2024 Vol. 43. №2

Nikolay Fyodorov’s Attempt to Link Aristotelian and Kantian Natural Teleology to the Project of Nature Regulation

Pages

123-151

Abstract

The key thesis of natural teleology is that the products of nature should be judged by the goal of their existence or they should be explained as if such a goal existed. The prevailing view in the literature is that there are two main stages in the development of teleology in the framework of philosophical knowledge: the classicaland the non­classical. The isolation of these stages is based on the conviction that at a certain period of time finalism is supplanted by the notion of the goal engendered by the developing whole. I submit that we can talk about non­classical teleology in yet another sense.The interest of Aristotle and Kant in the foundations that warrant the existence of purpose of the products of nature is replaced by the attention to the fact that what exists in nature is not sufficiently purposive. The change of perspective is accompanied by a revision of the notions of what exactly purposiveness is, as well as by calls for practical activity in the course of which nature should be the subject of some tweaking. To bolster this hypothesis I turn to the teaching of Nikolay Fyodorov, the father of Russian cosmism, who puts the emergenceof teleological thought in the context of the project of nature regulation. I focus on three of the philosopher’s assertions which show that he departs from the canon of classical teleology to determine a new context of development of teleological thought. First, Fyodorov points to the destructive processes in the organism, namely towards disease and death, which make it impossibleto consider the organism to be  purposive. Second, the founder of Russian cosmism understands reason as the instrument that is capable of ridding nature of destructiveness. Thirdly and finally, the Russian philosopher maintains that an indispensable condition of human virtue and the attainment of happiness is the regulation of nature by the human being through prescribing for it an external goal as its own.

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