-culturally. There have as
yet not been any systematic studies that compare teleological thinking across
cultures. However, there are some studies indicating that the tendency to
overattribute teleology is not just present in western cultures, but also in China
and Latin America. Rottman et al. investigated teleological thinking in Chi-
nese adults, both under speeded and unspeeded conditions, that is, in condi-
tions where one is put under time pressure versus those where participants can
take their time.25 Chinese adults tend to be low in religiosity, due to decades
of state-encouraged atheism. Given the connection between theism and some
forms of teleological thinking (in particular, about life events), this is a relevant
population to test whether intuitive teleological thinking about objects is also
present in a low-religiosity population. Chinese participants endorsed promis-
cuous teleological explanations, for example, they tend to endorse teleological
explanations such as ‘the earth has an ozone layer to protect it from UV radia-
tion,’ and this tendency increased when they were put under time pressure.
Western education can decrease the tendency to reason teleologically. One
clue to the role of education in teleological thinking is the observation that adults
offer fewer teleological explanations compared with children. One experiment
examined the effects of Western formal schooling by looking at teleological
reasoning in Romani adults who had attended school, and those who had
not. Romani value practical skills and cultural traditions of their communities,
which is why only a third of Romani primary school-age children are regularly
enrolled in school in Romania. Romani adults with varying degrees of school
exposure were presented with explanations for a wide range of phenomena, for
example, sand might be grainy because ‘bits of shells got broken up and mixed
in making it that way’ (mechanistic) or ‘so that it wouldn’t get blown away and
scattered by the wind’ (teleological).26 The tendency to endorse teleological
explanations for non-biological natural kinds (such as sand) decreased with the
number of years of schooling.
Secondary and tertiary education continue to decrease the endorsement of
teleological explanations. Kelemen et al. compared to what extent people with
different levels of education endorsed faulty teleological explanations such
as ‘germs mutate in order to become drug resistant’.27 Participants included
undergraduates, people from the greater Boston area (typically with a bach-
elor’s degree) and holders of PhDs in either STEM subjects or humanities who
are active scholars. Having a PhD further decreased teleological tendencies,
regardless of whether it was in STEM or in the humanities.
More indirect evidence for the mitigating role of education was found in
adults who were given teleological and non-teleological true-and-false expla-
nations. Under speeded conditions, undergraduate students were more prone
to endorse false teleological explanations (e.g., ‘the sun radiates heat because
warmth nurtures life’), but not false mechanistic explanations (e.g., ‘hills form
because floodwater freezes’).28 Adults with Alzheimer’s show an increased ten-
dency to endorse teleological explanations, for example, older adults with-
out Alzheimer’s tend to endorse that rain exists ‘because water condenses
into clouds and forms droplets’, whereas Alzheimer’s patients think rain exists
‘so that plants and animals have water for drinking and growing’, probably
because Alzheimer’s diminishes access to mechanistic explanations, the kind
of explanations we acquire during education. Taken together, these studies
suggest that teleological thinking is a cognitive default that we turn to in the
absence of other explanations.
Critiques of promiscuous teleology

While evidence for promiscuous teleology is substantial, the hypothesis faces
a number of difficulties. It has an epistemic normative flavour: people inap-
propriately extend teleology to domains where physical-causal explanations are
more appropriate. Elqayam and Evans find this problematic since empirical
evidence cannot arbitrate between competing normative theories.29 At best,
empirical evidence can be used to establish a certain cognitive tendency, in
this case, the tendency to attribute teleology to a wide range of domains. This
tendency can be gauged only descriptively, yet researchers like Kelemen seem
to assume that promiscuous teleology is the result of a mistake; while it is a
natural tendency, it needs to be corrected by education. Next to this, some
of the causal-mechanistic explanations used in these experiments were plainly
wrong, for example, ‘rocks were pointy because bits of stuff piled up on top of
one another for a long time’ is a wrong explanation, and yet it is offered as a
causal-mechanistic, more appropriate, alternative by Kelemen.
Kelemen realises that some philosophers and biologists hold that we can
sometimes appropriately use teleological explanations for functional features of
organisms.30,31 For example, it would not be a mistake to say that giraffes have
long necks so that they can eat the leaves that grow high up in trees, or so that
the males can use their necks in fights with other males. But Kelemen insists
that intuitive teleology is quite different from these scientific explanations: while
authors like Neander and Mayr do not see natural selection as a process akin to
intentional design, laypeople (and especially the child participants in her stud-
ies) assume that natural objects, including biological species, are intentionally
designed.32 Still, labelling this unlearned teleological thinking as promiscuous
requires a substantial metaphysical assumption on the part of cognitive scien-
tists, namely that there is no teleology in nature, except for local teleology at
the functional level (which is what authors like Neander and Mayr accept). A
biologist can rightfully maintain that leaves are there to provide energy and
oxygen for plants, but this is not the same as venturing into Gaia beliefs, such
as that the Amazon forest forms the lungs of the Earth, providing oxygen for us
all. The latter would require some explanation of who does the providing (e.g.,
Gaia, Mother Nature). Cognitive scientists have no scientific framework for
adjudicating whether Gaia and other supernatural teleological beliefs are sound.
This falls outside of the remit of science, which is methodologically naturalistic.
Belief in supernatural agency, particularly in an agential nature (Gaia beliefs)
predicts teleological tendencies in educated adults, including physical scien-
tists and humanities scholars.33 In a study in Finland and the US, participants
were shown photographs of objects (e.g., giraffe, maple tree, mountain and
paw of a tiger) and were asked if the object was ‘purposefully made by some
being’.34 The study also included some control objects such as a pair of scissors
and a cello because these would always have to yield ‘yes’. Participants had to
respond very quickly yes or no for each of these pictures. People who had a
higher belief in God, or in the Earth as a purposeful agent (Gaia beliefs), had a
higher tendency to judge that natural objects were made for a purpose. Among
Finnish subjects, the idea that objects such as mountains would be purposefully
made by some being was only 1% for atheists under unspeeded conditions, but
it shot up to 23% when they were put under time pressure. To compare, Finn-
ish religious participants endorsed ‘made for a purpose’ explanations in 25% of
trials under unspeeded conditions, going up to 41% under time pressure. The
idea that God or Gaia made natural objects for a purpose is in line with agential
beliefs, and stating that these participants made a mere mistake means cognitive
scientists were straying from the methodological boundaries of science. After
all, a theist looking at a picture of a mountain might think the mountain is
there to remind us of God’s majesty. In this case, the theist, by her own lights,
is not making a mistake.
Also, note that the mitigating influence of education on teleological think-
ing is a relatively recent phenomenon in Western culture. Until well into the
nineteenth century, natural theologians and natural philosophers encouraged
teleological thinking, linking the laws of nature to divine providence and
divine design. Paley’s Natural Theology, which explains in teleological terms a
variety of biological and astronomical features such as the function of the swim
bladder in fish or the seasons, was a standard textbook in British universities
during the first half of the nineteenth century.35
One can reinterpret promiscuous teleology in non-normative, purely descriptive
terms, perhaps describing it as broad-scope teleology. Normativity is superfluous
to evaluate empirical claims. It is sufficient to say that promiscuously teleologi-
cal statements such as ‘clouds are for raining’ are at odds with Western scientific
claims. Promiscuous or broad-scope teleology could then be described as the
tendency to accept teleological explanations that are at odds with Western sci-
ence, without judgments about their appropriateness.
Greif et al. are sceptical about promiscuous teleology and instead argue that
people spontaneously apply teleology to artefacts only. Unlike the promiscu-
ous teleology research, which pits alternative teleological and non-teleological
explanations of the same event or object against each other, Greif et al. gave
preschoolers the opportunity to ask open-ended questions about unusual-
looking artefacts (such as the crullet, which allegedly makes playdough balls, or
the garflom, which would flatten towels) and unfamiliar animals such as the tar-
sier, saiga, pangolin and civet.36 Children asked about the names of artefacts and
animals, for example, ‘what is it called?’ However, they asked animal-specific
questions only for the animals, such as ‘what does it eat?’, ‘where does it live?’
and – tellingly – teleological questions only about the artefacts, for example,
‘what do people use it for?’ If children were genuinely promiscuous in their
teleological thinking, one would expect them to ask such questions about the
animals as well.
One possible explanation for this anomalous study is that the promiscuous
teleology studies ask for explanations, whereas the open question design of
Greif et al. looks at a much larger body of relevant knowledge, including eco-
logical features (what an animal might eat and where it might live). When chil-
dren are specifically asked to judge explanations for why particular objects or
events occur, teleology comes to the foreground. This may be in part because
mechanistic-causal explanations are more difficult to understand. Even for
adults, mechanistic-causal knowledge is surprisingly shallow, for example, the
vast majority of Americans do not know how climate change happens.37 Like-
wise, people think they know how a helicopter, the tides or a zipper function,
but when asked to explain this in detail they fall short – this persistent cognitive
bias has been termed the illusion of explanatory depth.38 When confronted
with this lack of mechanistic knowledge, people revert to teleological explana-
tions, a cognitive default that is flexibly deployed when other explanations are
not available or do not seem appropriate. This flexible teleological stance also
explains why theists and people with Gaia beliefs are more likely to endorse
teleological explanations, both under speeded and unspeeded conditions. They
do so because teleological explanations may seem more appropriate or relevant
to people who think certain agents (God, Gaia) act in the world.
Promiscuous teleology has further been criticised because it leads to two par-
adoxes. First, cognitive scientists assume that knowledge about the differences
between animals and artefacts is innate39: grasping this distinction comes natu-
ral to infants, without instruction or demonstration on the part of their parents
or the experimenters. Making this distinction is presumably a part of ordinary
human development. In tension with this claim, promiscuous teleology seems
to assume that young children are confused about these two domains. Second,
the promiscuous teleology hypothesis seems to assume that western education
is the sole means by which people learn to limit teleological reasoning to the
appropriate domain of artefacts and perhaps parts of organisms. But there is sig-
nificant cross-cultural evidence to show that people from non-Western cultures
have sophisticated biological knowledge (ethnobiology), in some cases better
than that of Western laypeople, particularly in the domain of ecology.40 For
example, Quecha farmers in Peru and Bolivia know that rain is important for
agriculture. They use the mid-winter visibility of the Pleiades (June) as a guide
for the amount of rain that is to be expected during the coming season, and
postpone planting if the Pleiades are only dimly visible in the night sky. During
an El Niño year, cirrus clouds are more abundant, which means that fewer stars
of the Pleiades are visible.41 The Quecha then anticipate that rains will come
late and be sparse, and thus postpone planting potatoes for several weeks. They
do not think that the Pleiades are ‘for raining’, but use the reliable relationship
between star visibility and meteorological phenomena (in particular, less pre-
cipitation during an El Niño year) to guide their agricultural decisions.
As an alternative to promiscuous teleology, Ojalehto et al. propose what they
term relational-deictic teleology, which they describe as ‘teleological think-
ing about nature [that] reflects relational reasoning about perspectival relations
among living things and their environments’.42 This may suggest that teleology
is not merely an unreflective stance, but that it can be sensibly deployed to look
at different features of a local ecology. For example, one can observe that birds
nest in trees. Intuitive teleological reasoning can help us see this relationship:
the trees are ‘for’ birds to nest in. However, Ojalehto et al. did not demonstrate
that people do not privilege teleological explanations. Rather, they hold that
people might think teleologically in different ways, in that teleological thinking
does not just seem to depend on taking an agential perspective. For example,
the Nyishi (a North Indian small-scale society) have long known that horn-
bills nest in tree cavities (they traditionally wore cane helmets crested with a
hornbill beak). From the perspective of a hornbill, tree cavities are there to
build nests in. Thus, Nyishi think of tree cavities as being ‘for’ hornbills to build
their nests in. This tracks an appropriate ecological relationship in teleologi-
cal terms. Contemporary Western ecologists find such teleological reasoning
equally useful. For example, increasing traffic and the resulting noise pollution
forces Western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica) to leave their native pine tree
forests, and this explains why pine trees are no longer doing well in California.
These birds cache pine seeds for their own consumption, but as they forget
many cache sites, this behaviour helps pine trees to spread.43 For an ecologist,
it is useful to teleologically think of these birds as fulfilling a valuable ecological
function: spreading the seeds of the pine trees, even though it is misleading to
say scrub jays are there ‘for’ the spread of pine seeds. Contrary to what some
cognitive scientists argue, namely that teleological reasoning is promiscuous, it
can be useful for practicing scientists in clarifying ecological relationships.
Thus, taking into account the recent empirical evidence for promiscuous
teleology and some recent criticisms, we find that teleological reasoning is not
a passive tendency, but that it can be modulated by a variety of cultural fac-
tors and beliefs. In this way, teleological reasoning can play a positive role in
structuring our knowledge about the world, for example, in predictions about
upcoming precipitation and in elucidating ecological relationships. In the next
section, we consider Kant’s views on teleology in the third Critique, which we
draw upon to answer the normative question of whether intuitive teleology is
promiscuous.
Kant’s views on teleology

Kant’s views on teleology can be situated in a historical context of natural phi-
losophers trying to make sense of teleology in the absence of Aristotelian final
causes. Aristotle’s theory of causation was widely used until the late Middle
Ages to explain adaptiveness in nature. For example, why are our incisors suit-
ably shaped to tear food, and why are our molars shaped so as to enable us to
chew? Aristotle argued that one has to look at the function of teeth to under-
stand why this is the case: our teeth were not simply shaped by chance, but by
their function. Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, this idea of tele-
ology was widely accepted (see Boulter, this volume). Each object, natural or
biological, has its own teleology. It is in the teleology of a walnut to grow into
a nut tree. Not all walnuts grow into trees, but only walnuts (not, say, chestnuts)
grow into walnut trees, because they have the potential to do so.
In the seventeenth century, Aristotelian final causes were replaced by univer-
sal laws of nature. Particularly in the domain of physics, authors such as Isaac
Newton, John Ray and Robert Hooke no longer explained the behaviour
of objects as a result of their natures and their inherent teleology, but rather
as a result of general laws of nature that could be indiscriminately applied to
every object. This mechanistic world view privileged efficient causation at the
expense of final causation.44 However, the life sciences did not, at the time, fit
neatly in this picture. How do laws of nature explain that poppy seeds grow
into poppies, rather than daisies?
Natural theology was one solution to make teleology more intelligible: the
reason that body parts seem so well adapted to fulfil their function, such as the
eye which seems fit for seeing, is that God designed the world as a complex and
intricate machine. Authors such as Bernard Nieuwentijdt,45 and later William
Paley, likened nature to a clock or watch, intricate and well-designed to fulfil
its purpose. The design argument thus served an epistemic function, helping
natural theologians to make sense of teleology in a world without final causes.
However, as we have argued elsewhere, there is an asymmetry between the
design argument and intuitive teleological thinking.46 Intuitive teleology gives
the design argument its appeal, but intuitive teleology can survive without the
design argument. Even without reference to a divine designer, people still dis-
cern teleology in nature. Moreover, teleological thinking is spontaneous, but
inference to a designer is not.47 Further, the link between theism and teleology
is inconsistent: some studies find increased teleology in theists, whereas others
do not.
Outside natural theology, the design argument was deemed problematic
because it relies on an inductive inference about human-made objects, which
are designed for a purpose, and natural objects, which, by analogy, presum-
ably are also designed for a purpose.48 Moreover, it has a certain circularity,
because the design argument explains teleology by invoking God (an intelligent
designer), while arguing for the existence of God on the basis of the teleology
that is observed. As Kant remarked:
Thus if we introduce the concept of God into the context of natural sci-
ence in order to make the purposiveness in nature explicable, and then
in turn use this purposiveness to prove that there is a God, then neither
natural science nor theology is intrinsically firm; a vicious circle makes
both uncertain, because they have allowed their boundaries to overlap.49
There were several alternatives to the design argument to explain teleology in

nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The main theories on offer
were evolution and epigenesis. (Note that these terms had a different meaning
to their meaning today.) Evolution and epigenesis were proposed by natural
philosophers and physicians to explain embryological development. Due to the
decline of the scholastic view that each kind of object has its own nature and
propensities, the fact that fern spores grow into ferns could no longer simply
be explained by final causes (that it is in the nature of fern spores to grow into
ferns), but had to be explained by reference to general laws. Evolutionists such
as Jan Swammerdam argued that embryonic development occurred because
gametes already contained all the information of the adult state. By contrast,
epigeneticists such as Johann Blumenbach argued that embryos are formless,
but that their development is guided by a Bildungstrieb, a unified biological
force that explained phenomena such as regeneration (of polyps and other
primitive organisms), the repair of wounds and embryonic development. Blu-
menbach emulated Newtonian physics, providing a set of laws that explained
how the Bildungstrieb functions, for example, it was stronger in younger organ-
isms, and worked with varying degrees on different organs.50
This is the intellectual backdrop for the third Critique. Its second part, the
Critique of Teleological Judgment, probes whether it is legitimate to think about
nature in teleological terms. Although Kant was enthusiastic about the Newto-
nian project for physics, he was sceptical of Blumenbach’s theory (with which
he was familiar)51; he did not think that Newtonian forces could explain living
things. At best, the Bildungstrieb was a heuristic device.52
Why do we have this heuristic? According to Kant, ‘Natural purpose is not
a constitutive concept either of understanding or of reason.’53 In line with the
work in cognitive science that shows people have a tendency to discern teleol-
ogy in nature, Kant affirmed that we conceive of animals and plants in terms
of natural purposes because of the way our cognitive faculties work. As human
beings, given the cognitive capacities we have, we cannot but conceptualise liv-
ing things in teleological terms. We impose teleology on nature, even though
we shouldn’t.54
The third Critique argues against the use of teleological principles in for-
mulating biological laws which go beyond the use of teleology as a heuristic
device. Kant thought that natural science could only legitimately use mecha-
nistic laws and not teleology. In this he dismissed contemporary teleological
scientific theories, such as Blumenbach’s, which refer to end-states to explain
how biological forces such as the Bildungstrieb operate. For example, to explain
embryonic growth or the repair of a wound, one needs to make reference
to the adult, unblemished state of the organism. While Kant recognized the
heuristic force of the Bildungstrieb because it used Newtonian principles to
explain biological phenomena, he also thought that the use of teleology to
explain mechanical nature was inappropriate. As a result, he refused to recog-
nise biology as part of the sciences; it was not a Wissenschaft – at most, it was a
Naturlehre, a collection of generalisations.55
Kant’s pessimism about biology is encapsulated in the following statement:
[W]e may boldly state that it is absurd for human beings even to attempt it,
or to hope that perhaps some day another Newton might arise who would
explain to us, in terms of natural laws unordered by any intention, how
even a mere blade of grass is produced.56
This statement has received a lot of scrutiny. In particular, the question remains
whether evolutionary theory would satisfy Kant’s requirements of providing an
explanation for the apparent teleology in nature without any appeal to God,
but purely with reference to mechanistic causes. As we have seen, a num-
ber of contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology talk confidently
about teleology. While Mayr’s teleonomy does not state that organisms are
designed, he nevertheless acknowledges features of goal-directedness in organ-
isms, particularly in adaptive design. In philosophy of biology, neo-teleology
has a concept of normative function: the function of a heart is to pump blood,
and it has acquired this function as a result of its evolutionary history. However,
there is continued discussion on whether using such teleological talk is correct.
Cummins argues there is a problem with inferring function as a result of past
selective pressures.57 We could claim that the function of the human hand is
to manipulate tools. But at some point in our evolutionary history, hominins
had hands that were not used to manipulate tools, as they had not yet begun to
fashion stone tools. The same can be said about other examples of adaptations
such as wings. The first, rudimentary wings in vertebrates did not develop for
flying, but likely for capturing small prey, leaping and sliding or gliding. Flight
developed only later, after the evolution of wings.58
Kant argued that talk about teleology can be a useful heuristic, but can never
capture real biological properties. His views on teleology as a heuristic can also
shed light on intuitive teleology, as our concluding section will intimate.
Conclusion
Kant’s remarks about teleology and his concept of the transcendental illusion
provide resources to think about intuitive teleology and its role in human cog-
nition. The claim that intuitive teleology is promiscuous is a normative claim
based on psychological findings. Authors such as Kelemen have argued that
children and adults without schooling or without access to acquired causal
mechanistic explanations (due to time pressure or Alzheimer’s) improperly
attribute teleology to natural kinds, for example, clouds are for raining, moun-
tains are for climbing. Such normative claims are problematic because one
cannot straightforwardly derive a normative claim from descriptive psychologi-
cal results, because this normative claim is not based on psychological results,
but on a metaphysical framework that goes beyond the scope of the sciences:
cognitive science cannot adjudicate whether supernatural agents exist. At best,
one can argue that teleological thinking is persistent, occurs for both biological
properties and non-biological natural kinds and is modulated by education. It
appears to be a cognitive default that people turn to in the absence of causal
mechanistic explanations. Moreover, ethnobiology (see third section) shows
that teleological thinking can be useful and sophisticated.
Taking a Kantian perspective, one could argue that intuitive teleology regu-
lates and structures our cognition by helping us to make sense of biological
relationships and functions. This is why, unsurprisingly, teleological thinking
has resurfaced within evolutionary theory in the form of adaptive design. For
example, eyes evolved across many taxa because it is useful for animals, living
on a planet with a central light source (the sun), to capture light waves that
allow them to more easily navigate, hunt prey, evade predators and find con-
specifics. The statement ‘eyes are for seeing’ helps to capture these adaptations.
It also explains why teleology can play a positive role in ecology. For example,
while the ozone layer is not actually there to protect us from harmful UV radia-
tion, it seems intuitive to think that it serves this purpose, and the (incorrect)
teleological inference ‘the ozone layer exists to protect us from harmful UV
radiation’ does capture an actual relationship between the ozone layer and life
on Earth, namely that most life forms on this planet could not exist if it were
not for the protective effects of the ozone layer.
To conclude, intuitive teleology is an explanatory default, which plays a use-
ful role in cognition, but competes with culturally acquired causal mechanistic
explanations. Kant believed that teleology had a separate role in our cognition,
and that it was inevitable, given our cognitive makeup, that we would continue
to appeal to teleological explanations. Future work on teleology could expand
this Kantian framework, as outlined in the third Critique, by further exploring
the positive heuristic role of teleology in evolutionary and ecological thinking.
Notes
1 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and tr. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005 [first published 1781]; I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, ed. and
tr. W. Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987 [first published 1790].
2 See D. Kelemen, ‘The Scope of Teleological Thinking in Preschool Children,’ Cognition,
70, 1999, pp. 241–72; T. Lombrozo, D. Kelemen and D. Zaitchik, ‘Inferring Design:
Evidence of a Preference for Teleological Explanations in Patients with Alzheimer’s Dis-
ease,’ Psychological Science, 18, 2007, pp. 999–1006.
3 See M. Greif, D. G. Kemler Nelson, F. C. Keil and F. Gutierrez, ‘What Do Children
Want to Know about Animals and Artifacts? Domain-Specific Requests for Informa-
tion,’ Psychological Science, 17, 2006, pp. 455–9; B. Ojalehto, S. R. Waxman and D. L.
Medin, ‘Teleological Reasoning about Nature: Intentional Design or Relational Per-
spectives?,’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 2013, pp. 166–71.
4 Kant, Pure Reason, A vii–viii.
5 Kant, Pure Reason, A 297/B 354.
6 M. Grier, ‘The Logic of Illusion and the Antimonies,’ in G. Bird (ed.), A Companion to
Kant, Malden: Wiley, 2006, p. 196.
7 Kant, Pure Reason, B 354.
8 E. Pronin, D. Y. Lin and L. Ross, ‘The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self versus
Others,’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 2002, pp. 369–81.
9 Kant, Pure Reason, A 298.
10 Kant, Judgment, §64, p. 372.
12 See, for example, P. L. Harris, ‘Children’s Understanding of Death: From Biology to
Religion,’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B, 373, 2018; H. De Cruz
and J. De Smedt, ‘How Psychological Dispositions Influence the Theology of the After-
life,’ in Y. Nagasawa and B. Matheson (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife, Bas-
ingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 435–53.
13 C. H. Legare and S. A. Gelman, ‘Bewitchment, Biology, or Both: The Coexistence of
Natural and Supernatural Explanatory Frameworks across Development,’ Cognitive Sci-
ence, 32, 2008, pp. 607–42.
14 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, Oxford: Claren-
don, 1937/1967, p. 23.
15 K. Banerjee and P. Bloom, ‘“Everything Happens for a Reason”: Children’s Beliefs
about Purpose in Life Events,’ Child Development, 86, 2015, pp. 503–18, 503.
16 K. Banerjee and P. Bloom, ‘Why Did This Happen to Me? Religious Believers’ and Non-
Believers’ Teleological Reasoning about Life Events,’ Cognition, 133, 2014, pp. 277–303.
17 Banerjee and Bloom, ‘Why Did This Happen to Me,’ p. 291.
18 B. T. Heywood and J. M. Bering, ‘“Meant to Be”: How Religious Beliefs and Cultural
Religiosity Affect the Implicit Bias to Think Teleologically,’ Religion, Brain & Behavior, 4,
2014, pp. 183–201.
19 Heywood and Bering, ‘“Meant to Be”.’
20 Banerjee and Bloom, ‘Why Did This Happen to Me’.
21 E.g., Kelemen, ‘The Scope of Teleological Thinking’; D. Kelemen, ‘Why Are Rocks
Pointy? Children’s Preference for Teleological Explanations of the Natural World,’ Devel-
opmental Psychology, 35, 1999, pp. 1440–52; D. Kelemen, ‘Are Children “Intuitive The-
ists”? Reasoning about Purpose and Design in Nature,’ Psychological Science, 15, 2004,
pp. 295–301.
22 F. C. Keil, ‘The Growth of Causal Understandings of Natural Kinds,’ in D. Sperber, D.
Premack and A. J. Premack (eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 234–67.
23 For example, D. Kelemen, J. Rottman and R. Seston, ‘Professional Physical Scientists
Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive
Default,’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 2013, pp. 1074–83.
24 D. Kelemen, ‘British and American Children’s Preferences for Teleo-Functional Expla-
nations of the Natural World,’ Cognition, 88, 2003, pp. 201–21.
25 J. Rottman, L. Zhu, W. Wang, R. Seston Schillaci, K. J. Clark and D. Kelemen, ‘Cul-
tural Influences on the Teleological Stance: Evidence from China,’ Religion, Brain &
Behavior, 7, 2017, pp. 17–26.
26 K. Casler and D. Kelemen, ‘Developmental Continuity in Teleo-Functional Explana-
tion: Reasoning about Nature among Romanian Romani Adults,’ Journal of Cognition
and Development, 9, 2008, pp. 340–62.
27 Kelemen et al., ‘Professional Physical Scientists,’ p. 1077.
28 D. Kelemen and E. Rosset, ‘The Human Function Compunction: Teleological Explana-
tion in Adults,’ Cognition, 111, 2009, pp. 138–43.
29 S. Elqayam and J.S.B. Evans, ‘Subtracting “Ought” from “Is”: Descriptivism versus Nor-
mativism in the Study of Human Thinking,’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 2011,
pp. 233–48.
30 For example, K. Neander, ‘Functions as Selected Effects: The Conceptual Analyst’s
Defense,’ Philosophy of Science, 58, 1991, pp. 168–84.
31 For example, E. Mayr, ‘The Idea of Teleology,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 53, 1992,
pp. 117–35.
32 Kelemen, ‘Why are Rocks Pointy?,’ p. 244.
33 Kelemen et al., ‘Professional Physical Scientists.’
34 E. Järnefelt, C. F. Canfield and D. Kelemen, ‘The Divided Mind of a Disbeliever: Intui-
tive Beliefs about Nature as Purposefully Created among Different Groups of Non-
Religious Adults,’ Cognition, 140, 2015, pp. 72–88.
35 W. Paley, Natural Theology or Evidence for the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected
from the Appearances of Nature, ed. M. D. Eddy and D. Knight, Oxford: Oxford University
36 During the experiment, existing objects were given fake names and their use was altered,
for example, garfloms actually are wooden foot massagers.
37 M. A. Ranney and D. Clark, ‘Climate Change Conceptual Change: Scientific Informa-
tion Can Transform Attitudes,’ Topics in Cognitive Science, 8, 2016, pp. 49–75.
38 L. Rozenblit and F. Keil, ‘The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of
Explanatory Depth,’ Cognitive Science, 26, 2002, pp. 521–62.
39 F. Xu and S. Carey, ‘Infants’ Metaphysics: The Case of Numerical Identity,’ Cognitive
Psychology, 30, 1996, pp. 111–53.
40 I. Sánchez-Tapia, S. A. Gelman, M. A. Hollander, E. M. Manczak, B. Mannheim
and C. Escalante, ‘Development of Teleological Explanations in Peruvian Quechua-
Speaking and US English-Speaking Preschoolers and Adults,’ Child Development, 87,
2016, pp. 747–58.
41 B. S. Orlove, J. C. Chiang and M. A. Cane, ‘Ethnoclimatology in the Andes,’ American
Scientist, 90, 2002, pp. 428–35.
42 Ojalehto et al., ‘Teleological Reasoning’.
43 C. D. Francis, N. J. Kleist, C. P. Ortega and A. Cruz, ‘Noise Pollution Alters Ecologi-
cal Services: Enhanced Pollination and Disrupted Seed Dispersal,’ Proceedings of the Royal
Society B, 279, 2012, pp. 2727–35.
44 P. Harrison, ‘Newtonian Science, Miracles, and the Laws of Nature,’ Journal of the History
of Ideas, 56, 1995, pp. 531–53.
45 B. Nieuwentijdt, The Religious Philosopher: Or, the Right Use of Contemplating the Works of
the Creator, tr. J. Chamberlayne, London: J. Senex, 1721.
46 H. De Cruz and J. De Smedt, ‘Paley’s iPod: The Cognitive Basis of the Design Argu-
ment within Natural Theology,’ Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 45, 2010, pp. 665–84;
H. De Cruz and J. De Smedt, A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science
of Theology and Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.
47 De Cruz and De Smedt, A Natural History; H. De Cruz and J. De Smedt, ‘Intuitions and
Arguments: Cognitive Foundations of Argumentation in Natural Theology,’ European
Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 9, 2017, pp. 57–82.
48 D. Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, London: Hafner, 1779.
50 J. Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, Göttingen: Johan Christian Dieterich, 1789.
52 H. Ginsborg, ‘Kant’s Biological Teleology and Its Philosophical Significance,’ in G. Bird
(ed.), A Companion to Kant, Malden: Wiley, 2006, pp. 455–69.
53 Kant, Judgement, §65, p. 375.
54 Kant, Judgement, §77, pp. 379–80, 405.
55 R. J. Richards, ‘Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb: A Historical Misunder-
standing,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 31, 2000,
pp. 11–32.
56 Kant, Critique of Judgement, §75, p. 400.
57 R. Cummins, ‘Neo-Teleology,’ in A. Ariew, R. Cummins and M. Perlman (eds.), Func-
tions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
58 We do not have the space to discuss this in detail here, but this should give a flavour of
the contemporary scientific and philosophical discussions on teleology.
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Index
Note: numbers in italics indicate a figure on the corresponding page.
Abraham (prophet) 31 143; on causes and causation 11, 131,

Adamic purity 59 132, 133, 135, 195, 196; framework
Adams, John 49–50 140; Hume’s rejection of 156; neo- 154;
Africa 3, 76, 189; British Empire in 77; notion of function 4; science 5; teleology
‘Scramble for’ 49 84, 112; views 6, 9; see also final causes
agnosticism 109 Arminianism 4, 41, 50, 56, 61, 65, 67;
AIDS 189 see also Wesley, John
Almighty Architect see God Arminian Magazine, The 58, 63, 64
Amazon forest 101, 192 artificial selection 85, 86
America 49, 190; exceptionalism 2, 3, artificial systems 156
50; ignorance of 194; masons 32; Aryans and Aryanism 81, 86, 87; Jesus as 84;
Latin 191; North 4, 47–9, 88; see also model of Western civilization 78; see also
exceptionalism anti-Semitism; blood; race; white race
American Revolution 3, 5, 33 atheism 21, 50, 117, 189; in China 191;
ancien régime 5 Darwin and 96, 97, 109; in Finland 193;
Anglicans, Anglicanism 1, 41, 43, 48; Hume and 148, 149; and secularism 113
charity schools 68; and Darwin 95; Azande people 189
Evangelicals 69
Ancient World (Greece and Rome) 78, Bacon, Francis (Sir) 5, 45 151
82, 123 Bateson, M. 178
animals and evolution 96–7; see also Beagle, voyage of the 94–5
evolution Benjamin, Walter 124
animal souls 97 Benson, Joseph 58
anti-Enlightenment 78 Bering, J. M. 189
anti-modern 78 Berlin Conference on West Africa
anti-Semitism 86, 87 1884–1885 77–8
anthropic principle 101–2, 109 Berman, Richard (Ric) vii, 3, 4, 19–39
anthropology 5, 79, 84, 89 Bernasconi, Robert 6
anthropomorphism 84 Bible, Holy 34, 42–6, 49; Darwin’s
apocalypse 45, 51; collective teleology of acceptance of the 95–6; and medieval
44–6 teleology 112; Wesley’s teaching of 64–6
argument for design 94, 97–109; Biddiss, Michael 85
philosophical considerations 102–6; see also Bildungstrieb 197
intelligent design; theodicy biology, philosophy of 198
Arendt, Hannah 79 Birth of Tragedy, The (Nietzsche) 8
Aristotle and Aristotelian 4, 9, 10; blood: ‘degeneration’ of 80; as carrier of
categoricals 154, 155; ‘cause of causes’ mental and moral qualities 81; pumping
Index 205
of 169, 198; purity of 82; as a racial expansion 51; Darwin and 96, 97, 104;
marker 81; as a metaphor 81; ‘white’ 82 education 56, 57, 61; missionary work
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 78, 197 49–50; and scholasticism 9; and Swedish
Book of Constitutions (Creake) 27 Rite 32–3; teleology 40–4; virtue 56;
Book of Martyrs (Foxe) 46 see also Catholicism; Protestantism;
Boulter, Stephen vii, 10–11, 131–46, 147, salvation
195 Christian Socialism 96
Boyle, Richard 29 Church Missionary Society 49
Boyle, Robert 5, 10 Church of England 43–5, 48, 51
Bristowe, Mary Ann 96 civilization 5, 7, 50; decline of 6; European
Britain: destiny of 49, 50–1, 77; education 85, 87; evolution and 103; Gobineau’s
in 190; eighteenth-century 39, 41, use of the word 83; rise and fall of 80;
43, 44, 45, 51; eugenics in 104; Western 118; white culture and 77–87
exceptionalism 47; girls, schooling of 63; Clare, Martin 29
millenarian thinking in 45; nineteenth- Clarke, Adam 57
century 94, 193; norms 179; Protestant Claydon, Tony 48
identity 48; as second Israel 3; ‘white’ 88 cognitive science of religion (CSR) 185–6,
Britannia 49 188–92
British Empire 49, 77, 88, 103 cognitive-theoretic model of the universe
Broca, Paul 78 (CTMU) 106–7, 108
Buber, Martin 123, 124 Cohen, A. 153
Burder, George (Rev.) 49 Cohen, Hermann 120
Burke, Edmund 78 collective intentionality 174
Burkhardt, Jacob 118 Colley, Linda 47
Butler, Joseph 151 communism 87
Butterfield, Herbert 2 Comte, Auguste 78
constitution (physical) 61, 155
Cain, Mark vii, 12, 165–84 Constitutions (freemasonry) 21, 22, 27, 31
Calvinist evangelism 45; see also evangelism constitutional monarch 25
Calvinistic Methodism 45; see also constitutional parliament 24
Methodism Cook, James (captain) 48–9
Calvinism 65, 68, 80; decline of 50 cooperation see morality
Campbell, George 148 cooperators 172–3, 176–7
capitalism as teleological destiny 50 cosmos 84, 94, 122
Carlyle, Thomas 148 Creake, Benjamin 27
Catholic Church, spiritual authority of 24 creation: of the universe 10, 89, 99,
Catholics and Catholicism 3, 19, 107–9; evolutionary 101; forces of 114;
23, 46; and conversion 51; legal see also cognitive-theoretic model of the
burdens imposed upon 48; and Whig universe (CTMU)
Freemasonry 19 creationism 188
Cecil, Richard 64–5 Critique of Judgement (Kant) 12, 185, 187
Centre for Medical Humanities, Oxford Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) 12, 185
Brookes University 1 Critique of Teleological Judgment (Kant) 185,
Chakrabarty, Dipesh 6 195, 197
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 83–8 Crusades, crusaders 31
Champneys, Basil 76 Crusoe, Robinson 168
Charles I 46 cultural agency 175–6
Charles II 21, 46 Cummins, R. 168, 198
cheating and defection 12, 173, 177 Cunningham, Andrew 10
Cheyne, George 59
Christ: as the Messiah 42; second coming of D’Alembert, Jean le Rond 148
44, 45; soldiers for 59; see also apocalypse Danto, Arthur 115
Christianity 1, 3, 8, 63–7; Anglicanism 48; Darwin, Annie 96
Aryanism and 84, 86, 88; and colonial Darwin, Caroline 95
206 Index
Darwin, Catherine 94–5 Essay on Health and Long Life (Cheyne) 59
Darwin, Charles 5–8, 78, 85, 94–109; ethics 122, 124; and morality 5
argument for design 97–102; intelligence Euclid 95
design 106–7; philosophical considerations Eudaimonia 141
102–6; religious views 94–7 eugenics 80, 103, 104
Darwin, Erasmus 7 Eurocentrism 5, 78
Darwinian teleology 10, 11 evangelism 4, 19, 41,45, 49; and education
Das Kapital (Marx) 104 57, 62, 64–7, 68; and teleology 43
Dawkins, Richard 99 Evans, J. 192
decolonization 3 Evidences of Christianity (Paley) 95
degeneration (racial) 7, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86 evolution, human 77, 85, 94–7, 196–7;
dégénérescence 80 mechanism of 100; theory of 102–4, 198
deism 19, 21, 23, 105, 109 evolution, social 78
Derwentwater (Lord) 30 exceptionalism 3; American 2, 50; British
Desaguliers, Jean Theophilius 19, 23, 25, 47–9
28, 29–31 eye: Darwin’s argument 98–100, 104,
Descartes, René 5, 9, 114, 187 108; Paley’s argument 97; teleological
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to explanation for 196
Sex, The (Darwin) 96, 103
Diderot, Denis 45, 148 Fall, the 104
Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts fairness: morality of 172–5, 177; sympathy
(Foundations of the Nineteenth Century) and 176; and unfairness 175
(Chamberlain) 84 Faure, Élie 86
Dissenters 19, 41, 42, 62, 65 ‘Female Course of Study, A’ (Wesley) 68
Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural female education 61–4; see also education
Things (Boyle) 9 Figgis, John Neville 1
Divine Creator see God Final Causes 10, 11; and teleology 49
doctrines of the Gospel see Gospel final causation 5, 9, 131; and causal realism
Doddridge, Philip 65 135–9; and human agents 140–2; and
Dresibach, Daniel 49; see also Dissenters natural agents 132–5; scholastic account
Dutch colonial ventures 46, 51 of 139–40; see also Aristotle; Hume
Fifth Monarchy Men 45
education, teleology of 56–57; evangelism Foot, Philippa 154, 155, 156
64–8; female 61–4; and holiness 57–61; Fox, William Darwin 96
see also Wesley, John Foxe, John 46
‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’ (Gray) 51 freemasonry 3–4, 19–35; education and
Elizabeth I (queen of England) 46 entertainment 27–30: in Europe 30–32;
Elqayam, S. 192 five charges 21–6; French 32; creation of
Empire see British Empire; Roman empire a grand lodge 21; Hanoverian succession
empire building, teleology of 3, 49 21; medieval origins 19–21; Scottish 32;
England: America and 49; apocalyptic ideas Swedish Rite 32–3; teleology in rituals
in 44–5; Hanoverian 19; freemasonry 26–7, 34–5; transatlantic influences 33–4
in 20, 25, 29–30; provincial 28; see also French: civilization and society 83, 153;
Britain; British Empire; Church of colonialism 46, 51
England; History of England ‘French Prophets’ 44
English Civil Wars 3, 50 French Revolution 5
English Men of Science (Galton) 96
Enlightenment 2, 3–4, 6; and freemasonry Gaia beliefs 192, 193, 194
33, 34; knowledge 30; racism and 78, Galileo 5, 9, 143
83; science 24, 28; and secularization 40, Galton, Francis 96
49; sensibility 23; values 21 Gay, Peter 81
epigenesis 196–7 Gay Science, The (Nietzsche) 8, 113
Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines Geist (Hegelian) 112, 122
(Gobineau) 6–7, 79, 87 George I 21, 46
Index 207
Germany 8; civilization 83, 85, 86; History of England (Hume) 160
freemasonry in 32; idealism (Hegelian) Hitler, Adolf 85
116; nationalism 87; unification of 77; Hoadly, Benjamin 41–2
see also Teutons Hobbes, Thomas 5, 9, 50
Germanen, die see Teutons holiness 56, 67, 68; education and the
Gibson, William viii, 1–15, 40–55 pursuit of 57–61
Gilroy, Paul 85 Holy Bible see Bible
Ginsborg, Hannah 5 Holy Land 31; see also Israel
Glorious Revolution 25 Hooke, Robert 196
Gobineau, Arthur de 1, 5–8; and racial Hume, David 1, 5, 10, 11, 82, 138, 167;
fatalism 79–83; racial warnings 83–8 analysis of efficient causes 131–4;
God 10; Almighty Architect 24; answers to Humean puzzles 139–40;
Chamberlain’s views of 84; Christian and Darwinian teleology 156–9; and
105; ‘is dead’ 8; deist 104; as Divine the science of man 150–3; and teleology
Creator 24; and freemasonry 21, 23; 147–50, 153–9; see also final causation
Hoadly’s views of 41–42; as intelligent Hutcheson, Francis 149–51
designer 196; law of 5, 24; as Nature 24, Huxley, Thomas Henry 8
34; and special purpose 46, 50; Wesley’s hylomorphism, doctrine of 136, 137
views of 45, 56–9, 63, 66–7; wrath of
104; see also argument for design ‘Idea of a Universal History from a
God hypothesis 11 Cosmopolitan Point of View’ (Kant) 5
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 5, 120, 121 illusion of explanatory depth 194
Gordon Riots of 1780 48 illusion, transcendental see transcendental
Gospel, doctrines of 64, 65, 94; gospel of illusion
Luke 95; see also Bible immorality 25, 42, 121
Gray, Asa 104 imperialism 3; British 47, 49, 51; trans-
Gray, Thomas 51 European 77
Great Awakening 50 In Eminenti (papal bull) 23
Greco, Lorenzo viii, 10–11, 147–64 inbreeding 85–6
Greene, Joshua 172 individual salvation see salvation
Greg, William Rathbone 103 individual teleologies see teleology
Greif, M. L. 193–4 individualism 83
Guizot, François 83 Instructions for Children (Wesley) 66, 67
intelligent design 106–7, 108, 168–9, 196
heart (biological organ) 169–70, 198 intentional agents 140
Hegel, G. W. F. 107, 112–13; and intentionality: collective 174; cultural 174;
Nietzsche 122; and Rosenzweig 116, joint 173
118, 120 intuitive teleological reasoning 185–99
Hegelian, Hegelians 6, 116; Young individualism 83
Hegelians 113 inferior races see race
Henry V (Shakespeare) 46 involution, human history as 7
Herbert, Henry 29 Israel 31, 49; Britain as new 3, 46, 48;
heretical religiosity, Jewish 112–13; national teleology of 46–51
Rosenzweig’s teleology 120; see also Italy, unification of 77
Nietzsche; Rosenzweig
Heywood, B. T. 189 James I 19
Hindmarsh, James 58 James II 46
Hindmarsh School 58 James, Henry 165
Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe Jansenists 80
(The History of Civilization in Europe) Jewish people 31; and anti-Semitism 81,
(Guizot) 83 84, 86; Britain as successor to Israel 48;
historical teleology 1 in England 19
Historical Teleologies in the Modern World (ed. Jewish heretical religiosity 112–13; see also
Trüper, Chakrabarty and Subrahmanya) 6 Nietzsche; Rosenzweig
208 Index
Johnston, W. 44 of 12, 168–71; Hume’s views on 148;
joint intentionality 173; see also Hutcheson’s views on 149; natural
intentionality history of 172, 175; Nietzsche’s views
Joyce, Richard 159, 167, 168, 177, 178 114–16; on personal 21; Wesley’s views
on 57, 61; see also immorality
Kant, Immanuel 5; views on teleology Moravians 58
195–8; transcendental illusion 186–88 Morel, Bénédict Augustin 80
Kelemen, D. 12, 185, 190–2, 198 Motion of Fluids (Clare) 29
Kingsley, Charles 96 Müller, Max 79
Kingswood School 58 myth, mythology 104, 123, 149; chivalry
Knox, Robert 79, 81 and 30; of exceptionalism 48, 49;
Korsgaard, C. 175 founding 49; monotheistic 123
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste de 7 narrative teleology 3; see also teleology

latitudinarianism 19, 21, 23 nationalism 83, 87
Law, William 57 Natural Philosophy (Paley) 95
laws of nature 9, 95, 97, 99, 196 natural order 131, 139, 141, 144, 147;
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 112, 143 place of humans in 156, 157
Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 46–7 natural philosophy 4, 5, 10, 23, 186
Locke, John 25 natural selection 5, 18, 12, 107; see also
London Missionary Society 49 artificial selection
Louis XIV (king of France) 46 Naturlehre 197
Loutherberg, Philip James de 48–9 Nazism (National Socialism) 86, 87, 88
Luther, Martin 86 Neander, K. 192
Lyell, Charles (Sir) 94–5 Newton, Isaac (Sir) 5, 10, 151, 196
Newtonian science 4, 19, 23, 28
Maistre, Joseph de 78 Newtonian System of the World, The
Mandeville, Bernard 151 (Desaguliers) 25
Marshall Plan 50 New Zealand 87
Marx, Karl 104 Nietzsche, Friedrich 1, 7, 8, 78, 84, 90;
Masonic ritual see freemasonry epistemology 114; and nihilism 114–16,
Maxwell, Darcy (Lady) 67 123; revelation according to 116–20; and
Mayr, Ernst 5, 170, 192, 198 Rosenzweig 112, 120–3, 124–5
mechanism, mechanistic world view 5, 9, Nieuwentijdt, Bernard 196
97–8, 131, 196, 197; causal-mechanistic nihilism 7, 8, 114–116, 123; see also
192, 194, 198 Nietzsche
mechanism, moral/psychological 172–9; normative, normativity 11, 158; claims
false 191 198; contexts 120; dimensions 157;
metaphysical teleology 116, 124; see also epistemic 192; measures 156; and
teleology morality 159, 165–7; structures 119; and
Methodism 43, 45, 65–7 teleology 192, 195; theories 192
Methodist Conference 65–6; Minutes 66 Notes on the New Testament (Wesley) 65
Millennium (biblical) 3, 45–6
miracles 3, 99, 105, 158, 160 Oakley, Edward 27
missionaries and conversion 3, 49 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
moral judgment 12, 43, 165–6; and the Sublime (Kant) 82
emotions 167; impartiality of 167; O’Brien, Dan viii, 1–15, 147–64
interpersonal nature 168; internalism/ Ohana, David viii, 6, 8, 112–27
externalism 167; and laws 166; and Ojalehto, B. 194–5
morality 165–8; motivational force 167 ‘Of National Characters’ (Hume) 82
Moral Philosophy (Paley) 95 ‘Of the Reason of Animals’ (Darwin) 11
morality 5, 11, 29; Christian 114–115; and ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in
cooperation 172–80; Darwin’s views Philosophy’ (Kant) 5
on 105; enforcement of 51; functions Oriel College, Oxford 77
Index 209
Origin of Species, The (Darwin) 6, 7, 96, 102 Ray, John 196
Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt) 79 Redvaldsen, David ix, 6, 8, 94–111
Osler, Margaret 10 Reid, Thomas 148
Ottoman Empire 44 Religion of Reason (Cohen) 120
Oxford Brookes University 1 religion 1–2, 6, 9; cognitive scientists of 12;
Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church Darwin’s ideas 94, 95, 96; in eighteenth-
History 1 century Britain 41–2; freemasons and
Oxford Hume Forum 1 21–4, 29, 31; heretical 112; inner 113;
Nietzsche and 114; phenomenology of
pagan relativity 120 112; teleology and 40–51
paganism 121–3, 124 religiosity 57, 58, 112; Jewish heretical
Paley, William 6, 7, 8, 95, 97, 193; 113–24
argument for design 99; watchmaker Renan, Ernest 78
analogy 101, 106, 196 Revelation, Book of 46
Peace of Paris 48 revelation according to Nietzsche 116–20
Pearson on the Creed 95 Revelation Restored (Johnston) 44
philosophes 148, 149 revolutions of 1848 77
Pinker, Steven 105 Rhodes, Cecil 77, 88
Poor Law 43 Roman empire 81, 82
Popish Plot 46 Rosenzweig, Franz 8, 112, 116–20; on
Portrait of a Lady, The (James 165) Greek conceptions of the Olympian
Portugal 46 123; and metaphysical teleology 124;
Presbyterians 148 rise of modern paganism 120–3; Star of
predestination 41, 65, 80 Redemption 120
Priestly, Joseph 65 Rosicrucianism 32
Principles of Geology (Lyell) 94–5 Rottman, J. 191
Prinz, J. 166 ‘Rule Britannia’ 47
prolepsis 2 Ryan, Linda A ix, 3, 4, 56–73
promiscuous teleology 12, 185–99;
critiques of 192–5; Kant’s views on salvation 2–4, 43, 148; fatalism and 83;
195–8 God’s grace 50; personal 51; telos of 40,
prophecy 3, 44, 45 41, 42; universal 68; piety and 64–7, 68;
Protestantism 46, 47, 51; and British Wesley’s thinking on 56–7, 61, 64–7, 68
national identity 47–9; post-Reformation salvation as the teleology of education 4, 68
46; Trinitarian Dissenters 41 Saracens 31
providence 3, 44, 45, 50; divine 193; and Scholem, Gershom 124
natural selection 96, 193; and teleology ‘science of man’ 147, 150–3; see also Hume
112 Scientific Revolution 5
providential 44, 46, 48, 50 Second World War see World War II
Puritans 41, 49, 57 selective teleology 190
self-: awareness 56, 58, 67, 68; control 57;
Quecha farmers 194 denial 56, 59, 60, 68, 155; discipline
57, 59; discovery 32; destructive
race: and civilization 80; hierarchy of 5; and 114; evident existence of God 112;
racism 7; strong and weak 81; teleology examination 61; governance 175;
and 1, 77–88; see also Gobineau; Rhodes identity 49; improvement 4, 19, 26, 27,
race question 6 30, 56, 65, 68; interest 12, 172, 176,
Races of Men, The (Knox) 79 179, 180, 182; justification 113; love
racial decline, theory of 78 123, 152; protective 115; replicating 107;
racial fatalism 79–83 serving 174, 190
racial mixing 5, 7, 81, 82, 87 Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
racial renewal, theory of 78, 85 (Law) 57
Ramsay, Andrew Michael (‘Chevalier’) Shafer-Landau, R. 167
30, 31 Shakespeare, William 46
210 Index
Short Account of the School in Kingswood, uniformitarianism 94
Near Bristol, A (Wesley) 59
simulacra 50 vicious circle 196
sinner 41, 42, 121 Victorian Age/Era 41, 49, 94
Skinner, Quentin 2 Voegelin, Eric 78
Smith, Michael 167 vegetarianism 166, 167
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Vogt, Carl 84
in Foreign Parts 48 Volkwerdung 85
Southey, Robert 59
Spain 46, 48 Wagner, Richard 82, 83, 84
Spencer, Herbert 78 Wallace, Robert 148
Spencer, William 58 Walsh, John 2
Star of Redemption, The (Rosenzweig) 116, Walsh, W. H. 164
120–3 Washington, George 33
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 6 watch, example of the 188, 196; Darwin’s
supernatural 40, 45, 84, 198; teleological example of 98, 108; eye likened to 99;
agents 189, 192 Paley’s example of 97, 101, 196
Swammerdam, Jan 197 watchmaker analogy 98, 101, 106; see also
Swedish Rite 4, 19, 32–3 watch
soteriological teleology 2, 3 Weismann, August 106
Southcott, Joanna 45 Wells, H.G. 104
Spinoza, Baruch 45, 116 Wesley, Adam 57
St Augustine 80 Wesley, Charles 57
St Paul’s Cathedral, London 46 Wesley, John 4, 43, 45, 49, 56–68;
education and holiness 57–61;
telos 2, 3; of individual salvation 3; evangelism and the poor 64–7; female
national 3 education 61–4
teleological: nihilism 8; thinking 8–12, 188–92 Wesley, Susanna 57
‘teleology’ (term) 3, 4, 94 Whigs, Whiggism 2
teleology: and the argument for design white majorities 88
97; Aristotelian 112; of empire building white race 77, 79, 82, 86, 87; see also
3; and freemasonry 4; and modernity Aryans and Aryanism
1, 6; historical 1–2, 4–8; and Hegel’s white superiority 6, 77, 79, 82, 87
philosophy 107; Hume’s rejection Whole Duty of Man, The 61
of 11, 147, 150, 154, 156; intuitive William III and Mary II (rulers of
12; narrative 2; natural 122; within England) 46
natural selection 98, 99, 103, 108, 109; Williamson, Arthur 45
soteriological 2; theological notions Wiesner, Julius von 84
of 9–10; see apocalypse; education; Winthrop, John 49; see also Puritans
freemasonry; heretical religiosity; Israel; Wissenschaft 197
race; promiscuous teleology Wolfe, James (general) 51
Teutonic: knights 31; migrations 78; races Wolff, Christian 4
84, 86, 87 Womersley, David 1
Teutons (modern) 85 world-spirit 107
theodicy 104 World War I 116
Tocqueville, Alexis de 49, 80, 90 World War II 50
Todorov, Tzvetan 82–3
Tomasello, Michael 12, 165, 172–80 Young Hegelians see Hegel
transcendental: order 112–13; unity 114 Young, Robert J. C. 82
transcendental illusion, Kant’s concept of Youth’s Introduction to Trade and Business
12, 185–8 (Clare) 29
Treatise of Human Nature (Hume) 11
Trüper, Henning 6 Zarathustra 112, 121, 122, 123; see also
Turda, Marius ix, 1–15, 77–93 Nietzsche

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Teleology and Modernity

The main and original contribution of this volume is to offer a discussion of

William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Director of the

Dan O’Brien is Reader in Philosophy and Subject Co-ordinator for Philosophy

Marius Turda is Professor in 20th Century Central and Eastern European

The Work of History

History and Sociology in France

Universal History and the Making of the Global

Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money

A Personalist Philosophy of History

Historical Parallels, Commemoration and Icons

Historians Without Borders

Leopold von Ranke

Teleology and Modernity

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Edited by William Gibson,

ISBN: 978-0-8153-5103-0 (hbk)

List of contributors vii

1 ‘We apply these tools to our morals’: eighteenth-century

2 Teleologies and religion in the eighteenth century 40

3 John Wesley and the teleology of education 56

4 Teleology and race 77

5 Charles Darwin and the argument for design 94

6 Teleology and Jewish heretical religiosity: Nietzsche

7 Can the sciences do without final causes? 131

8 Hume, teleology and the ‘science of man’ 147

9 What is the function of morality? 165

10 Is intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous? 185

The foundation for this volume originates in two workshops organised by

Section II: history

Section III: philosophy

The medieval origins of modern freemasonry

Membership of a guild became synonymous with membership of the local

The Hanoverian succession

Figure 1.1 Frontispiece

But though in ancient times Masons were charged in every Country to be

Within a decade this teleological concept had become an integral part of

As Masons we only pursue the universal Religion or the Religion of Nature.

Replacing the medieval invocation to the Trinity and traditional obeisance to

A Mason is a peaceable Subject to the Civil Powers, wherever he resides

It was a radical proposition that a freemason could be ‘a rebel against the

The Primaries lead their Satellites,

Teleology in eighteenth-century masonic ritual

The Working Tools of an Entered Apprentice are the twenty-four inch

And it continues with an introduction of the allegorical functions of each work-

Education and entertainment – scientific and self-improving

Those of the Brotherhood whose Genius is not adapted to Building, I

The combination of entertainment – ‘good conversation’ – education – and

I have communicated to . . . Dr J Theophilus Desaguliers, your Grace’s

The Swedish Rite

Your admission among masons in a state of helpless indigence is an

Manuscript and printed primary sources

The teleology of individual salvation

The collective teleology of the apocalypse

The national teleology of the new Israel

O Lord our God arise,

As Linda Colley wrote:

Protestantism, broadly understood, provided the majority of Britons with

John Wesley regarded scholarship as a Christian virtue and saw no contra-

Education and the pursuit of a life of holiness

Anxious to protect Kingswood pupils from what he regarded as the dangers of

Female education, piety and salvation

I am entirely of your opinion, that the pursuit of knowledge and virtue