Dewey and Taoism: Teleology and Art

by Crispin Sartwell

In some ways, the inaugural thought of the Western tradition is Aristotle's, repeated with regard to almost every subject matter he investigated. We could call this thought teleology, technology, or means-ends rationality. Here is the first sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics: "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." This notion reappears in fits and starts throughout the tradition and has a particularly fraught relation to Christianity. But in Adam Smith's economics and in utilitarian ethics, as well as in the economic and political orders they reflect, it reasserts its dominance. And in pragmatism, teleology becomes a theory of all value, and in particular a theory of truth.