Philosophy's Continuous Coastline

The website aeon.co proclaims itself to be “committed to the spreading of knowledge and a cosmopolitan worldview.” This worthy Aurelian telos finds particular support in one of the website’s articles, entitled “How Schopenhauer’s thought can illuminate a midlife crisis,” by Professor Kieran Setiya of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A Princeton Ph.D., Professor Setiya taught at the University of Pittsburgh from 2001 to 2014 and at MIT subsequently. In the aeon.co article, he stated that his own midlife crisis occurred at about age 40. Evidently, he was able to respond to this challenge by skillfully writing the book: “Midlife: A Philosophical Guide,” which appeared in 2017 and features a cover with a sketch of a glass half full (or empty).

In the website article Setiya identifies his problem as a lack of meaning in a life of writing and teaching what he regards as mere quanta of rationality - projects such as teaching, testing, and grading his next set of students, or writing his next book. Upon surveying his life, Setiya found that “the succession of activities, each one rational in itself, fell short [reviewer’s emphasis].” Setiya turns to Schopenhauer and finds life described as a pendulum operating between one limit of suffering construed as the flawed attainment of goal-oriented activities and a second limit of boredom or ennui. At the first limit there is suffering endured while perfecting the current quantum of rationality; at the second limit, there is suffering endured because all such quanta, being essentially identical and repetitious, provide no sense of convergence to anything interpretable as “meaning.” Setiya finds that he can step twice into the same stream of activities and, not perceiving a current of meaning in that stream, deems the stepping to “fall short.”

Setiya notes that Schopenhauer’s approach seems to be unduly bleak, because it does not distinguish between sources of value: Some activities, capable of completion, can fulfill a telos, while other activities seem to remain forever incomplete, limitless, or atelic. If there are atelic activities, then they are not subject to the assembly-line production pressures that serve as Setiya’s bêtes noire.

Before proceeding to Setiya’s examples of atelic activities, let us review some standard examples of telos. Aristotle famously asked, “Why did they go to war?” and answered, “So that they may rule.” On the other hand, suppose that a second tribe, eschewing warfare, just wanted to create and enjoy some really artistic, spontaneously generated graffiti on their enemies’ walls. Replacing martial arts with aesthetic pleasure still leaves one within the ambit of final causation; hence, introducing a notion of “atelic” in this case would seem to be problematic. One is reminded of a German Romantic who remarked that man is never so much himself as when he is at play. Nevertheless, “for the sake of play” specifies some sort of goal, albeit different from a goal for the production of widgets. In these examples, one seems to be dealing with a hierarchy of teloi, not a fundamentally atelic domain. The pinnacle of such a hierarchy may be thought of as an intrinsic value that rises above lower-ranking, merely pedestrian goals.

If an example of intrinsic value were to be sought in the playing of sandlot baseball in preference to the professional rigors of the major leagues, then one could only agree and say, “Play ball!” But even sandlot baseball has internal rules, which define a framework for the sequential acts of prowess that truly energize the game. The reason that one returns repeatedly to the sandlot is to enjoy performing or observing feats of skill, or intra-game teloi. Play has its own teloi, even if - - adapting baseball terminology to final causes - - the lurking danger of commercial teloi must be fouled off in order to look for a better pitch.

Setiya’s examples of “activities that have no terminal point” (atelic activities) are listening to music, parenting, and spending time with friends. At least one of these examples seems to be at odds with the Aristotelian conception of final cause: Listening to music is done for its own sake, but does this mean that the listening is done for the sake of the listening itself or for the sake of the music? In other words, is listening to music essentially a divertissement for the listener, or is listening done for the sake of music as final cause and transcendent value? Of course, one could be referring to “elevator music” for the sake of the listener, but this seems out of place in a discussion of values, mid-life crises, and the ominous “falling short” of some activities previously thought to be of paramount importance.

For an Aristotelian analysis of the proposed atelic nature of listening to music, consider an analogy to Aristotle’s cosmic Intelligences: In desiring to possess the perfection of the Unmoved Mover, these Intelligences are motivated to execute the actions known as “making the world go around.” The final cause (object of desire) is the Unmoved Mover, while the action (rotating the celestial spheres) is taken by the Intelligences in order to achieve that final cause. Analogously, musicians and connoisseurs, desiring to experience the perfection of absolute beauty, are motivated to create and to attend works of musical art. This is art for art’s sake (for the sake of absolute beauty), not for the listening’s sake, which is the musical equivalent of “making the world go around.” Creating and listening are necessary for, but distinct from, the final cause. The final cause is absolute beauty, or perhaps the transcendent value of absolute beauty.

For a Plotinian analysis of the proposed atelic nature of music, consider the musical or mystical experience of a person truly absorbed in his listening, reading, or meditating: At some point that person is no longer conscious of himself as a subject, having somehow fallen into the interior of his chosen activity or object, perhaps like a speck of matter falling into a black hole. Far from being atelic, this absorption can only occur after a long period of self-discipline and training. The final cause is the absolute beauty or the object of mystical contemplation.

In summary, neither Aristotle nor Plotinus would find a haven from telos while listening to serious music. Furthermore, we have noted that even if baseball played for fun is deemed to be an atelic enterprise due to an intrinsic value, the game and its value rely on internal rules (teloi) for their integrity, quite apart from the threat of commercial teloi. One suspects that there is a way to construe any apparently atelic enterprise as one possessing both value and telos.

Setiya writes, “When you pursue a goal, you exhaust your interaction with something that is good, as if you were to make friends for the sake of saying good-bye.” The problem is one of transience. In the Nicomachean Ethics (1157a 1-4) Aristotle says, “bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or of utility ... but good men will be friends for their own sake, i.e. in virtue of their goodness. These, then, are friends without qualification.” The Aristotelian choice for the final cause of friendship is drawn from among utility, pleasure, or goodness; but not, as Setiya affirms, from termination or “saying good-bye.” True friendship is based on appreciation of character, which is something enduring, not transient. Setiya’s problem of “falling short” is one of the transience, or at least the apparent transience, of things of value. One thinks of the 1981 Academy-Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire, which is a flashback from a 1978 funeral to the camaraderie of some British athletes in the 1924 Olympics. One is left wondering whether, and in what sense, the friendship among this group of Olympic athletes was really transient. Surely the resources of theology are required for this further analysis, as well as a careful consideration of whether - - as Copleston has remarked - - philosophy is the handmaid of theology or the charwoman of science.

Setiya concludes that “It is hard to resist the tyranny of projects in midlife, to find a balance between the telic and atelic. But if we hope to overcome the midlife crisis, to escape the gloom of emptiness and self-defeat, that is what we have to do.” The reviewer finds this task to be exceedingly difficult, because some of the activities proposed to be atelic turn out to be, upon closer examination, subject to telos after all.