Spinoza on Final Causality

Abstract

Abstract In this way, the central issue quickly becomes—too quickly, I feel—how various early modern philosophers understand the relationship between mechanistic explanation and teleological (or functional or purposive) explanation: To what extent did early modern philosophers exclude teleological explanation from certain domains of inquiry? To what extent was their practice of using functional idioms consistent with their rejection of final causes? (Is, for example, Descartes’s claim to have excluded final causes from physics consistent with his employment of functional idioms in his physiological writings?) Did some thinkers reject teleological explanations completely or only in certain contexts? Did Spinoza, for example, reject all teleological explanations, or only those teleological explanations that involve attributing purposes to God or nature, making room for teleological explanations that involve human beings? And if Spinoza did reject all teleological explanations, is this consistent with what he had to say about human behavior?