Back to Aquinas Arguments

Natural philosophy

Final causality and teleology

Natural powers and actions are intelligible because they are ordered toward ends.

Guiding question

What end makes a natural operation intelligible rather than random?

Why it matters

Final causality underwrites Aquinas's philosophy of nature, ethics, providence, and natural law.

The argumentative movement

  1. 1Natural things act in regular ways that tend toward determinate outcomes.
  2. 2A power is understood by the act or end toward which it is ordered.
  3. 3Order to ends points to intelligibility in nature and ultimately to divine wisdom.