Teleology

Teleology is the study of the end goal of an entity. Its literal translation is “the study of the end”. For example, when we look at a spoon, we immediately know it is for scooping food that wouldn’t be easy to pick up with a fork. We can also expand on this example by looking at how good the spoon is: A good spoon would be one that scoops well! This is an example of using teleology as a guiding principle to your analysis. Knowing the basic idea of teleology, it is really easy to confuse it with consequentialism. However, there are differences: consequentialism is about the consequences of your actions, especially in relation to ethics, by dividing between the good consequences or bad consequences/effects of an action. On the other hand, Teleology focuses on the purpose of something. That is, it is not solely related to the moral sphere - however, if it does relate to ethics, it does not have to follow a consequentialist line of thinking. For example, think eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is a teleological way of thinking and falls into a category of ‘virtue ethics’ as opposed to consequentialism at least in certain schemas of morality. Teleology is often applied [implicitly] to business, economics, and medicine, though the term is mostly used within philosophy in relation to ethics. For example, looking at business, the CEO needs to determine what the goal of the company is before they make further decisions. Socrates argued that without knowing the purpose of something, it is just like “groping in the dark”. Further, teleology does not need to focus on obscure and unique examples of spoons or CEOs, and does not need to restrict itself to purely ethics, but can be involved in numerous other fields such as metaphysics and the philosophy of science. In sum, teleology is the “study of the end”, and one could literally try applying teleological thinking right now by, say, making a goal and centering your actions around that end goal!