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 Published by William S. Bretzlaff, 238 pages                                                                                                            Contact the publisher at wsb@bretzlaff.com

    An Initial View of Final Causes examines the philosophical foundations of the concept of final cause that appear in the work of Aristotle, Kant and Hegel. Containing more than 670 footnotes, as well as an 11-page index, this reference work is recommended for students studying these three prominent philosophers. 

    Ever since Aristotle stated that nature is a cause acting for a purpose, and hence a final cause, philosophers such as Kant and Hegel have debated the existence and status of natural purpose, which is relevant to some current scientific topics. 

    In the example of cosmology, Aristotle asserted that the Unmoved Mover (final cause of cosmic motion) is also an indirect cause of the cosmic radiation of heat impinging on the earth. The resulting earthquakes and weather are somehow related and keep the earth “stirred up” over the infinite duration of the universe.  In contrast, the modern view is that the universe (or our segment thereof) originated in an unlikely state that set the universe on its way to ultimate destruction in a gargantuan black hole after only a finite duration. The modern debate is over what final purpose, if any, is served by the unlikely initial state of the universe (or our segment thereof).

    In the example of biology, the theory of evolution admirably fulfills its assignment of delineating a certain complex web of physical causes and effects (efficient causation). The underlying biochemistry of nucleic acids and proteins is more puzzling, however, because it is not clear how both could have arisen simultaneously, since each requires the presence of the other. Kant would not have been puzzled at this joint development, because he insisted that organisms and their constituents arise from mechanisms bound together by concepts or natural purposes that exist independently of any knowable mind. One might say that a natural purpose is a concept “endowed with causality,” i.e., is an instance of final causation. Today, one might still be puzzled, because we do not easily imagine that concepts, as abstractions, can of themselves cause any natural effects whatsoever.

    In contrast, Kant did expect such a splitting of causal analysis into the two realms of efficient causes and final causes: Causal analysis is conducted by finite rational beings that are themselves split between a phenomenal world of sensible intuition and discursive thought, on the one hand, and a noumenal world of rational presuppositions and timeless things-in-themselves, on the other. In effect, final causes allow the phenomenal analyst to borrow rational presuppositions from the noumenal world.

    Kant thought that his notions of natural purpose and reflective judgment would do for biological knowledge what his Critique of Pure Reason had done for metaphysics: Organisms cannot be thought possible except as the joint effect of mechanism and natural purpose, just as phenomena cannot be thought possible except as the joint effect of sensible intuition and a priori mental categories. In either case, the human mind helps shape input data into conceptualized objects.

In Hegel’s philosophy of the Absolute, “the rational is the real, and the real is the rational.” The Absolute becomes concrete or actual only by its development to its end, as in the Hegelian metaphor of the circle. Reality is the teleological process of the unfolding of the Absolute into polar opposites followed by synthesis and refolding into a new unity. Philosophy’s task is the systematic understanding of this dialectic of hypothesis, critique, and resolution. The teleological process reveals the nature of the Absolute and increases its self-knowledge. Increasing self-knowledge is the final cause of the development of the Absolute. The limiting state of self-knowledge acquired by the Absolute during all teleological processes is referred to as Absolute Knowing, a state to be attained by Absolute Spirit.

    From the ancient world, with its Aristotelian distinction of the “four causes,” to the modern philosophical era (circa 1600 – 1800), with its Kantian delineation of conceptual thought, to Hegel’s unique brand of Idealism, the notion of final cause has continued to challenge all those who approach the philosophy of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel.

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     The publisher, William S. Bretzlaff, is proud to publish paperbacks by the author, Robert S. Bretzlaff.  The publisher currently makes available the only paperback ever written by Robert S. Bretzlaff, viz., An Initial View of Final Causes.  The publisher currently makes available only this one title, although additional works are under consideration for the future.

     In the author’s three decades of technical work preceding his foray into philosophical works, he occasionally contributed to technical reports (typically 5 to 10 pages in length) with more than one author.  These group efforts were occasionally added to those of many other technical groups and bound into printed volumes containing dozens or hundreds of other technical reports.  Assuming, however, that “paperback by Robert S. Bretzlaff” implies a professionally bound volume with soft covers and the sole authorship of Robert S. Bretzlaff, then it can be stated unequivocally that there has never been a “paperback by Robert S. Bretzlaff” before his book, An Initial View of Final Causes, a work of 238 pages that was first published on Amazon on January 22, 2017.  Hence, any Internet offering of a “paperback by Robert S. Bretzlaff” that pre-dates An Initial View of Final Causes is materially misleading.